After a 2 year semi-hiatus due to COVID, Free Comic Book Day is back in full this year on May 7th. Diamond will be distributing all books as they own the FCBD name. Also, no DC Comics book this year.

Here are the books available at your LCS
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Looks like a decent-sized chunk of that stuff is aimed at younger readers, which is probably a good thing.

Kind of surprised to see the Dav Pilkey book; I know from Brian Hibbs' annual Bookscan reports that stuff from Pilkey and Telgemeier sell like crazy in actual bookstores, but are practically invisible in the direct market.

Reason for both is that many libraries carry these Free Comic Book Day releases too, so they serve as the perfect intro for these types of books. As you see, one of them even has the Scholastics logo.

The freebies that interest me most are the books I’d read anyway (Tex, Red Sonja, Disney ducks) so maybe I should leave those copies for someone else to discover. Not that anyone would really be interested in a Euro cowboy. But my LCS restricts it to four titles per customer so I’m sure a lot of people gravitate to the familiar.

This year's Avengers/X-Men/Eternals crossover FCBD book is going to fly off the shelves because it's the first appearance of Blade's daughter. Collector's are already speculating about it.

So how does free comic book day work? Do you go to an LCS and they have some on a table and you grab what you want or do you have to buy something?

Libraries tend to limit 1 free comic per person.

The Winchester House comic interests me the most.

Generally yeah, stuff is just laid out on tables or shelves. No purchase required, but some stores restrict the number of freebies per customer. Obviously stores hope you’ll also spend some cash while there, so some offer discounts on regular stock.

In my experience every store handles it a little differently. Some just lay the free books out on a table, others dole them out as you walk through the door, etc.

Each store is different like many have said, so my advice is to check their social media pages or give them a call. Most stores limit between 1-3 for the entire selection during the first day and if they have leftovers, then usually they let customers come back and pick some other books.

Some people act fucking stupid on FCBD day. Back in 2016 when I had my store, we had 3 incidents. We had written the rules and posted them on social media and throughout the store about 2 free books per person and they could add 3 more if they purchased at least $10 in store. We had a specific section labeled for the available free comic books and for the special sales running that day. And we still had to deal with 3 assholes. First one brought a stack of 15 comics that he took from our new releases rack and was asking for a bag so he could take them home for free. They guy had come in with his 6 year old daughter. I told him those books were not the free ones and directed him to the section of the free ones and that he could pick 2 and his daughter another 2. Out of nowhere, the asshole started throwing a tantrum accusing us of false advertising and that he was going to call the cops on us and picked up his daughter, grabbed the stack of 15 books and ran outside the store. We had a police station across our store and one officer heard the guys scream and saw him running and apprehended him on the spot. We didn’t press charges and the guy apologized but we never saw him again.

Second incident was a guy who grabbed a handful (around 20) of the Marvel FCBD issue and was leaving the store. One of my employees stopped him and he said that those books were free and he should be able to get as many copies as he wanted. Had to tell him that the books are free for customers but not us retailers as we have to pay for them plus shipping. He threw the books in the floor and exited the store after creating a scene.

The last one was a guy known around town for appearing at stores during sales and cleaning them out of items and then trying to return the ones he couldn’t resell online. The guy has been banned from returning items at Best Buy, Target and Walmart. Well, this guy came in late during the day, opened the doors like if it was Black Friday and started grabbing whatever he stumbled upon, repeating to himself, “these are
the free books, these are the free books, right, right? He had at least 10 trades and a huge stack of regular comic books that he had grabbed in less than a minute and was planning on leaving before the employees stopped him and told him which were the free books. He grabbed 3 of them and left and at least didn’t cause a scene.

Thanks all. Will give it a try this year.

You should probably consider yourselves fortunate that you only had to deal with three of these assholes that day.

I especially like the one where the guy was trying to shoplift a stack of books and threatened to call the police on you. I would have pursued charges on the fuckhead.

There was another memorable incident but this one was after Halloween Comicfest. Diamond had set up a contest for people who cosplayed for the Halloween Comicfest at local comic shops. The rules were pretty simple and the people had to submit the photos to a link provided by Diamond of the cosplayer at the event holding one of the free books from that day and they would select the best 3 of all participant and give them a $100 gift card plus some other things. Somehow, this idiot family created their own rules and decided that the winner of this "contest" would be the cosplayer who had gotten the most likes on the Facebook photos that we posted of the event. The family kept telling friends to share and like the photo of their kid in a simple pirate costume, but they never said why. Then, a week after Halloween Comicfest, the family shows up asking for the $100 dollar rewards (not gift card or prizes). I was confused about what they were asking so they said they had won the contest. I checked with Diamond and they still hadn't picked anyone yet, and told them that and the mom goes "well, my son has the most likes on your Facebook page, so he won the contest" I told them that's not how the contest worked and the mom and dad started throwing a tantrum in front of the customers and threatening us with leaving bad reviews all over social media and that they were not leaving the store without their $100 dollars (not gift card). My former business partner, in order to diffuse the situation decided to give them a $50 gift card and a couple of kids books and toys and the family left satisfied. I was fucking furious about the whole situation and it was another topic that caused the rift between myself and that business partner.

There are so many stories about the stuff that happens with customers at these types of stores that it could easily have a reddit sub section.

She trying to get a $100 in Meth.

Fucking ridiculous that adults would act like that, in a comic store, with kids,....over free shit

I'm in good with my LCS and Ive been able to let them know ahead of time which books I want and how many. Never asking me for a penny.
I do however spend quite a bit of money there so kinda makes up it

I was mistaken. There are 3 DC free comic books this year, including Dark Crisis #0, which is the start of the event after the death of the Justice League

That JRJR cover though (ASM/Venom)

I’m having fun doing my usual and trying to track them all down. My wonderful wife accompanied me to two stores that allowed ten each with food bank donation, so that knocked off 40 of them. Have a few coming thru DCBS, and my main store allowed 6. I mostly skipped the huge stacks of Marvel and DC ones, figuring I can find those after today.

My main store is also having a 30% off back issues sale, and has put out a lot of new stock recently. They have 100s of long boxes of back issues.

I found the complete run of the old CrossGen series Ruse for $1 an issue, so 70 cents times 26. Why not?

I remember liking what I read of Ruse. It was on my pull list. Those CrossGen comics were often better than the stuff being put out by Marvel and DC at the time.

I think most of it was written by Waid and drawn by Butch Guice.

I ended up finding close to 100 seventy cent comics to buy today. Mostly complete runs of things that looked interesting, a few things to fill in holes in my collection like a few old DC mini-series issues from World of Krypton/Smallville/Metrolpolis, and then one run I’m sure I’ll regret but couldn’t resist, the old 12 issue Wolfpack series from Marvel.

My LCS only allowed three freebies, so I took Tex, Disney Masters, and Walking Dead Clementine. I wanted the other Disney duck book but decided to just go for one. I also passed on Red Sonja because I’ve read the Marvel story many times, and Best Archie ever. They also discounted regular merchandise so I bought a few facsimile issues.

I then went to my secondary shop, and they had the duck book I had taken but not the one I had skipped. They did have Archie, though, and I got some others for my quota of four.

As was mentioned in the digital thread, a number of these have hit Comixology already.