Raf’s Countdown to Free Comic Book Day for 5.4.2022

Hi there, Carol and John’s Shoppers, and welcome to Free Comic Book Day week! It’s the most exciting time of the year at the shop, and this is our biggest event of the year; we’ve got a few other fun things going on at the shop this week too. We’ll get to all that in just a bit, but we’ve got another Wednesday full of new comics to go over first.

Marvel Comics

“Fast approaches the ultimate destiny of one of the Jedi’s most renowned masters! As he spends his final days in the remote deserts of Tatooine, Obi-Wan Kenobi takes time to reflect on — and record — key moments of a heroic life long-lived. Writing in old leather-bound journals from his hermit’s hut, Obi-Wan remembers his days as a young Jedi Initiate, his trials as a Padawan, the crucible of Jedi Knighthood, and The Clone Wars, as well as some of the earliest challenges he faced as a true Master of the Force! In this tale, Obi-Wan considers a watershed Youngling adventure he narrowly survived on Coruscant when he was but eight years of age… This is just the beginning of his Jedi journey!” Just in time for the debut of the Disney+ show later this month, Obi-Wan (my favorite Star Wars character) gets his own miniseries. On “May the Fourth be with you” too no less.

DC Comics

A few weeks ago, we had the epic #0 issue, and now this week it’s the proper #1 for Flashpoint Beyond. “Batman’s hunt for the Clockwork Killer brings him to Europe and face to face with the mad king, Aquaman. On the eve of Aquaman’s sinking of London, Batman infiltrates his stronghold and goes on the warpath for answers. Nothing matters to Batman, whose world is already dead, but if he can track down the Clockwork Killer, Thomas can save his son’s world and put everything back together again.” If you were a fan of the original Flashpoint story, you’ll definitely enjoy this issue. There are some major payoffs from that previous series just in issue #1 alone.

Small Press Header

New from Image Comics and writer Zack Kaplan comes Metal Society. “In an inverted future, evolved robots have resurrected humans for manual labor. When a tribalistic cultural clash breaks out, a fearless human fighter and a frustrated, displaced robot will square off in a public MMA-style sport fight of epic stakes to determine once and for all who reigns supreme: man or machine.” It’s Blade Runner meets Rocky in this exciting sci-fi miniseries.

Writer and artist Skottie Young (I Hate Fairyland, The Me You Love In the Dark) is back again with a new epic fantasy adventure miniseries, this time joined by series artist Kyle Strahm (Spread, Unearth). A love letter to strange and imaginative stories like The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth, Twig is a hesitant hero on a quest to save his world. Skottie Young’s work speaks for itself, but Kyle Strahm’s artwork is bright and colorful with great monstrous character designs. This is the sleeper hit this week, that’ll we’ll be getting more of back in stock soon.

“Following the big action of the regular Frontiersman series, our hero now faces the consequences! When Frontiersman is thrown in the county jail to await trial, he’s visited by an antihero who wants to free him-whether Frontiersman likes it or not!” This Image superhero series was one of my highlights of 2021 and I’m excited for more. There are a bunch of spinoff miniseries to come later also, so this one-shot is great for returning fans and new readers alike (we’ve got copies of Volume 1 for only $9.99 too!)

Vault Comics was the latest publisher highlighted in my featured small press publisher article series (you can find more on those here and also at my own personal site). They’re one of my favorite small publishers out there and specialize in funny, weird, and scary sci-fi and fantasy. This week we have a new #1 from them in Quests Aside. “A skeleton, an apprentice mage, and an exiled princess walk into a bar… for another shift at Quests Aside, the local watering hole run by once legendary, now retired adventurer Barrow. When the King privately explains that he plans to shut the place down, Barrow must find a way to hold onto his business and the family he’s built around it. It’s always sunny in the realms!” We now have a dedicated section for all of the small press publishers featured and written about at the back of the shop. We’ll be getting a fresh restock of Source Point Press books also too, there’s plenty more out there!

Free Comic Book Day Header

And now, for the moment you’ve all been waiting for… Free Comic Book Day is back!

Free Comic Book Day will be this Saturday, May 7th from 10 am – 7 pm. If you’ve been to the shop before during FCBD, you know the drill, but otherwise, if you haven’t, you can’t miss it. We’ll have big signs outside both the shop and the event space designating where the free books will be. It’ll be in Kamm’s Plaza with the shop. You’ll notice the traffic and lines of people. For the first 400 people, we’ll be giving away copies of Avengers #211 also!

Our special guest this year is former Marvel writer and editor Jim Shooter! Secret Wars is a shop favorite and one of the best Marvel books PERIOD, so we’re very excited to have him in the shop for FCBD. Jim will be here signing all day in the foyer next to the shop. We’re excited to announce his signatures will be FREE, with a limit of FIVE PER PERSON. There’ll be two lines, one for Free Comics and another for Shooter, so make sure you’re in the one you want to be in first.

In the event space with the free comics, we’ll also have twenty vendors set up for you all to meet. John calls it a fun pop culture “farmers market” and we’re stoked to have some new and familiar faces back for the day. You can find out more about who we’ll have here at John’s last FCBD Update.

But wait, we’ve got one last surprise also: we’ll also be having a big 50% OFF BACK ISSUES SALE! This will actually start this Thursday, May 5th, and run all the way through the weekend until Sunday, May 8th. These sales are awesome and it’s fun to watch back issues fly out of here. We always have our books at 25%, but that jump to 50% really makes a difference.

WOW. I told you it was the biggest event of the year! We’ve got plenty of coffee here at the shop to make it all happen, so we’ll be ready. We hope to see you all and have a great time. Until then…