Reading Comics 186 "Free Comic Book Day 2016"

So, Saturday was National Comic Book Geek Day, otherwise known as Free Comic Book Day, which to further clarify (because every time I bring up to my sisters, they assume you can pick up just any comic for free), is when pretty much every publisher puts out a special release that's absolutely free.  It's the best comics advertising of the year, and what they provide often gives you keen insight to what they consider important.

Take DC, for instance.  This year they published a special reprint edition of Suicide Squad, somewhat obviously because the next DC movie is...Suicide Squad.  But more importantly, because DC's next big event is DC Rebirth...which is just around the corner, and the big reveals are waiting to be discovered in Justice League #50 and DC Rebirth Special.  So this year there wasn't really much point in doing something other than what it did for the freebie.  The company has brownie points to earn for its next movie, because no one actually thought Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice was as cool as DC did, and Deadpool looked like it just created a revolution earlier this year, and so yeah, the somewhat tonally-similar Suicide Squad looks like a pretty good horse to back.

But enough about that.  But a little more about movies!  Because after visiting my local haunt, I went and saw Captain America: Civil War.  It was a pretty good movie, all told.  It's my favorite Avengers movie, somewhat easily, I might add.  Although plot-wise it's full of holes (about as many as people tried really hard to see in Batman v Superman), it does the Marvel method better than any other in that franchise to date.  So that's pretty cool.

Getting back to the comics, my local haunt put a three-book maximum, and so I had to be pretty careful.  The first choice was really obvious, and so that left two.  I'll walk you through my thought process:

Avatarex FCBD Special Preview (Graphic India)
This is Grant Morrison.  You know Grant Morrison, right?  Chances are, if you've read this blog at all, you'll catch a hint that he's one of my favorite comic book writers.  So this was the gimme.  Avatarex is something I first learned about last year, but it was a pretty exclusive affair in 2015, being available only through a special online bundle (I assume it was digital, but Graphic India did not go out of its way to make this easy to decipher).  Once I'd read this preview, I found out what Avatarex is all about.  Basically, it's Morrison's modern 18 Days, featuring Superman as depicted in Man of Steel and Batman v Superman.  The whole thought process is very clearly spelled out in the preview.  Also included in the preview is an excerpt from 18 Days, which is a project I've wandered from recently but fully intend to read completely at some point, because it's fascinating.  This is the primordial superhero epic, the Crisis in Ancient India, as it were.  Morrison himself isn't writing the complete story, which is part of the reason I've found it easy to stray, but it's such powerful stuff, a vision Graphic India would really have needed to screw up.  And thankfully, from everything I've read to date, the company really hasn't.  Which is really good.  It's also good that we're getting a writer of Morrison's caliber presenting comics from a totally different landscape than we're used to.  And bringing his A-game...

Civil War II FCBD (Marvel)
Brian Michael Bendis and Jim Cheung present this preview of the upcoming sequel (-ish thing).  In terms of what they present here, I'm glad I read, and relished, Charles Soule's Secret Wars effort, because as of this material, I have no idea what the fight will be about.  This is more like random material they tossed in (which is kind of how most of Captain America: Civil War plays out, but again, I say that out of admiration, because eventually, weird logic ensues), including completely downplaying Thanos.  (Somewhere along the way, I have to assume someone making the movies decided Thanos wasn't as important to the overall arc as Joss Whedon suggested, because he's been almost completely insignificant, even in Guardians of the Galaxy.)  Unlike the reprint synergy DC brought to FCBD this year, Marvel's just reads cynically.  Which is weird, because Bendis is literally one of the chief sources of inspiration that brought about the hugely successful movies, and his work subsequently just looks like afterthought.  Even weirder, the special also slips in a random All-New, All-Different Avengers excerpt, which is Mark Waid literally riffing on last year's Ant-Man.  I just don't get it.  Here's Marvel doing exactly what DC usually does, and ending up looking like it wasted the whole thing.  But at least it reminds everyone that Marvel's got comics, too...

Valiant 4001 A.D. FCBD Special (Valiant)
This is a company I've grown quite fond of in the last year.  I haven't been reading a lot of it lately, but it made for an easy selection, because there are various previews of upcoming projects, including the titular latest crossover event and Divinity II, both from writer Matt Kindt, who is easily the company's greatest steal, if nothing else than for his Divinity.  The second volume of this saga looks just as fascinating as the first, with Kindt pulling back the curtain a little and having a look at the two cosmonauts left behind last time and maybe more about what's really going on.  I look forward to reading more of that.

And finally, I was also to slip into another shop later in the day.  Predictably, the pickings were slim, but I came away with:

Camp Midnight FCBD Special (Image)
In the spirit of Lumberjanes (which is a huge buzz book I've sampled thanks to comiXology), Camp Midnight is a young readers adventure set in summer camp.  The writer is Steven S. Seagle, whom I'd shockingly not yet made a label here, despite his rather formative accomplishments (including the seminal if sparsely-referenced It's a Bird... Superman graphic novel).  He's part of the creative group behind Ben 10 and Big Hero 6.  And his writing chops are in evidence here, which is an excerpt from a graphic novel.  A lot of times, material aimed at younger readers tries to be too clever, so that it ore represents Adult Swim-inspired material like Archer, or the caffeine-inspired cartoons that kids have today.  Seagle wisely backs off from that approach, but still maintains an edge.  Glad I had a second chance to catch a look.

It's also worth talking a little about the character of FCBD as I experienced it this year, in Virginia.  My last two experiences were in Maine, and waiting in line there was a little like experiencing riffraff congregating (plus some Stormtrooper cosplay).  This year I had a better sense of the comic book fans who saw this as a special occasion.  I got to overhear, and participate, in some of the better chatter I've heard at a comic book store.  These places can sometimes be a wretched hive of scum and villainy (it's no wonder geeks largely define the dialogue of the Internet), so it was nice to experience something better for a change. 

On the whole, it was a pretty good day.