The Wright Opinion

The point of all of this FCBD business has been, of course, to attract new readers to comics and to attract existing readers to comics they might not otherwise try. Some try to present something familiar to people who’ve never picked up a comic before and others attempt to pump up the hardcore for the next publishing cycle. This year saw all of those approaches in play. The most new-reader-oriented titles tend to be the all-ages ones like Tugboat’s Dragons! or the licensed books like Darkwing Duck/Rescue Rangers, Richie Rich and Geronimo Stilton/Smurfs, from Boom!, Ape Entertainment and Papercutz, respectively. DC’s main offering, Green Lantern/Flashpoint, is in the pump-up-the-hardcore camp (with probably-unfulfilled movie-tie-in aspirations), while Marvel’s two offerings fit more into movie-tie-in (Captain America/Thor) and “appeal to comics readers who don’t currently read a particular title” (Amazing Spider-Man).

I’ve gone into how successful or not those various titles were in previous parts. So how did some of the others do?

The Next Day/Kenk
Pop Sandbox
By Paul Peterson, Jason Gilmore & John Porcellino/Alex Jensen, Jason Gilmore & Nick Marinkovich

These are both short previews rather than standalone stories and read more like part of a press package than consumer-oriented products. The Next Day is about survivors of suicide attempts, while Kenk is about a prolific bicycle thief. Both previews are so short (six pages and four pages) that they don’t provide much more than the high concept of each book. Each also has a one-page description of the book which, by offering more than a tiny snapshot of tone and visual style, did a better job of presenting the material than the selected previews. I’m interested in seeing more of both books, but not more so than I was before reading the previews. Note: after not finding this on the Free Comic Book Day website and noticing there’s no FCBD logo on it, I’m now wondering if maybe this is part of a press package that has been repurposed for FCBD. If that’s the case, I’m willing to go easier on it, since all I’d expect from that is a synopsis and a sense of what the book looks like.

Rating: Ask me tomorrow

I.C.E.: Immigration and Customs Enforcement/Loose Ends
12-Gauge Comics
By Doug Wagner and Jose Holder/ Jason Latour & Chris Brunner

I.C.E. displays a weird tendency that several of this year’s FCBD comics succumbed to: quitting just when the story is introduced. The comic is a mess of pacing. Of the 12 pages, eight are taken up with what I guess we’re supposed to understand to be I.C.E. business as usual, some agents apprehending someone trying to cross the US/Mexico border, a slog to get through with confusing action and off-putting art. One follows up with everyone congratulating each other afterward, another wastes time with inconsequential, boilerplate dialogue as two agents climb some stairs, and only on the final page do we get something that isn’t business as usual, presented in a splash page with no dialogue. Clearly, we’re meant to be intrigued and pick up the first issue, but other than that there are some headless people, there’s nothing to tell us why we care about this case enough to want the agents to solve it, and the characters themselves have been blank slates so far. Add in the slog to get to this point and there’s nothing to hook a reader to continue.

On the literal flipside, the artwork, the colors, and even the lettering are more appeaing in Loose Ends. The dialogue sounds more real and the people seem more interesting, but the eight-page preview falls into many of the same traps. There’s a quote from Jason Aaron on the cover, so this may be a good story once you actually get to read it, but that doesn’t happen here. The cover also says “Southern crime romance,” but there’s not much evidence of that inside. Sure, there is a crime background—one character runs drugs. But any hint of why today is different from any other day he runs drugs is left out. Who the romance will be between beats me. If the cover didn’t say “romance,” nothing inside would have tipped me.

Stories need some setup, stuff that can be paid off later and lend some shape to the narrative, but setup isn’t what sells stories or else every movie trailer in the world would be the first two minutes of a film. If you’re going to release a preview rather than an original story, figure out where the juice of the thing you’re selling is and print that. Tell us about what’s in the room instead of showing agents walking up to the room or you’ll run out of pages before anything interesting happens.

Rating: Wake me when the story starts.

Spontaneous #1
Oni Press
By Joe Harris & Brett Weldele

I’d say Oni shut out FCBD last year; The Sixth Gun got serious buzz and actually ran out at every store I went to, so I didn’t get to read it until later. A year later, the series continues to get great attention and recently won the Director’s Choice award at Stumptown. So Spontaneous was one to check out. I don’t think it’s a perfect first issue by any means, but it avoids a lot of the mistakes of the comics listed above. For one thing, it’s the complete fist issue, which gives it the space to take a, forgive the expression, slow burn approach. We get the time to get to know the characters and for tension to build. But not spending enough time with the I.C.E. agents wasn’t the only problem. Here, the captions reveal a POV on page one, our protagonist exhibits some strange behavior on page two, and a major event has occurred by page six. We end with a cliffhanger, but it’s not the first sense of something weird, it’s our heroes in mortal danger. This is a miniseries, people. This is how you do it.

There’s a definite Chew influence on display in the way that the story takes a very specific, offbeat entry point into weird genre investigation, coupled with tongue-in-cheek narration and even a fast-food setting. Melvin has developed a method for tracking and predicting potential victims of spontaneous combustion—burners—and Emily is a freelance/unemployed investigative journalist following up on a burner who ignited in the mall food court where Melvin works, and it goes from there. Weldele’s art is very similar to how it was in The Surrogates, and it works just as well here. His use of sketchy details and a monochrome palette combine the focus of black-and-white with the storytelling possibilities of color, and the predominance of yellows and oranges keep the theme of combustion constantly in mind. There’s certainly enough here to make me want to know what happens next.

Rating: Hot.

Rated Free For Everyone
Oni Press
By J. Torres, Dean Trippe, Joshua Williamson & Vinny Navarrete

Neither of the stories in here completely grabbed me, seeming just a bit too familiar, but of course they’re for kids, who may not have seen it all before. I was more impressed by the art of Sketch Monsters (loved the way that the creatures that come from the sketchbook are colored and rendered) than the story, which was simply functional, and more impressed by the story of Power Lunch than the art, which was somewhat stiff. Both had fun concepts, though, and might grab kids. Importantly, each is a complete story that gives a good sense of the tone of the books they’re promoting.

Rating: Little growing up to do.

Top Shelf Kids Club
Top Shelf Productions
By Andy Runton, Christian Slade, James Kochalka, Ray Friesen, Jess Smart Smiley, and Chris Eliopoulos

Top Shelf once again used their FCBD comic as a grab bag of their various all-ages titles, with a brief story from each of their regular artists. Some are exceptionally trifling, but each gives a good sense of what their respective book lines are like. I found the Owly story slightly harder than usual to parse, but I got there, and it was charming as always. The Korgi story was a standard outing, fairly shallow but beautiful. I laughed at the conclusion of the Johnny Boo story. Of the new offerings, the art style of Upside Down sucked me in, the Pirate Penguin vs Ninja Chicken short didn’t totally grab me, though I appreciated its secret origin of Free Comic Book Day, and Okie Dokie Donuts impressed me with its weirdness, at least. I already follow many of these, but I can easily see kids moved to find more based on the stories in here.

Rating: :)

Michael Moorcock’s Elric: The Balance Lost
Boom! Studios
By Chris Roberson, Francesco Biagini & Stephen Downer

This seemed like a good place to end for now, because it was never going to grab me personally, as I’m not a fan of fantasy, but the package nonetheless impressed me. The ten-page story shows Elric in action, introduces his essential conflict, that his sword compels him to battle in order that his own life force will be restored when it kills, and delves into his place in a multiversal procession of reincarnation. That’s a tall order for such a short story. Just as importantly, the story is followed by an appreciation by Boom! publisher Ross Richie and a history of Elric in comics, which is exactly the sort of material that helped me wrap my head around Dark Horse’s Conan comics. So, not for me, but if I was a fantasy buff, this is just the kind of package I imagine attracting my attention.

Rating: Lost on a technicality

So there you have it. I don’t think this year’s offerings were the strongest, but there was a great variety, and at the very least, seeing how different publishers seize the opportunity of stores full of new readers is instructive. The major takeaway lessons for me are: actually give aways something free, a full issue or original story, and failing that choose a preview that is actually representative of the story and tells readers why they have to see more. It’s surprising how many publishers haven’t put those things together, but good to see that some have, and very effectively. Till next year!

(P.S. I actually got a lot more free comics this year, so depending on how lazy I am in the next week, there may be straggler reviews.)

Time for store two!

Just like I had noticed a guy with a bag of comics at the Tea Zone, my bus ride from downtown to NE Sandy Blvd. provided a look at some more comics fans in the wild. Some were, like me, on their way to Cosmic Monkey Comics on 53rd Ave., while others got on around 42nd Ave., having just left the Sandy Blvd. Things From Another World store. While reading Captain America/Thor: The Mighty Fighting Avengers, I listened in to them comparing notes on what comics they were anticipating. Then it was time to get out.

Cosmic Monkey’s a different kind of store than Floating World, though also a great one. Where Floating World has a bit more of a feel of being curated, Cosmic Monkey attempts to have everything and does a pretty good job of it. It’s also a much larger space, and the space was used today to set up a few separate displays and make room for artists signing at tables. Before looking checking out the comics, I spent a few minutes chatting with Shannon Wheeler, who was signing his newly Eisner-nominated book, I Though You Would Be Funnier, about the publicity boon that the book being mistakenly left off the online Eisner ballot provided and about some of his upcoming books from various publishers.

The wares on offer included FCBD titles from previous years, as well as an assortment of other overstock items. There was a table that appeared to be general stuff and another that was exclusively all-ages material. At the general table I picked up a Fantagraphics-distributed anthology from 1989 called Fox Comics Special, while the kids’ comics table revealed Kaktus Valley #1, a Fanta anthology from 1990. My paid-for-it acquisition was Julia Wertz’s The Fart Party volume 2; I had picked up the first volume from her at Stumptown, loved it, and had been eager to get my hands on the second.

  

Like at Floating World, store owners Adam Healy and Andy Johnson reported lots of business, and I saw several more kids than I normally do at the store.

Tomorrow: A special bonus store visit, plus more comics impressions!

I live downtown. I don’t have a car. When I started at Dark Horse, I was lucky to already live a few minutes walk from a bus that goes straight from downtown Portland to two blocks from DH’s door in Milwaukie. There’s a lot I like about commuting by bus rather than car, but the best part is the hour of reading time the bus provides each day. Sometimes I’m reading novels or magazines, but I often dig out whatever comic I’m reading at the time, be it 20th Century Boys or Batman Inc. or Love and Rockets or whatever. They’re all bus-appropriate.

So, no car, and plans to hit more than one comics shop in short notice. Lots of busing it today, which means getting through more of my FCBD stack. And for the bus, why not some good old-fashioned superheroes?

Captain America/Thor: The Mighty FIghting Avengers
Marvel Comics
By Roger Langridge, Chris Samnee & Matthew Wilson

This one’s sort of why we’re all here today, right? They schedule Free Comic Book Day to go along with the first big comics movie of the summer, which this year is Thor (and it’s usually a Marvel movie, as Marvel’s efforts to pump out movies are much further along than DC’s). Later in the summer there’s also Captain America, so combining the two for FCBD is a clear winner. The comic, by the creative team of Thor: The Mighty Avenger, the only Thor comics I’ve ever read, is also pretty good. It’s not quite as strong as the series was, since the part that works the best, the growing relationship between Thor and Jane, is largely absent, and while sending the heroes back in time to meet King Arthur is a clever way to put them on unfamiliar ground while still presenting a scenario familiar to kids who don’t read comics normally, Thor’s thing is already being a fish out of water, so this actually isn’t much more of a stretch for him. Still, the superheroics are topnotch, and Captain America comes across as likable, despite receiving only the most basic characterization, and Samnee’s take on the heroes is wonderful, a softer, more human take on superpowered folks than usual while still communicating their power.

Rating: Mighty!

Green Lantern Special Edition plus Flashpoint
DC Comics
By Geoff Johns, Ivan Reis & Andy Kubert

I’ve already read the main story here, so I just gave it a skim. It hasn’t gotten better, and while it’s part of Hal Jordan Green Lantern’s origin (part 2 of 6, to be exact), it’s already awfully wrapped up in other things. So many “secret origin”-type stories assume the reader already knows the broad strokes and the future of the characters, thereby creating a mechanical, predetermined feel to the proceedings, and this is no exception. Between Blackest Night teases and callbacks to old Alan Moore shorts, there’s hardly any room left for an actual story, and the cliffhanger, the appearance of a regular-looking person who announces he is HECTOR HAMMOND in large letters, is absolutely meaningless without existing knowledge of the characters. As for the Flashpoint preview, who knows what’s going on there? All it tells me is that I don’t care about Flashpoint. It’s impossible for me to imagine this comic getting anyone excited about this summer’s Green Lantern movie.

Rating: Yellow!

Young Justice/Batman: The Brave and the Bold Super Sampler
DC Comics
By Art Baltazar, Franco, Mike Norton, Scholly Fisch & Rick Burchett

This, on the other hand, is very smart about what it’s for and who it’s after. Each of the two stories based on DC’s current cartoons is self-contained and complete, and each finds a relatively organic way to include clear statements about who its heroes are in the course of the adventures. The Psycho-Pirate introduces each member of Young Justice to their hidden fears, while Batman’s team-up with the Flash keeps him from a charity dinner where other philanthropists talk about Bruce Wayne. The artists nail the character designs while bringing something of themselves to the table, and the result is straightforward superhero stories totally suitable for kids with a knowing wink at older readers.

Rating: Bold.

Amazing Spider-Man
Marvel Comics
By Dan Slott & Humberto Ramos

I don’t read Amazing Spider-Man, but I’m betting this is not all that different from a regular issue, with a little more upfront background thrown in. It’s not bad, not my thing. Slott clearly has fun writing the banter, and Ramos’s ragdoll anatomy is perfectly suited to the exaggerated way Spider-Man moves. A quick recap page explains what’s up with Spider-Man these days, including the loss of his Spider-sense. There wasn’t much more than that to grab me, and I found the last few pages a little difficult to get through because the pacing was so odd. The story climaxed, had a denouement, and then a fourth act suddenly appeared, having virtually nothing to do with what had come before and setting up an upcoming storyline. I guess the idea was to get people into the mood of the book and then introduce a continuing storyline rather than throw readers in headfirst, but there must have been a way to do it that felt more natural. Still, it’s trying way harder than the Green Lantern comic to attract the non-hardcore, so I have to give it that. Basically, this was a pleasant enough read, but it didn’t convince me I needed more.

Rating: Spider-sense . . . not tingling!

Super Dinosaur: Origin Special
Image Comics
By Robert Kirkman & Jason Howard

This one’s pretty gloriously stupid. I’m sure a lot of kids will be sold the instant they see a T-Rex (Super Dinosaur, natch) using its tiny arms to manipulate two joysticks that control a pair of large, powerful arms. And indeed, Howard’s artwork is inviting enough that I’m willing to forgive things like the fact that no 11-year-old would ever say, to some other kids, “As you know, my dad, world-famous Doctor Dynamo, is a really cool scientist.” And therein lies the weakness of this comic: it’s not a story so much as a recap. At least I assume this is a summary of the story to date and not the actual first-time origin of Super Dinosaur, because it’s largely just exposition in the typically wooden Kirkman style. Again, though, the concept alone is enough to make it easy to get through, and Howard tells as much story with the color scheme alone as do the captions, so it’s all in good fun.

Rating: Little arms controlling big arms! (That’s a metaphor.)

Last year for Free Comic Book Day I visited two comics stores and reviewed 14 of the comics. This year the plan is to once again visit two stores—one down, one to go, and exceed last year’s review count.

Having already started the day at downtown Portland’s Floating World Comics, it’s time for round one. I’m relaxing over tea and croissants at the Tea Zone in Portland’s Pearl District, much more crowded than normal on a Saturday morning, as it’s hosting both Mother’s Day high tea and a walking tour. Readers in Portland: this is a great place, with an amazing tea selection and delicious Sunday brunch, especially the eggs Benedict, which uses organic spinach and bacon and homemade Hollandaise sauce. Not that I mind never having to wait for a seat, but it always surprises me to not see it packed Sunday afternoons. But I digress . . .

Different from last year: this will be several entries throughout the day and probably tomorrow. Same as last year, gonna tear through the comics and write quick first impressions. I’ll be passing on the Dark Horse offerings, conflict of interest and all (actually read, or rather proofread, these months ago), and this year I’m adding the pair of Archie freebies, as I now work with them too, on DH’s Archie Archives line. I’m sure they are all worth your time, though!

So, threetwo1 go!