Free Comic Book Day is tomorrow at Ash Avenue Comics, with nearly four dozen titles to choose from, publishers have offered a mix of original content, previews, and reprints this year. There’s plenty of titles for different ages of readers: we have age appropriate comics for kids, as well as comics for teens, and there’s also releases for a mature and adult audience as well. Have any questions about age appropriate comics for Free Comic Book Day? Feel free to ask our staff for assistance.
Cartoonist Billy Goodman is back this year, with an Ash Ave Comics exclusive FCBD edition of his latest comic, and the second part of his MF DoomWar bootleg epic. He has a full color preview edition of Bootleg Comics #4, and black and white mini comic edition, and some other tricks up his sleeve with some new editions of the previously, and long sold out, earlier issues.
Last but not least, the shop sale. We will be open from 10 Am to 7 PM, and we are doing our 20% off sale from 10 AM to 4 PM. Once again be doing door prizes! Just like the last few years, the first person in line, the one who was first at the shop on Saturday morning, gets the big prize, a 35% discount on their purchase. The second person in line gets 30% off their purchase, and the third person in line edges out the rest with 25% off their purchase. When it comes to the line: no cheats or cutting. The sale does not apply to this week’s new comics, items already on hold, consignment items, and items already marked down on sale.
Running through the mental checklist, and I think that about covers it. We can’t wait to see all of you in the shop on Saturday for Free Comic Book Day 2026!
My goodness! Has it already been a year since Free Comic Book Day 2021? The answer is… no! Free Comic Book Day 2021 was in August 2021, therefore ACTUALLY it’s only been nine months, so how do you like that? That’s the sort of joyless pedantry that keeps me working on this website from a top-secret, undisclosed location with only my friend Bilbo Bag ‘n Board for company, rather than down in the shop where I can alienate people and expose us to one-star Google reviews, ha ha!
Pictured: Bilbo Bag ‘n Board
If you’re the type of person who wants to experience joy unconfined, you’re in luck because tomorrow is FREE COMIC BOOK DAY! As you may know, 364 days of the year, comic book store owners are miserly, penny-pinching misanthropes who count every last bag and board in the shop before they leave at night to make sure none have gone missing. But then, late on the night before Free Comic Book Day, each participating store owner is visited by three specters:
The Ghost of Comic Retail Past, a fellow who is always posed in a crouch with his knees up over his head as an homage to Todd McFarlane’s classic Spider-Man #1 cover
The Ghost of Comic Retail Present, who you only get to see after you’ve made an order for 50 other ghosts
The Ghost of Comic Retail Future, a woman of color bearing an iPad with Marvel Unlimited installed on it
Moved to their depths by this sobering experience, the retailers run through the streets, laughing and whooping merrily, and upon arrival at their shop, start handing out free FCBD-branded comic books to the whole town! Not just to the middle-aged men, but to little girls and college students with septum piercings and all sorts of others! They even discount their own inventory by as much as 50% in some cases! (Bags and boards are still $0.35, though. Those things aren’t cheap.) And then, the day after, a notification from Key Collector that an artist drew Kitty Pryde to look a bit like Billie Eilish in a Marvel house ad will come through, and people are wondering if maybe this means that Billie Eilish will be playing Kitty Pryde in a forthcoming Disney+ series, and then the race is on to pull every single Kitty Pryde cover appearance out of the back-issue bins and flood eBay with them… and the whole cycle begins again.
That is the sacred tradition of our people. And we have honored that tradition every May for twenty years, except during the pandemic and that time it was delayed to August.
If you’ve read this far, you may well be saying to yourself, “That was stupid. I just wanted to know what Ash Avenue Comics is doing for Free Comic Book Day. Tell me. Tell me, damn your eyes.”
Well, we have all kinds of free comics, for a start! There’s the Dark Crisis Special Edition from DC, a 25 Years of Buffy the Vampire Slayer Special from Boom, Spider-Man/Venom #1 from Marvel, a lead-in to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’ Armageddon Game event from IDW, and loads more! Choose up to five titles each, one copy per title per person. Play fair!
Remember that every issue isn’t for every age group. Not all of these titles are for kids! The books are color-coded to indicate the age range they’re aimed at. Here’s a guide for you culture warriors out there:
In addition, everything in the store is 20% off from 10:00-2:00 (excluding new issues, items on hold, and items already discounted). What better time to get that Jim Lee X-Men Artist’s Edition book that’s the size of a tombstone?
Thanks to you, Free Comic Book Day 2021 was a resounding success! It was a pleasure to spend the day in the company of old Ash Avenue Comics friends and to have the opportunity to make new ones. We got a special treat when Spider-Man and Spider-Gwen swung by to plug in some gaps in their back issue collections! To live in such a rich, diverse community of comics fans and pros is a gift that we don't take for granted. Thank you for choosing to shop at Ash Avenue Comics, and we hope to see more of you in the year ahead! On to Free Comic Book Day 2022!
