It's no secret that, as a dollar-and- cents industry, the comic-book business has seen better days. Nor is it a secret that it hasn't seen said better days for, oh, 60 years, when readership was at its highest levels in postwar America. Companies, creators and commentators have long been fretting over the state of the industry and wringing their hands over whether the graying of the readers will eventually spell doom for comics.
In an attempt to recruit new readers, retailers decided a few years back to emulate the most successful of industries: illicit drugs. Like crack dealers, they'd give a first taste away for free and, once their marks are hooked, they'd start charging.
That's the idea, anyway, behind Free Comic Book Day, an annual industry holiday which this year falls on Saturday, May 6. Participating comic-book shops (including several in the Valley; click to
freecomicbookday.com to find the nearest one) will give out special, free editions of comic books.
Every major and a lot of minor publishers are putting out special free books, and most of them are aimed at all-ages audiences and tied into other, more popular media.
And a lot of them aren't very good. But at that price, of course, any book you choose is guaranteed to be worth at least what you paid for it. Here are a couple of decent books that will be in the free piles Saturday.
Free Scott Pilgrim No. 1
Oni Press
If you asked me what I thought the best comic book in the whole world was, I'd sputter something about that being a very difficult, maybe impossible question to answer, and probably start peppering you with qualifying questions about what criteria we're evaluating comic books by, and what exactly you mean by "best" and "comic book." But if you insisted, I'd probably answer Bryan Lee O' Malley's Scott Pilgrim.
This Canadian-made, manga-style graphic novel series is about a twentysomething slacker who plays in a band and is pursuing an American delivery girl. But to win her, he must first defeat her Seven Evil Ex-Boyfriends in hand-to-hand combat.
In addition to being a very funny and action-packed love story, Scott Pilgrim is one of the new breed of "arcade logic" comics—books that read like video games—so Scott's quest narrative follows the logic of Sonic The Hedgehog and Street Fighter II more closely than Joseph Campbell's The Hero With a Thousand Faces.
O' Malley's put out two Scott Pilgrim books so far—Scott Pilgrim: Precious Little Life and Scott Pilgrim vs. The World—and if you missed 'em, this all-new, free adventure is a great jumping- on point.
The Preposterous Voyages of IronHide Tom
AdHouse Books
IronHide Tom is the son of a scurvy sailor and a typhoon. He was raised by horseshoe crabs, brine shrimp and pirates, and became a hard-skinned, hard-luck and hard-traveling sailor. And he's the star of this hilarious must-read book from writer/artist Joel Priddy.
Priddy's style is a unique one, with each page of his books filled by tiny panels and each panel filled by tiny abstract figures (so we'll just have to take the narrator's word for it that Tom resembles an ugly sea-ape, since he's just a circle, half-oval and four lines). Tom's adventures are funny little sea-faring tall tales that allude to the adventures of more famous sailors like Sinbad and Odysseus, and the book tells you how to make your own IronHide Tom scrimshaw.
X-Men/Runaways
Marvel Comics
The headlining story in this free 40-page Marvel anthology is a pairing of the superhero team starring in the company's very best (but sadly low-selling) book, Runaways, with the perennial best-selling superhero team, The X-Men. The point being to introduce new readers to the Marvel book they should be reading.
The Runaways are postmodern superteens who don't wear costumes and have intentionally stupid codenames, which they only use ironically. They get their group name because they all ran away from home, but they had a pretty good reason—their parents were all supervillains bent on destroying the world.
They're the creation of writer Brian K. Vaughan, who made his rep on more literate work like controversial political thriller Ex Machina and sci-fi epic Y: The Last Man. While Runaways pales next to those two more serious works, it does show off Vaughan's superior plotting skills and gift for lighthearted, Buffy the Vampire Slayer-style dialogue. Vaughan scripted the special story, and is joined by artist Skottie Young, who works in an exaggerated manga-meets-hip-hop style that should be fun when applied to such stale characters as the X-Men.