I Got All The Comics: Kiel's FCBD 2010

Okay. So maybe I didn't get ALL of the comics literally, but on this year's Free Comic Book Day, I went all out and tried to do as much as I possibly could, and as a result I ended up nabbing 17 of the 33 issues published as part of the annual comics holiday. If you couldn't tell from my reminiscing last year or my outright promotion of previous FCBDs, I'm a big supporter of the event from all sorts of angles including the hopeful potential it holds for expanding awareness of both the medium and the Direct Market, the boring businessy way in a journo wank like me can watch publishers leverage their giveaways into awareness amongst comics core readers and the plain old school joy of hanging in a comic shop all day shooting the shit with fellow fans.

I ramped up for Saturday by lining up a mega-roundup of FCBD previews and events for CBR as well as writing a short feature on Arizona retailer Mike Malve's plans for the day and his participation in the "Kick-Ass" movie as a comics promotion tool (and I guess I did some sideline reporting as part of the site's CBR Live! coverage, which you should all scroll through), but I'm not beneath putting it out there that once the day actually came all I really cared about was seeing as many shops as I could and getting as many free comics as possible. Luckily, while Chicago may not be a comics creative community/publisher juggernaut in the way towns like New York, LA or Portland are, the city has got to be one of if not the very best comics retail towns in America, and in hitting five shops I only scratched the surface of what the Chi offers on FCBD or any Wednesday in the calendar.


I started my day off by heading to The Comic Vault, which I chose as my first stop because they were advertising free giveaway bags for the first 50 customers, and I'm a sucker for more free shit than I deserve. Getting there a half hour after opening, I was WAY behind my shot at a goodie bag, but I did happen to bump into my buddy and fellow CBR staffer Shaun Manning who was leaving with a handful of books (see up there?). Shaun said The Vault had a line out the door when he arrived, so bully for them on spreading the word.


I'm not 100% on this, but The Comic Vault may be the closest comic shop to my apartment, though I rarely get over to its Montrose and Clark location because traveling from 94 toward the lake on any Chicago street can be kind of a pain in the ass. Still, the few times I've stopped by the store for an event, the thing that's really struck me about the shop is the uncountable legion of teenage workers who man the store asking kindly if I know what the day's specials are. If there was a comic store in my area when I was in high school that would pay me in any way shape or form to hang out with a bunch of other nerds all day explaining the ins and outs of our hobby to strangers, my mother would have to call in a missing persons report because I would never have left. Good to see a such a young, dedicated crowd of readers.


The other really noteworthy thing about this store is how dedicated they seem to be towards single issues for a shop that's relatively new to the scene (they've been open about four years). There's a trade section at The Vault like in any other modern shop, but the wall space around the room is anchored on recent floppies which all come pre-bagged and boarded. You can tell that this place's bread and butter is the Wednesday warrior crowd, for sure. And as you can see above, that mentality extended to FCBD as The Vault was probably the only shop I went to that kept damn near every available book for the event well in stock, allowing me to get my hands on a few offerings I was interested in that I thought I might miss like Mike Raicht's new The Stuff of Legend/Mortal Instruments flipbook, Brandon Jerwa's Storm Lion (which I forgot he'd done until I saw his name on the cover and which you can download for your iPhone here) and Cullen Bunn and Brian Hurtt's superb new Oni series The Sixth Gun.


After stopping by to chat up my FCBD compadre Kegmeister (who couldn't do much shopping with me this year because he had to bartend his way through a brutal Cubs homestand), I made my way downtown to Chicago's Magnificent Mile and the city's longstanding retail anchor Graham Cracker Comics. I chose that stop on the expansive chain of Graham stores because they had Mouse Guard creator (and fellow Flint, Michigan native) David Petersen signing books. Best moment of the stop? While I chatted up Petersen for a minute about C2E2 (which I never got to blog about because my computer melted down during the show), a guy asked him to sign an issue of Iron Man. Rather than merely turn the comics neophyte away because he didn't want to autograph a book he didn't work on, David drew a rad little mustache on Tony Stark's alter ego. It was really pretty cute.

You know, even though I had the pleasure of attending two FCBD events featuring artists who actually had books out as part of the promotion, it really has to be said that having any creator sign at your store (The Vault had a massive lineup of local cartoonists with mini comics) is the basic promotion I'd recommend for any shop that has a local creator who can sit for a few hours with pen in hand and smile on face. Beyond the pull of getting your regulars out to meet someone whose work they admire in the way any signing does, I expect that having a creator on hand for FCBD adds that little extra zing of excitement for first time comic shoppers who beyond getting a free taste of the medium get to marvel at someone drawing something and ask questions like, "So do you make all the little bubble for the words too?"


Speaking of signings, I made it to my third stop – Dark Tower Comics – just in time to see one with Chicago-area artists Tim Seeley and Skottie Young wrap up. Seeley was on his way to another signing in the norther 'burbs, but I got to hang out for a while and talk about comics retail with Young, Jose Capetillo and the store's owner Mark. That's a really nice, old school comic shop, by the way. I'd been there once before when I did a guest spot on the late, great Around Comics podcast, but I'd never had a chance to really look through it until Saturday. A LOT of dollar comics (I got this one and this one), but Mark stocks up strong with as many varieties of trades and OGNs as you can imagine as well as all sorts of comic shoppy ancilary products. While we were standing there, some guy bought one of those hella expensive Marvel Bowen busts (a Green Goblin one), which always shocks me because I can't imagine paying 50 or 75 bucks or whatever for a superhero statue.

Oh, and just like The Comic Vault had its take on FCBD with its massive wall of everything, I should note that both Dark Tower and Graham Crackers took their own track for what comics to get and how to distribute them. Dark Tower did what I've seen a lot of bigger shops do, setting up a free comics table on your way out the door where a staff member would help you pick out a few choices to get with whatever you got while shopping. And for what it's worth, their selection seemed more focused on the kid-friendliest comics of the bunch while Graham's was a mix of the DM staples from Marvel, DC and the other big publishers while also having a metric ton of Mouse Guard for Petersen to sign. While it's great that there are 33 comics available for distribution, I always find it telling what specific kinds of free comics the stores put in for and how they arrange those titles on day of. Says a lot about who they think the days is for or who they find comes in.


That afternoon, I made my way over to what I thought would be my last stop of the day: my regular Wednesday home of Challenger's Comics. Store owners Pat and Dale looked a little harried, and by the looks of the free comic rack right out front, they'd had a lot of foot traffic coming through. I like the store's general approach to comics retail a lot as Challenger's is a clean, friendly space anchored by book shelves that run DEEP in the variety of material without skimping on the week-in, week-out single issue stuff. This was my second year stopping by the store for Free Comic Book Day, and like last year, their selection seemed heavily focused on stuff that would be good for newer, younger readers...including the DC Comics kids offering featuring a story drawn by neighborhood artist Mike Norton who was signing books and leading a small dance party while I was there.


In addition, Challenger's event served as (I believe) the debut for kid fantasy series Verum Corpus by writer Josh Emmons and artist Katie Cook. The first issue had been printed up just for the day, and both Emmons and Cook were on hand to sign and sketch for the kids along with Norton. I may be totally wrong about this, but I could easily see that kind of "comic created just for one shop on FCBD" launch becoming a regular thing for web cartoonists and other small press folks. Certainly got me to check the book out, and it looks like really fun stuff. I didn't get to chat up at all because she were talking to Petersen (who apparently followed me over), but Emmons seemed super excited about everything.


Two other things of note from Challenger's:

1 - The two-piece nerd rock outfit Wednesday Heroes was on hand and recording personalized songs about any comic of your choice which they'd then burn to disc for you to take home with your free comics. I actually think one of the guys wasn't super into comics as much as he was into rocking, but everyone seemed happy with the tunes they were pumping out.

2 - Challenger's employee Ashley was rocking the same new Scott Pilgrim shirt as me because apparently we're the two raddest people in Chicago, and somewhere on the interwebs there's probably a fun picture of the pair of us showing off the full Bryan Lee O'Malley bass spread, but Lord knows I don't have it.


I swear to God I was more than satisfied with my Free Comic Book Day at that point and after saying goodbye to the gang at Challengers, I took off for home. But after I decided to take a detour on the East side of the city while heading north both to avoid the traffic on 94 and check out some neighborhoods for a possible move, I totally drove by Chicago Comics on accident. As Alex Ross once told me, Chicago Comics is the store worth going to because "they just have everything" and holy shit, it's so hard to walk around that place without spending obscene amounts of money (Rickey, you'd die there, bro). I fought hard and won the battle not to buy that Russell Davies book about writing "Doctor Who" I hear is so good, but I may go back and get it once I finish watching all his episodes of the series. Anyway, the store ended up being the perfect spot to end my day as the staff had taped up copies of the FCBD offerings in front of their checkout counter, and by the day's end I was lucky enough that out of the books they had left were two that I really wanted just to read for fun and not for work: Drawn & Quarterly's John Stanley sampler and the totally sick Jim Woodring Weathercraft book from Fantagraphics. How many totally unsuspecting people do you think nabbed copies of these completely different yet completely brilliant comics this weekend? It blows my mind a little.


Wow. Writing that all out made me almost as tired as living it. After this long, rambly rundown of what I did, I'm not sure there's a real takeaway I can give for Free Comic Book Day except that it's still a great day for the medium and it's main sales outlet and that one of the things I enjoy the most about how the holiday works is how pliable it is in providing readers with experiences unique to comic shop shopping. Ultimately, there are thousands of different ways to celebrate FCBD, and at least in my neighborhood, the retailers seems to be doing their best to give people a reason to come out.

How'd your day go?

What's On Ben's Desk?

So as you guys may remember, Ben spent last week in the tropical paradise of Aruba on his Honeymoon, riding jet skis with laid back Jamaican men and playing beech volleyball until his skin boiled while doubtlessly stuffing some wicked spikes down the throats of various dweebs (Note: probably untrue). While it took the Morses a few extra days to get off the island thanks to some hi-larious airplane shenanigans, I'm assuming our fearless leader won't be back to his day job until at least Tuesday.

To that end, I figured I'd dust off a post that's been languishing in the blog editor since sometime last fall to remind Ben what he's missing during his Wrestlemainia catch up day day of well deserved rest. That's right, kids! It's time to play...What's On Ben's Desk?


Unlike Rickey's cube-a-rific workspace, Ben's Marvel.com outpost is inexplicably part of a swank corner office at Marvel HQ. Don't worry, his prime location along with Agent M and "The Cerilli" should not be construed as Ben having any real power at the House of Idea. It does, however, mean that I had to photograph his stuff a bit piecemeal what with the wraparoundy nature of his stuff.

Above, you see what I'm assuming Ben states at absent-mindedly when he's really tired of editing Kevin Mahadeo's copy: miniature toys! I know this photo turned out a little blurry and all, but I can't honestly figure out any real unifying theme for the figures under our boy's computer monitor other than "they're all tiny." Mostly it's a few Heroclix and some of those kiddie figurines whose official name I always forget and end up calling "preschool Hawkeye" or whatever. As far as I know, Ben doesn't play Heroclix or like children, so your guess is as good as mine here.


Now this? THIS is more like it, y'all! While it nowhere near rivals the ridiculously large collection of Flash figures that once adorned his Wizard desk, I was very happy to find a growing Nova collection at Ben's current home away from home. Does anybody know how many Nova action figures there are? Because I'm pretty sure Ben's damn close to all of them.

Watching over the Human Rockets is the only thing that could supplant them in Ben's heart of hearts: his lovely wife Megan (ain't she fierce?). And I can't be the only one take with the whole attempt at normalizing the workspace by placing some fake flowers in the Mar-Vell glass. I kind of love how Ben and I were both far too young to get those '70s Marvel collector's glasses whenever they were originally sold at Arby's or whatever but we both seem to know exactly what they are via some weird nerd osmosis. And it wouldn't really be Ben "I'm coming down with something" Morse's desk without some kind of antiseptic spray handy, would it? Punisher matchbook's a nice touch too, pal.


I'm fairly certain that the Nova bust over by Ben's phone is the second such statuette that our boy has owned in his lifetime as I vaguely recall him having one at Wizard where the red star brand on Rich Ryder's helmet kept falling off only to be lost one day (somewhat similar to the Flash maquette I broke and then replaced like an adult should when they break something).

Aside from the multiple Iron Man tchotchkes and the pen set his parents bought him when he graduated college, I think that's some kind of official Marvel Comics hacky sack on the table. Ben, if you've ever had to blow off some steam by going to the park and hackin it up for a while, you're a bigger hippie than I'll ever be.


You can't see it from the photos I have here, but the Marvel.com offices are actually choke full of some pretty impressive superhero costume replicas. But while Agent M and "The Cerilli" have rad numbers like an official Captain America shield and multiple life-sized Iron Man helmets, Ben has to make due with playing the part of Wal-Mart Hulk. Hey...don't laugh, you guys. Those hands made his company a shit load of cash.

Also: Ben, please don't tell me you went out of your way to own XFL merchandise.


While Rickey's window view allows him to see the life of a Children of the Corn-style soup spokesboy, Ben actually can't see out either of the window's to his immediate left. This is no big deal for two reasons: for one, I think across the street from Marvel Comics there's just a Lady Footlocker or something. For two, He has this rad Marvel Universe poster giving him a window into the early '80s glory of Jim Shooter's era as E-i-C. At least I think that's when this is from without googling it. Who drew this? John Buscema? One of you has to know.


We wrap our tour with Ben's corner of Misfit Marveldom. Aside from the dollar store Halloween Hulk bucket that in my mind doubles as an unwearable mask for the aforementioned Marvel.com office dress-up hour, we've got a pair of actin figures that Ben explained to me were given to him by officemates as a joke. Of particular note is the Ben Reilly dolly which Agent M went out of his way to put a sticky which read "Hey Ben – 'Enjoy' this 'awesome' Ben Reilly dolly." or some such. God, it must be so awful to be the Marvel Comics characters that Marvel Comics employees play pranks on each other with. Note to Ben Reilly fans: he's never going to be popular again because he was never popular to begin with. Give up.

See you next time!

What's On Rickey's Desk?

So as you may have surmised, I was in New York a week back visiting the offices of DC and Marvel. Beyond chatting up as many staffers as I could in an attempt to squeeze out some exclusive info for CBR, I took a few minutes to stop by the work stations of my illustrious co-bloggers and thought I'd share what I found as a killer way to waste five minutes of your time. Let's start with Rickey (because I went to DC on Thursday)!

As you can see from the wider angle shot above, Rickey's desk is anchored by a ton of comics (including a rad Blue Beetle trade and equally rad but lesser-read issues of Teen Titans Go!) but more importantly it holds a copy of Diamond's Previews catalogue where every month retailers and fans with too much time on their hands read up on the coming comics. For everyone who still hadn't figured it out, a big chunk of Rickey's day involves writing DC's solicitation copy for Previews so it's nice to see he can admire his own hard work up close.

More importantly, Rickey rocks a whole crazy crap load of...er...crazy crap picked up from over his years in service to comics. While his small work space certainly doesn't hold a candle to his chock-full apartment, there was plenty of knick-knackery at play. Aside from some crazy Scott Pilgrim promotional sticker I've never seen anywhere else, you can see a photo of Rickey and his lady friend (and great blogger) Sam from Christmas. Rickey's the elf. He's also got some nice J.G. Jone Final Crisis which for some reason looks different than the other versions I've seen. This could be some promo piece DC did, or it could be a Rickey original. Back in the Wizard days, he used to draw over the covers of comped comics to create things like a special "Blood and Thunder Driven By The Knives of Donkeys" variant for Dave. Anyway, nice to see a little Marvel love in there too.

As for the bevy of action figures...I've got nothing. Sorry, gang, but I know next to nothing about toys and see very little there that jumps out at me as "totally Rickey!" in terms of character picks. Any comments on why they're cool is welcome. Also: I don't get what's up with the bag of change.

Swinging to the left towards his computer monitor, Rickey's rocking a neato-rific (do you think I'm going to run out of 4th grader adjectives by the end of this post?) statue of Superman going toe-to-toe with Darkseid. Again, I'm not sure who made this or designed it or whatever (DC Direct?), but I do know that Rickey and I both crush super hard on Jack Kirby's Fourth World stuff and particularly love Darkseid as one of DC's premier villains. Still, I hope he didn't pay too much for that thing. Statues are too expensive!!!

On the other edge of Rickey's desk, I spotted this totally bizarre Batman hat. I mean, I guess it's perfect if you want to pretend your face is Batman's junk, but otherwise it's seems a little silly to rock a Batman hat with neither a picture of Batman or his logo clearly visible. When I pointed this out to Rickey, he said, "The logo's under the bill. You can see it on the one I put on Alex Ross Superman..."

So, um...mystery solved!!

The last thing Rickey insisted I show all of you was what he looks at out of his window all day: a creepy little wooden boy who lives in a window chewing on a giant piece of string!

It's kind of unnerving, and so rather than just explain what it's all about, I'm hiding dude's reason for sucking on that thing behind the jump. Give it your best guess before you click!

28 Comics I Love

The Amazing Screw-On Head by Mike Mignola

Batman...Jesus, too much to say in a post like this, so I'ma just say "Batman" as a title and leave it for later.

Blue Monday by Chynna Clugston

Bone by Jeff Smith

Deadenders by Ed Brubaker & Warren Pleece

Epileptic by David B.

Fun Home by Alison Bechdel

Green Lantern by Ron Marz, Darryl Banks, et al.

Good-Bye, Chunky Rice by Craig Thompson

Grickle by Graham Annable

Impulse by Mark Waid, Humberto Ramos & Wayne Faucher

JLA by Grant Morrison, Howard Porter & John Dell

King of Persia by Walt Holcombe

Madman by Mike & Laura Allred

The New Gods by Jack Kirby

Palooka-ville by Seth

Pappercutter edited by Greg Means

The Paul Series by Michel Rabagliati

Robin by Chuck Dixon, Tom Grummett et al.

The Rocketeer by Dave Stevens

Scott Pilgrim By Bryan Lee O'Malley

Scud: The Disposable Assassin by Rob Schrab

The Shadow by Howard Chaykin, Andy Helfer, Bill Sienkiewicz & Kyle Baker

Sidekicks by J. Torres & Takeshi Miyazawa

Skeleton Key by Andi Watson

Spider-Man 2099 by Peter David, Rick Leonardi, Andrew Wildman, et al.

Starman by James Robinson, Tony Harris, Wade Von Grawbadger, Peter Snejbjerg, et al.

Teenagers From Mars By Rick Spears & Rob G
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[NOTE: I should have had this up last week to follow the example set by the much harder working Ben in his whole series which you should go back and re-check out, but it was a weird thing to do. At first I felt like I couldn't find enough comics that I felt as strongly about as the ones I love most on this list...then I found I had way, way too many fucking comics and had to cut way down. I hope no one takes this as a best of all time list (as if anyone really gives a shit what my best of all time would look like) and more as a snapshot of why I'm so juvenile at this age. - KP]