BW Free Comic Book Disappointment

I love Free Comic Book Day. I really do. It’s a good way to check out comics you otherwise wouldn’t risk the money for. However, when scaplers grab as much free comics as they can sneak off with and comic stores aren’t prepared for even the new legit ones I miss out on comics I really wanted to check out. (I went over those on Thursday.) No Transformers. No Ty Lee. No Jurassic Strike Force. Instead I only picked up four comics: Doctor Who, Divergent, Secret Wars, Avengers, and mistakenly picked up a leftover Infinity preview, being too disappointed to really pay attention.

That would have been okay if the comics had been good. Through the power of reposting Twitter (under #BW_FCBD ) share in my misery.

There were three Doctor Who stories, counting down from 12 to 10. 12 and Clara come upon a station collecting energy from a quartz planet, and accidentally sucking up energy creatures.

The Doctor goes to tell the collectors what they’re doing, but we’re not shown the reaction, only one guy getting fried with no report on what happened to the others.

The 11th Doctor obviously can’t travel with Clara, his last Companion, but instead of Amy & Rory, Titan went with three new characters: a former library assistant named Alice, a musician named Jones that Alice’s mum really likes, and a shapeshifter named Arc.

Our heroes were going to the obligatory World War II trip but end up at Piccadilly Circus. Because the Doctor has more trouble reaching his targets than Bill & Ted.

It’s not just comics. There were also free books and magazines, all telling the story of Zzagnar. The story has anyone who reads it transfixed.

It turns out the enemy is sentient text that wants to tell its story to see if everyone likes it. The Doctor, sensing an invasion, has Arc basically throw up so the Doctor can put the alien into a non-text body. It states its real purpose, wanting everyone to see his work (or him since he’s sentient text) and if they like the story.

A bit out of order with the tweets. The Doctor convinces Zzagnar to just give away books at a convention.

NOW we go to Doctor 10 and his American Companion, Gabby from Brooklyn, a struggling artist who wants to escape her parents’ laundromat & restaurant (I’ve not heard of those two together) and being pushed into being an accountant.

Still, I’m on Gabby’s side. The Doctor overshot summer on one planet, leading to them landing in the muddy season. The Doctor has a laundro-demat, a washing machine that separates molecules of the clothes from the mud and reassembles the clothes. Because if it’s worth doing it’s worth overdoing? Also there’s a spa with bath next door to the laundry room and the Doctor suggests Gabby take a bath.

However, the Doctor left the Sonic Screwdriver in the pocket of his coat, and the mud turns into a mud creature to give it back to him before it falls apart. Yes, this actually happens. Also, the clothes get mixed up and the Doctor’s shirt pattern and Gaby’s switch outfits.

Divergence is a preview of the next event in the DC universe once Convergence is through. I decided to hate it early and it didn’t let me down. Or did, depending on your point of view. The introduction boasted two things of note: they claimed to be faithful to the past while insisting they didn’t want to get bogged down with continuity. They got the last part right anyway. Check out the Batman story, in which my tweets say it all.

I’m not kidding, look at this thing.

Also, Gordon shaved his head because he’s a former Marine. Okay? What I forgot to mention on Twitter is that Wayne Enterprises is defunct after Batman disappears and is presumed dead along with the Joker. Now the company is own by Powers International. So they stole an idea from Batman Beyond, or is this supposed to be how the Beyond timeline starts in the DCU now? It was bad enough when some (but not all) writers tried to force Kingdom Come into DC’s future. What’s the point of alternate universes if they’re going to keep trying to force everything into the same universe?

The biggest disappointment of this book comes from the middle story and I think there’s an article in that, but for now I’ll return to it after looking at the Justice League offering. This one I won’t go into the Twitter feed as much because it took me a while to understand what was happening. We see Hippolyta giving birth to Diana, giving her the Roman version of their gods’ name to allegedly hide the fact that she’s Zeus’s daughter, since DC decided to ditch the clay origin and yet still referenced it in the New 52.

Yes, this is canon now.

But apparently there was another baby born that day, as another Amazon had the baby of…Darkseid. Not even kidding. Now Darkseid’s daughter is either challenging Darkseid or the Anti-Monitor I don’t even know anymore. Was this trip really necessary?

The biggest disappointment, however, goes to the Superman story, because it changes a rather important part of Superman’s life, tossing Clark Kent out the door so now he’ll be Superman 24/7.

And apparently public opinion is going against him. But who exposed Clark Kent as Superman?

Yep, Lois, who has been listed as a confidant to Clark in this new continuity and his wife in the last one. Now she’s that reporter from Irredeemable. I’m really hoping Divergence is some temporary alternate universe, like House Of M at Marvel. Otherwise…

Yeah I’ve been saying it since Cry For Justice but I’m thinking the rant on the Superman story and the last Convergence podcast may the last new DC I’m going to discuss on this site for a long time, the same way Linkara considers Spider-Man dead to him unless they undo the deal with Mephisto. (Not have Pete and MJ marry again–the deal has to be officially undone or he won’t care.)

Speaking of Marvel, they unleashed two specials on us (DC did do their kids sampler but I already have the Scooby-Doo Team-Up issue with the Super Friends and really don’t care about Teen Titans Go!). Both comics contain two stories. We’ll look at them chronologically and I’m pretty sure this IS chronological, but I haven’t followed “Spider-Universe”. That means Secret Wars is up first. So how does it start?

She’s leading the younger members of the Future Foundation, including some old Power Pack members, in building a ship to escape. Escape what? Apparently the Marvel and Ultimate Universes are about to collide. I’m not sure how that works. How do universes move through the multiverse? Do they orbit something?

Now that I think about it, this is actually more like their Crisis On Infinite Earths, a merging of unrelated continuities into one. Considering how often the Marvel movies, whether it was a Marvel Studios production or not, have used more from the Ultimate universe than the usual 616 universe I’m actually not all that surprised. Annoyed and disappointed since Marvel kept itself from universal rebooting until now, but not surprised. There’s also a back-up feature from the Japanese magazine Brutus featuring the Titans from Attack On Titan popping up in the Marvel universe but it ends mid-fight with no resolution one way or the other. That’s disappointing, too.

One positive thing I’ll say about the Avengers/Uncanny Inhumans comic is that it wasn’t bad. It wasn’t good, it was just kind of mediocre, but at least it wasn’t bad. The point is to show off the “all-new, all-different Avengers: Ms. Marvel. Miles Morales Spidey, Nova (some new kid named Sam that my friend Chris Ferraiolo says has been Nova for awhile) the current Captain America (Sam Wilson, who still uses his Falcon gear but Cap’s costume and shield), Iron Man (who doesn’t appear to be the Superior version as Stark no longer funds the Avengers), and the Vision, who now can’t charge up as fast as he used to.

If I follow the story correctly, Radioactive Man creates a dragon somehow to help him rob a bank. Not knowing who is behind the dragon, the senior Avengers take on the dragon while the new members go in to save people and stop the crook. Radioactive Man turns invisible and escapes after taking down Nova as Spider-Miles and Ms. Marvel have to save a man. The comic starts off looking like Captain Falcamerica is scolding the kids but at the end it turns out he’s congratulating them for making the right choice. I like it but it’s not a very strong story.

The second tale starts in India as the Terrigan Mists continue their trek around the world thanks to events prior to this. They turn a movie star and a fan at his debut into Inhumans, the star becoming a tree monster and the fan gaining electromagnetic abilities, but not like Magneto’s. Hydra tries to capture them both but the tree movie star gets away while the elctromagnetic guy is rescue by the Inhumans and Human Torch.

There’s also a two-page preview for Max Ride, based on James Patterson’s Maximum Ride novel series. There’s not enough there to really wage an opinion on.

Overall I was really disappointed this year. The stuff I really want was gone, either by a slew of comic readers or a lot of scalpers. What I was left with was disappointing, mediocre, or rage-inducing enough to lead to another article after I do some research. I hope the rest of you had a better Free Comic Book Day than I did. At least I got some cool interviews out of it.