Marvel Comics
Creators: Mark Waid, Chris Samnee and Matthew Wilson
Release date: February 2018
If you follow the Steve's Comics for Sale Facebook page, you already know I enjoyed some Free Comic Book Day offerings: notably Dynamite's James Bond: VARGR preview and the DC Nation No. 0, although that last one wasn't free. (It cost a quarter.)
I support the idea of Free Comic Book Day: to get new people into comic book stores with the lure of free stuff. But I also very much support the idea of not going, grabbing all of the free books you can and rushing back out. Stay, browse, look around, ask questions and find soemthing else you like or want to try that you can pay for. FCBD is free to the consumer, but not to shop owners, who still have to pay something for those giveaway books. Help make it worth their while by buying some comics, too.
I attended FCBD this year with my 6-year-old daughter and my 17-year-old nephew who shares my interest in the hobby. We traveled to one local store and three others in other town looking for some good books. And at each store in which we stopped, I bought something in addition to picking up a few of the free books to try. Thanks to that free James Bond preview, I decided to go ahead and spend the money to buy the full story in trade. And that wasn't the only purchase that day that prompted further buying.
I was browsing the shelves at the last stop of the day. This shop owner's shelves were pretty picked over by 4 p.m., but he still had several issues that caught my eye, including the one above, Captain America No. 696.
I haven't bought a Cap issue in quite a while. I loved Ed Brubaker's phenomenal run on the title and just hadn't cared to try another run since that one. This cover, showing Cap wielding a sword instead of his usual shield, was interesting. The creative team was the same one I'd enjoyed on Daredevil a few years ago as evidenced by posts here and here and here. And the shop had this issue and the next, No. 697, by the same creators. As a bonus, No. 697 had Cap on the cover with Kraven the hunter, a villain I like. So I picked them both up.
I'm glad I did. No. 696 is a standalone story that was a great read, a well-done Captain America tale that has him stumble across a villain purely by accident. No. 697 was also good, but ended up being continued into the next issue. So I opted to seek out and buy the trade that collects both these issues and the subsequent ones by this creative team.
That's how Free Comic Book Day should work, at its best: Get a person into the store so he or she can find something they want to try, and maybe, find a title they can get into and follow to another purchase and another enjoyable tale.
