The Tease of Things I Don't Need

Free Comic Book Day continues to develop:
51 days and counting

The 4th annual Free Comic Book Day, a sort of open house for comic book stores, when promotional copies of comics and other items are given away, is set for May 7th this year. In previous years it was set the day after the premiere of a big comics movie (Spider-man or X-Men, say) in the hopes that a big comics-derived blockbuster would help open newspapers to looking for a related story, but if there's any such element at play this time I'm unaware of it. Perhaps this year they want to see if it can get any press on its own, or if it's less likely to be buried by editors who may have decided in past years that a big story on a comic book movie took up as much space as they were going to give to the genre for one Friday's paper?

The mechanics of FCBD will work differently at different stores. Some will give away a single item to anyone, some will insist on the purchase of something before handing out one or more of the free items. Some will hand a bag with one of everything over to anyone who asks. Before you judge the less generous ones too harshly, keep in mind it isn't as if the comics companies are just giving the items away; the shop owner has to pay something for them. From what I know of past years the largest companies - DC (Batman, Superman, Flash, Wonder Woman, etc.) and Marvel (Spider-man, X-Men, Hulk, Fantastic Four, etc.) - might only charge 3 to 10 cents per issue. The smaller publishers end up charging more, perhaps up to 50 cents or more per copy. That can add up and become aggravating especially when they see people who are already pretty plainly into comics coming by for as much free swag as they can get - some of them looking to re-sell it on the secondary market - but who are unlikely to ever come back to that store... at least until the next FCBD.

One can get some sense of the relative cost to retailers by looking at the sponsors list and noting the Gold, Silver and Bronze levels; it's a safe bet that the Gold-level comics are the ones the retailers will only be asked a token sum for. The savviest of the retailers look at it as part of the advertising budget, and may choose a blank area on the cover (many of these leave the area that would normally have a bar code blank on these free editions) to place a stamp with the store's name, address, etc

Additionally, this year's event will also see the give-away of some small toys, including a Rookie Batman Heroclix figure (seen on the left) which is an advance piece from this fall's (so shift my estimate closer to October) Icons set I was talking about yesterday. It's a good looking piece, and we should be able to reasonably presume that unlike Batwinkle this one will have Leap/Climb. Otherwise he's not getting down off that brickwork without at least a bad sprain. I'm expecting this to be a hot item, as bottom feeders everywhere will be trying to score as many of them as they can in order to capitalize on selling them to those who didn't get there before they did. Okay, okay... this could be considered a service to some, especially to those who don't live in North America or have a participating shop nearby. The important point is that this is an advance piece on a set that won't premier until at least four months after this event, and there will be many who will want it.

Regardless, if one goes to the link at the top of this piece there's a spot to sign up for email updates, and there's a comics shop locator, too, where North Americans (this includes Canadians) can plug in your zip code and see how many shops are nearby. Those in the UK and Ireland can go here. So far there's nothing to tell you which stores will be participating in the event, so you'd need to contact each shop as the day draws near to find out what their plans are.