Lois & Clark Forums Forums General Discussion Off Topic 5/5 - Free Comic Day!

Just a reminder that on May 5th - That's TODAY, folks - (at least here in the states) if you go to a store that sells comics, they are handing them out for free!

EDIT: I got a hilarious short comic entitled: Superman Family Adventures (I'll see if I can scan my free copy and post it here, it's only a few pages of fun.)

My daughter got the new 52s as they called it. She said that I could "borrow" it but that I had to return it. Harmph! (supposedly they not only revamped Superman & WonderWoman - as already discussed on the boards - but ALL DC characters including Batman... I can't wait until she let's me take a peek.)

Okay, here's the link to the DC Nation site about that comic Superman Family Adventures I mentioned in my previous post. I was able to scan the 8 page comic onto my computer, but have no idea how to get it from there to here. Oh, well. Sorry, folks.

Thanks for thinking about posting the comic online, but it may be just as well that you weren't able to do so. I'm not sure, but I think that doing so may well violate copyright laws. (More's the pity. I wasn't able to get to a store today and I would have loved to have seen it. )

I saw on the Comic Book Day web site that a lot of the other free comics are already online via their site, but DC's comics are conspicuous by their absence.

Oh well. There's always next year.

Joy,
Lynn

Virginia, what format is the comic in? I think if you e-mailed it to interested people that would be O.K. Posting it probably wouldn't be good.
r/
Artemis

Yeah, I was figuring that as well. Of course, most of the free comics they pass out are "teasers" in such that you only receive the first few pages of the comic. Like the one I referenced has... of the 8 pages I scanned, the cover and last page are the same picture, no real content. 1 page is advertisement, which leaves the comic only 5 pages long and on the website I saw whole comic is like 32 pages long.

Actually, Lynn, when I read it, I thought of you. It had your quirky, silly, innocent, some-what spoofing kind of humor to it. Personally, I'm tempted to run out and plunk down $3 to get the whole book, which is OF COURSE, why the do this whole FREE comic book day in the first place.

Yeah, , Artemis. I scanned it onto my computer in JPEG format. So, it would probably be completely WRONG for me to send it to anyone who e-mailed me and requested me to send them some photos of my scanned FREE comic book, right?

True. I had been frustrated by the free comic I got last year for that reason. I've lowered my expectations appropriately. But even so, it is nice to be able to get a feel for a comic without having to plunk down the money to try it. And some comics, at least, are full ones... I saw on the love and Capes web site that that cartoonist had made a complete, albeit short, story for a previous Free Comic Day.

Thank you! I love that description of my sense of humour. And I think you may have convinced me to try an issue. (I just checked; it isn't available to buy digitally. Looks like I'll have to swing buy a comic shop if I want to buy it.) I must admit that I had been put off by the title and the artwork; I had assumed that since they the primary target audience was obviously very young children, it wouldn't appeal to adults. But I guess either they wrote it really well to appeal to adults, too, or else my humour is more juvenile than I thought.

Joy,
Lynn

True. I had been frustrated by the free comic I got last year for that reason. I've lowered my expectations appropriately. But even so, it is nice to be able to get a feel for a comic without having to plunk down the money to try it. And some comics, at least, are full ones... I saw on the Love and Capes web site that that cartoonist had made a complete, albeit short, story for a previous Free Comic Day.

Thank you! I love that description of my sense of humour. And I think you may have convinced me to try an issue. (I just checked; it isn't available to buy digitally. Looks like I'll have to swing buy a comic shop if I want to buy it.) I must admit that I had been put off by the title and the artwork; I had assumed that since they were obviously targeting young children as the primary audience, it wouldn't appeal to adults. But I guess either they wrote it really well to appeal to adults, too, or else my humour is more juvenile than I thought.

Joy,
Lynn

p.s., I see that the print version of the book won't be on sale until May 30th; perhaps they'll put out a digital version at the same time.

If anyone wishes a subscription to this comic or to Superman or Actions Comics, I would suggest using an EBates account to get it. If you click through EBates site, you can, in essence, get a 26% discount off the regular subscription price. (I wrote "in essence" because of the way the EBates site works. You have to pay full price, but you will receive a rebate on your purchases on a quarterly basis. The rebates for most stores are usually around 2-4%; magazines.com's 26% rebate is highly unusual.)

If you are interested in learning more, you can go to www.ebates.com . I've been a member about five years, and I have gotten about $240 back all told by clicking through EBates to buy things I would have bought anyway. (Truth in advertising: I could have put in a referral link here which would have earned me $5 for every person who signed up via the link, but I wanted to make it clear that I am writing this not for personal monetary gain, but simply to share information about a useful and money-saving site. So instead, I just included a link to the main site.)

Joy,
Lynn

I spent the day, yesterday, helping out at one of our local comic shops. One of my buddies is an owner of the largest comic shop in the Twin Cities and they have a small satillite store they own also.
This small store is literally the size of a large hallway. It is about 10X30.

What these folks do for free comic book day is to prebag up one of every offered free comic for adult readers and one of every kid friendly comic offered for the kiddies. These bags are then handed out to every person who comes through the door until the supply is gone.
Literally hundreds of bags of comics are given away even at the small store. I believe the stores purchase about 26,000 comics from the publishers to give away on Free Comic Book day.

By the time the little store opened at 11:00, we had a line well down the block. Believe me, in a store that size, trying to get all those people in and out (and some of them trying to shop also) was quite the exercise in space management.

We were out of the free comics by 2:00 but still had the 'sale' going on, and the free snacks.

The main store goes even more all out. They invite costumed heros to wander around. Have guest creators at the store, and provide free pop and snacks for the people coming through the door.

They ran out of the free comics before we did.

Free Comic Book day is a logistical nightmare, and a fairly expensive proposition for the stores, but the upside seems to make it all worth while.

The lure of the free comics bring in a lot of customeers (some of them 'new'), the 'sale' lends to the store having a great retail day; and, as my buddy says, if we get just a few new customers out of it... it's worth it.

Personally, I don't like working it because of the crowd crush, but it is a good promotion for comic books and their outlets.

Tank (who in all the years he's worked Free Comic Book day, has never scored a bag of free comics for himself)

Well, I bought an old copy of "Superman: The Wedding Album" and I plan on going back to get vol 1 (if it's still available) of the "Superman Family Adventures", so I guess it worked for me.

I was looking at my DC Comics "New 52s" bookmark I got at the event and noticed that new "vol 1"s are hitting the stores this month:

- Animal Man: The Hunt
- Batman: The court of Owls
- Catwoman: The Game
- Green Arrow: The Midas Touch
- Green Lantern: Sinestro
- Justice League Intl': The signal Masters
- Justice League: Origin (oooh, that one sounds good)
- Stormwatch: The Dark Side
- WonderWoman: Blood

Let's see also coming this year:

June:
Batwoman, Frankenstein :rolleyes: , Mister Terrific , Red Laterns, Static Shock, (okay, most of those, I don't know)

July:
Batgirl, Batwing, Batman & Robin, Demon Knights, Grifter, Men of War, and Suicide Squad (other than the Bat group, new to me)

August:
Deathstroke, Hawk & Dove, OMAC, Superman Action Comics (FINALLY!), Superboy (really?), Swamp Thing (they really are bringing out the old characters!)

Sept:
Aquaman, Birds of Prey, Fury of Firestorm/ The Nuclear Men, Green Latern Corps, Legion Lost, Teen Titans, Voodoo

Oct:
All-Star Western, Batman: The Dark Knight (I thought that series was finished?), Green Latern: New Guardians, I Vampire, Just League Dark (??), Nightwing (that's part of the Batman ouvre, right?), The Savage Hawkman, Supergirl (Marcus must be thrilled - unless with the new revamp she becomes a pregnant teen mom. Who knows with the way they're going, right? )

Nov:
Blackhawks, Blue Beetle, Captain Atom, The Flash, Red Hood & the Outlaws, Superman: What Price for Tomorrow

Okay, They've got Superman Action Comics, Superboy, and Superman? Do they usually have so many differing storylines going on at the same time?

Yes, years ago there were Man of Steel, Superman v2, Adventures of Superman, Action Comics and in five-week months there was Man of Tomorrow. Those were the good times. Great stories.

Sadly, today I don't care about all the Superman comics that they can cook up. DC destroyed all that I loved about him.

I just found out that DC Comics has made their Free Comic Book Day comics available for free online.

The New 52 and the Superman Family Adventures are both available via Comixology.

I haven't read them yet, but I do plan to do so soon.


Joy,
Lynn

Well, Lynn, I read the New 52s from your link and I can honestly say HUH? Where is Herb Wells when we need him?

<chuckle>

I agree with you, Virginia: The "teasers" they gave on the free day did not make me want to run out and buy the comics. I also agree that the web site is not well organized. I think that getting it straightened up and including all we want looks like a job for Superman.

Seriously, though, they don't claim to be completely comprehensive. I imagine it would take some time to get all the old comics online. I haven't been there often enough to say for sure, but I would guess that they are probably continuously expanding their online library of older comics while simultaneously posting all of their new ones.

Joy,
Lynn

When I was in the library today, we stumbled across Superman Family Adventures in book form. (I've included the link to BN.com should anyone be interested in purchasing this no longer available series. It's fairly cheap for the Nook. I couldn't find the link to the thread about the series being canceled.) It was nice to finally be able to read some of this series I liked when I first saw it during the Free Comic Book Day several years ago. Lots of references to Superman: The Movie though, so if you haven't see that movie WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE? Go out and WATCH it already, geeze.

Sorry about that tangent. Anyway, thought I'd share.

I love that every issue starts with an asteroid of some sort heading towards Metropolis.