Free Comic Book Day always makes me smile. I don't know why. Well, sure I do. Nostalgia plays a role, since I inherited my first stack of comics when I was about 11 from a kid who was a few years older. He was also smaller, despite the fact that his nickname was Moose.
Within a few years, I'd expanded that collection with issues featuring then-new superheroes like Spider-Man, Thor and Sgt. Fury & His Howling Commandos. Eventually, however, I passed all of them along to my younger brothers because that's just the way it worked then, a rite of passage I didn't question.
Every year since 2002, FCBD comes along again to remind me about all that. Why wouldn't I smile? But it's also serious business. I love to watch the momentum build as I read articles from local papers nationwide in which indie comic book retailers express their enthusiasm for a day during which they get to occupy center stage.
And it's certainly not a coincidence that the The Avengers opens today in multiplexes everywhere. Studios know a good thing when they see it, too, and a comics-themed movie released the day before FCBD is definitely well-timed.
Comics matter.
Forbes magazine noted that free comics are a revenue generator. "I'm told by a lot of retailers, and I'll bear that out in my own store, that Free Comic Book Day is one of the best days of the year in terms of business," said Joe Field, FCBD's founder and the owner of Flying Colors Comics, Concord, Calif. "We use Free Comic Book Day as a way to just get people ignited about comics... and to come back to the store week after week. It turns out, with the number of people who show up, it's no secret that it's become one of the best business days of the year."
The Gaithersburg Gazette observed that FCBD "may serve as an origin story for those who have not ventured far into the medium."
Chris Pobjecky, co-owner of Yancy Street Comics, Port Richey, Fla., confirmed this theory in the Suncoast News. He said his shop "has been growing as though it had been bombarded by gamma rays," expanding three times in 10 years. "I love the fact there's more people reading now, especially kids." He added that the myriad graphic options available have also played a role: "It isn't all just, 'Bam!' 'Pow!,' Spider-Man battling Dr. Octopus all the time."
In the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Robert Lewis, owner of Wishing Well Comics, said, "Because it gets so much press, we get a lot of parents in who have never taken their kids to a comic shop before. Sometimes when they see that the books excite their kids and interest them in reading, they become regular customers and the kids become avid readers."
Terry Grant, owner of Third Coast Comics, Edgewater, Ill., told Gapers Block that FCBD "remains an event that is just awesome for families with small kids as well as long time fans, without being filled with speculators.... I think FCBD does a great job bringing new faces to shops and new readers to comics by virtue of the fact that I'm still having new people coming up to me from last year's FCBD and mentioning a book, artist, writer or publisher that I suggested for them."
Acme Comics has partnered with the Natural Science Center of Greensboro this year to offer a second location for handling the anticipated turnout of about 4,000 people, the News-Record reported. Recently the city council declared that on the first Saturday in May, Greensboro will be known as "Comic Books City, USA."
A couple of days ago, I saw Morgan Spurlock's documentary Comic-Con Part IV: A Fan's Hope. Then I watched it again because it also made me smile. I will never be part of this world, which is okay because I surrendered my comics cred long ago when I betrayed my collection of superheroes and sacrificed them to the most cruel and invincible of archvillains--younger brothers, armed to the teeth and dirty fingers with weapons like ice cream, cola and peanut butter.
FCBD is an annual reminder for the rest of us that maybe a little more Bam! Pow! in our lives wouldn’t be such a bad thing. In Spurlock's film, DC Comics writer Grant Morrison observed: "The superhero is a kind of last, small broken ideal of what we might all become one day if we'd just get it together and stop being assholes." And that's funny, too. So stop by an indie comic book retailer tomorrow. It's where all the best superheroes hang out.--Robert Gray, contributing editor (column archives available at Fresh Eyes Now)
