It's our favorite holiday of the year - Free Comic Book Day. The day that comic book giants and independents decide that the best way to get new readers and promote their upcoming titles is to just give their comic books away. It's free! Just run to your local comic book shop, grab as many free comics as you can, and run for the hills, right?
No, not right. Because, you see, the comic book stores - the people that dispense your twenty two pages of illustrated crack for you every month - they actually have to PAY money to get these books. Not their usual prices, but they still have to ship them to their stores, and that's not free. Not to mention however much they spend on the food, entertainment, or extra staff that they provide to make your Free Comic Book Day experience awesome.
At the top of this image is my haul for FCBD this year. The bottom three comics are the "free" ones I grabbed. Everything else I paid for - it was like $100 worth of comics and trades. And while you don't have to break your wallet like I did, if you're heading to an LCS for the day, you should really buy something. A t-shirt, the newest issue of X-men, a plastic green lantern ring - just something to show your appreciation for how awesome the store is for putting on an amazing event for you, year after year.
