Free Comic Book Day -- or Not

In 2002, to coincide with the opening of the new Spider-man movie, the comic book industry started a new tradition of "Free comic book day." Although you can't walk into a comic book store and just take a free comic book or your own choosing (that would be cool), many of the publishers came out with special issues to give away. Retailers had to pay a small nominal fee for the books, but gave them away to people who came into their stores (or as the case in 2002, many retailers showed up at movie theatres and gave copies to people going to see the Spidey movie). The idea was to get new customers to start reading comics, and maybe to give long-time fans, such as myself, some new books to take a look at. (I bought at least one title because of getting a free issue on Free Comic Book Day.) This tradition has carried over for the last five years, with more publishers jumping on the bandwagon and producing books for giveaways, often reprints of previously published material, but occasionally brand-new stories as well. Some comic shops limit the number of books one can take away on this day, and while I understand the reasoning behind that, I think letting people sample as many new and different titles as possible would be a good thing. Last year I went to the comic store in Mankato for Free Comic Book Day and the owner was encouraging everyone there to take as many books as they wanted. I grabbed about 15. This year, yesterday in fact, I was quite enthused for Free Comic Book Day and made the trip up to Mankato to see what the day would bring. Imagine my disappointment to find out that the store decided not to participate in Free Comic Book Day this year. No free comics for me. I had a couple other reasons for going to Mankato that day, which helped stave off complete disillusionment, but I was still bummed out. If I had known they weren't doing anything, I very well might've made the drive over to Rochester or Winona to see what I could find there.