You probably know about Ben & Jerry’s Free Cone day
right? Well Free Comic Book Day is the same thing, but way, way better. It
takes place all over the world, and there are dozens of comics to choose from
and they are genuinely for everybody. Boys & girls, men and women; From The
Smurfs, Regular Show and Spongebob, to The Walking Dead, Judge Dredd, 2000 AD
and Grimm. Of course there are also serious contributions from the big boys – Marvel
& DC, as well as major Indies like and Image.
FREE COMICS, BECAUSE IT IS FREE COMIC BOOK
DAY!
What is Free Comic Book Day?
The comics are specially produced for Free Comic Book Day
and serve as a brilliant way to either get people back into comics, or draw
them from the first time. Between the Marvel Studios’ Marvel Cinematic Universe,
Warner Brothers attempts to get the most out of their ownership of DC and the
likes of Arrow & The Walking Dead taking over television, the mainstream
public are aware of more comic book characters now than ever before. No longer is
it just Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Spider-Man & The Hulk, who the
average person in the street can recognise.
Around 16 years ago Marvel man Avi Arad finally convinced one
of the studios that were sitting on film rights to Marvel characters to
actually make a film with them. Studios were too afraid to make the films they had the
rights to after Batman & Robin capped a string of box office disappointments,
that Hollywood saw as a sign that people were done with Super hero films. They weren't they were just done with bad, awful, repetitive Super Hero films.
Between the awful, but financially successful Batman Forever in 1995 and WB mega
disaster film ‘Steel’ in 1997, Cinemagoers were ‘treated’ to 7, American, Comic
book adaptations. All, except for Men In Black, were critical and/or financial
horror shows. Judge Dredd, Barb Wire, The Phantom and The Crow: City of Angels,
all convinced the suits that Comic book films, not just super hero films, were
perhaps just too risky. WB thought about how to resurrect Batman (That was
still 8 years away) and spent tens of millions of dollars failing to get a
Superman film off the ground. (Most notably with Tim Burton & Nicolas Cage.)
FREE COMICS, BECAUSE IT IS FREE COMIC BOOK
DAY!
Creators of Ben 10...
FREE COMICS, BECAUSE IT IS FREE COMIC BOOK
DAY!
Against this backdrop of negativity, Avi Arad was somehow able
to convince New Line decided to take a chance on a little known super hero,
Blade. Created in the 1970s Blade was not only a pretty grim horror film but a
kick ass one to boot. The success of Blade helped tip Fox over the edge about bringing
the X-Men (by far the most popular comic book character of the 1980s &
1990s) into production; and with a ‘real’ director at that; Bryan Singer from
The Usual Suspects. All of this made other studios get up off their collective
arses and take films that had been in development hell for years, or decades,
into Production. Spider-Man definitely sealed the deal and the world hasn’t looked
back since.
(Quote from The New York Time in June 2004, regarding Blade and
X-Men:-
“Together, the movies proved
that even comic book characters unknown to the general public could become the
basis for blockbusters.”)
FREE COMICS, BECAUSE IT IS FREE COMIC BOOK
DAY!
Hugh Jackman...
The two biggest success stores have undoubtedly been Christopher
Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy, which we should never forget started with a film
that lost money at the box office. Sometimes quality, and good DVD / TV sales,
is more important than money. Despite ‘only’ making $374min cinemas, the film
was very well received, which led to the next two films making just over $2b combined.
The other is, of course, the amazing rise of Marvel Studios and their daring,
unprecedented, building of a shared Universe on the big screen. If you pickup some
Marvel comics tomorrow, free or otherwise, you will likely to see characters
popping up in other character’s books. It is something that happens more in
Marvel comics than others, and translating that to the film business is truly remarkable.
Imagine James Bond trying to escape some bad guys and getting a little help
from Jason Bourne along the way, before teaming up with some Impossible
Missions people to save the day. Taking the trouble to build up a brand with
Iron Man, Thor, The Incredible Hulk and Captain America, has paid huge
dividends. Not only did the sum of those parts, with a little help from Nick
Fury, end up becoming the third highest grossing film of all time (The Avengers
- $1.51b); but Iron Man Three has, in a 9 day rolling release, already grossed
$345m outside of North America! To put that into some kind of perspective, the
top two International grosses for the Solo Avengers films were, $311m for Iron
Man 2, and $268m for Thor. (Very decent amounts indeed) So in nine rolling days,
Iron Man Three has already passed them both. Of course getting to the $888m The
Avengers made is still a very tall order; but it is more proof that Super heroes
and comic book adaptations in general, are about as popular as they have ever
been.
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| Click the banner to go to the Free Comic Book Day website |
So comic books are having a massive effect on pop culture,
even as print media is in decline. So why not take advantage of the far
reaching comic book genre and get people to actually read the stories that
inspired these films and TV shows? And when you get there, you’ll discover that
there are far more comics, covering far more subjects and topics, aimed at a
much wider age range, than you probably thought before. So check out where your
nearest FREE COMIC BOOK DAY store is and give the call. But if you take that
last Walking Dead comic I will have to hurt you!
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