Free Comic Book Day: Avengers/X-Men and Free Comic Book Day: Dark Crisis Special Edition: As is traditional by this point, the big summer events from both Marvel and DC get previews in FCBD releases. As someone unusually invested in both storylines this year – Judgment Day essentially because I like Kieron as a writer more than anything else, while Dark Crisis combines my love of DC events and Joshua Williamson hitting all the right notes – I suspect both will be worth a look, even if I also trust both writers to ensure that the issues won’t necessarily be so essential as to punish readers who missed them before the main event properly begins.
Free Comic Book Day: Best of 2000 AD #0: For those paying attention at home, this will be the second zero issue for Best of 2000 AD in the past three years; the first was in 2020, intended to be an introduction to the never-published-because-of-COVID 12-issue mini version of Best of. (Rebellion sent press a PDF of the first issue ahead of time, and we all missed out on that not happening, let me tell you.) This time around, it’s promoting the upcoming 200-page quarterly anthology version of Best of launching later this year, but it again features one of the primary selling points of any FCBD issue: a new Al Ewing-written Judge Dredd short, this time with art by V.V. Glass. The fact that there’s also material from Mick McMahon, John Wagner, Kevin O’Neill and more in there is just some particularly delicious gravy, to make a weird metaphor even worse.
Free Comic Book Day: Clementine #1: I’m not a Walking Dead fan by any stretch of the imagination, but I am a Tillie Walden fan, so the idea of her stepping into Robert Kirkman’s zombie empire to tell a YA story is something that’s been particularly exciting since its announcement. There’s more to this than a preview of that book, though; it also has previews of Skybound’s other upcoming YA and middle grade books, making it a worthwhile glimpse of what lies ahead.
Free Comic Book Day: The Incal Universe: Talking of what lies ahead, I have to admit that my confusion and cynicism about the very idea of building a shared universe of books out of Jodorowsky’s The Incal and Metabarons was hit pretty hard by a preview copy of this issue, which features work from Mark Wait, Mark Russell, Dan Watters, Yanick Paquette, Pete Woods, and Jon Davis-Hunt. Yes, in many ways it’s a softening and commercialization of the original work, but it’s also kind of great, feeling like the cross between 2000 AD and Heavy Metal that the material arguably deserves. Featuring some genuinely lovely art, this might be the book that sneaks under most people’s radars tomorrow.
While I’m not entirely sold on the “mythical heroes or superheroes?” set up of AWA’s Free Comic Book Day: Primos #1, I did want to single it out for its formatting; it’s a double length issue, featuring the story initially in English, and then a complete reprint in Spanish. I’d love to see more FCBD issues go this route, or simply offer more material for non-English speaking readers.
In terms of straight-up reprints, Free Comic Book Day: Jonna and the Unpossible Monsters #1 merits a mention simply because, for those who haven’t picked it up yet, Chris Samnee’s art is absolutely glorious – it’s Jeff Smith meets Alex Toth meets Jack Kirby, and who doesn’t want to see that?
Of course, your tastes will likely vary from mine, which is why you might want to check out the
almost complete list of what’s going to be available tomorrow
right here. (The not-listed DC books can be
found here; the
League of Super-Pets book is very, very cute indeed.)