Review- Free Comic Book Day Offerings Part Three

Free Comic Book Day Offerings Part Three

Cirque Du Soleil: The Complete Collected Edition (Marvel, cover date February, 2015; softcover)

Collects Cirque Du Soleil #1-3

One comic shop that I went to was giving away this skinny trade, which states on the front cover that it is a “Custom Edition” and “Not For Resale”. From what I gathered in the 0.987 minutes that I spent researching it, this was a marketing stunt thought up by the Las Vegas promoters to get a male audience into Cirque Du Soleil. They launched it on Marvel's digital comics site and had some stupid contest. Zero marketing dollars were spent and it resulted in 5,000 Facebook likes for Cirque Du Soleil. That and five bucks will get you a cup of coffee at Starbucks.

It's slick and polished, but as a read it is crap. The story is just plain boring. Still, this dead stock was given away at one shop on FCBD so the only thing that it cost me was the time that it took to read it. I had no interest in Cirque Du Soleil before I read this book and I have no interest in it now.

Junk Food For Thought rating: 1 out of 5.

Skyward/ Fracture Halloween ComicFest Edition (Action Lab Entertainment, cover date October, 2013)

I thought that this was familiar when I read it, and that's because it is. It was dead stock from the Halloween ComicFest 2013 and was given away at Free Comic Book Day 2014, and I already reviewed it here. It gets the same rating from me two years later.

Junk Food For Thought rating: 2.5 out of 5.

Atlas: Origins #1 (Dave Swartz Art, Kickstarter, cover date 2015)

Green Brain Comics in Dearborn, MI tends to explore the more out there and independent comic books available. While this particular comic book not my cup of tea I do enjoy seeing what is out there in the fringes of the medium from time to time.

Junk Food For Thought rating: 2.5 out of 5.

Free 2016 (Retrofit/ Big Planet Comics)

Comic books can be anything under the sun. What appeals to some people does not have to appeal to others. While I am admittedly more of a capes and newspaper strips kind of guy there are bits and pieces of this sampler of indie comics that work, particularly Jacob Bladders And The State Of The Art. Not all comics are for everyone. I am okay with that.

Junk Food For Thought rating: 2 out of 5.

BOOM! Studios 2016 Summer Blast (BOOM Studios, cover date May, 2016)

This is a sampling of six different BOOM and Archaia properties. None of them are making me open my wallet, nor were any of them awful.

Junk Food For Thought rating: 2.25 out of 5.

Doctor Who: Free Comic Book Day 2016 (Titan, cover date June, 2016)

It never ceases to amaze me how socially acceptable Doctor Who has become. In my fledgling nerd days in the 1980s even we nerds thought that Doctor Who was for nerds. Times change, and this beloved British icon has made inroads on this side of the Atlantic. My 9 year old son loves Doctor Who. There's a kid at his school who has a Doctor Who backpack for chrissakes. I know nothing about the character but found these short stories to be entertaining.

Junk Food For Thought rating: 3 out of 5.

Reviews- FCBD Offerings Part 4

Doctor Who: Free Comic Book Day #1 (Titan, cover date June, 2015)

I read this at three in the morning, and while I don't recall a whole lot about it I remember liking it well enough. I suppose that since I didn't recall vehemently disliking it that it was good enough.

Junk Food For Thought rating: 2.5 out of 5. 

Hip-Hop Family Tree Three-In-One Featuring Cosplayers (Fantagraphics, cover date May, 2015)

The first two-thirds of this triple feature are unreadable. I could scarcely decipher what was being said. After a few pages of trying in vain to make sense of the dialogue I skipped to the Cosplayers story. I found this story to be fun and enjoyable, even if it is something that I wouldn't ever buy.

Junk Food For Thought rating: 1 out of 5.

 

I had to scan this, as no site on the Internet would waste bandwidth on this crap.

Revive #0 (Streetvirus Publishing, cover date 2011)

Some of these FCBD books are, in truth, dead stock that stores throw out there to get rid of. I have read a lot of comic books in my life. I thought that I knew the definition of suck, but that was until I read this comic. To say that this sucks is such an understatement. It is abysmal dreck, an abomination to to the eyes and mind, and all parties involved should be tried for crimes against humanity, or at least good taste.

Comic books have been used as advertisements in the past, but using a comic book as an advertisement for a clothing store that caters to the vain and fashion conscious has to be the dumbest idea that I have ever heard. A visit to any comic convention would demonstrate that comic book fans are not exactly concerned about their appearance. That alone makes this comic book laughably pitiful. The douchey message and lame artwork are the icing on this cake of suck. The worst part of all of this is that a tree had to die so that this piece of shit could be made.

Junk Food For Thought rating: -1 out of 5. 

Divergence FCBD Special #1 (DC, cover date June, 2015)

DC's continuity is, at best, a hodge-podge clusterf*ck of epic proportions. Past attempts to set things “right” have since been undone and then undone again, and are now those things are going to be undone so that some, but not all things can be redone. Does any of this make any sense to you, because it sure doesn't to me! I enjoyed the Superman story well enough, and I am interested in reading the John Romita, Jr. Superman run someday. As it stands, I have no interest in buying any of the endless crossovers pumped out by Marvel and DC these days.

Junk Food For Thought rating: 3 out of 5. 

Impact University Volume #3 (Impact/ F + W, cover date 2007)

This is an introduction to basic comic book art, which is pretty cool for anyone starting out. I can see this being pretty cool for a kid who likes to draw. While it isn't interesting to read I found the idea of it to be cool enough to give it a...

Junk Food For Thought rating: 3.5 out of 5. 

The Whedon Three Way (Dark Horse, cover date September, 2014)

Provocatively titled and priced at $1, the shop that I got this from on Free Comic Book Day had to give this thing away. It's three #1s reprinted at a bargain price with the intention of sucking folks into buying the collected editions. I was never a fan of Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Angel & Faith, or Serenity, so I was impervious to the lure. This was polished and readable but ultimately left me cold.

Junk Food For Thought rating: 2.5 out of 5. 

Warhammer Online: Prelude To War FCBD (Boom Studios, cover date May, 2009)

This was okay. Not great, not awful, just okay.

Junk Food For Thought rating: 2.75 out of 5.

Titan Comics 2015 Spring Preview (Titan, cover date 2015)

A hype book about everything that Titan publishes. There are one or two things that look interesting. No rating.

Worlds Of Aspen 2015 #1 (Aspen Publishing, cover date May, 2015)

A flipbook of two concepts that were readable but unremarkable. You could do worse.

Junk Food For Thought rating: 2.5 out of 5.

 

Transformers: Robots In Disguise Free Comic Book Day #0 (IDW, cover date May, 2015)

I was part of the original audience for Transformers. While I only had two of the toys (Laser Beak and Ravage; thanks for being poor, Mom!) I did buy the comics for the first 10 or so issues. I don't care for the movies or for these characters, but my son loves them. This comic left me cold while my 8 year old son loved it.

Junk Food For Thought rating: 2 out of 5.