free comic book day

today is free comic book day. any day where you give away my most favorite product in the entire world for free is the best day clearly. there was a limit of three comic books per person so i picked: green lantern, the avengers, and star wars. i read the first two but, i haven't read star wars yet.

green lantern was a nice prologue to blackest night. a classic conversation between hal and barry at bruce's grave about the deaths of batman, aquaman, and martian manhunter. while every character has evolved to all new limits in the past few years, dc comics has already said that they are returning the characters to their most iconic forms. knowing that martian manhunter is coming back as a black lantern, i'm sure he will be back in his most classic apperance as opposed to his oval headed martian look. overall, the return of aquaman and martian manhunter will allow the justice league to reboot as a more "big seven" team that was the key to morrison's run on the book. it was definitely the best justice league run in the past twenty years at least. i wouldn't have minded seeing the "big seven" characters used in the "lightning saga" storyline which was by far one of the greatest stories since i started reading comic books.

i have nothing to say about the FCBD avengers comic book expect the size of the issue was weird. you can't just change the size of the modern age comic book abruptly. it felt wrong to hold.

in terms of marketing strategy, the release of "x-men origins: wolverine" to coincide with free comic book day is beneficial. the press coverage just using google search seemed to have worked very well with 496 clips since april 21. if consumers see the movie and interest in the comic book is sparked, i would presume that they would follow up with picking up a free comic book at their local store. however, a better way to garner attention to comic books by non-readers is to partner with movie theaters to promote free comic book day or to run an advertisement before "wolverine." this strategy would have allowed nonreaders to become knowledgeable about the event even if it only would have been able to be run for one day. i guess there's always next year and the following years with the release of a slew of marvel movies.

"the dead shall rise."