Review- Free Comic Book Day Offerings, Episode V

Free Comic Book Day Offerings, Episode V

FCBD 2014 Valiant Universe Handbook #1 (Valiant, cover date May, 2014)

Imagine all the fun of reading The Official Handbook Of The Marvel Universe without the hassle of having any characters that you even remotely care about. Yeah, I didn't even get one paragraph in before I flipped through to make sure that I wasn't missing anything. ZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzz.

Junk Food For Thought rating: N/A out of 5.

Far From Wonder Volume One- Hatter M Free Comic Book Day (Ipso Facto, no cover date, 2014)

My God this sucks. I feel like starting a class action lawsuit just to get everyone who took the 10-15 minutes to read this dreck some form of recompense.

Junk Food For Thought rating: 0 out of 5.

Free Comic Book Day: Doctor Solar, Man Of The Atom/ Magnus, Robot Fighter (Dark Horse, cover date May, 2010)

This is okay, but I have no desire to read any more of it.

Junk Food For Thought rating: 2.5 out of 5.

Jesse James Is A Dead Man Custom Comic (Marvel, cover date May, 2009)

The only thing worse than bad comic books are comic books which are thinly veiled or overt attempts at building “comic cred” into your “intellectual property” before launch.

Junk Food For Thought rating: 0 out of 5.

Free Comic Book Day 2014: Rocket Raccoon #1 (Marvel, cover date May, 2014)

My 7 year old son really enjoyed this, and I appreciate that this is appropriate for him. I found it all too cutesy and boring for my tastes, both the main tale and the Spider-Man back-up, but he loved it, so good for Marvel there.

I do find it staggering that the forthcoming Rocket Raccoon #1 is shipping 300,000 copies without any lame gimmick variants with seven different covers (Edited- Was corrected). I still would like to see the industry shift to a Soundscan method of tracking real world sales. I suspect that many “top” titles would sink like a stone on the sales charts since it's a dirty little secret that most retailers over order to get those 1:25, 1:50, 1:100, or 1:200 chase variants which sell for more on eBay than they would make if they sold every copy that they ordered. The remaining copies clog dollar boxes at conventions later. Luckily us collected editions buyers are immune to this crap.

Junk Food For Thought rating: 2 out of 5.