The Avengers released, and Star Wars Day yesterday, and Free Comic Book Day today? If you’re not a geek right now, you’re seriously missing out…

“Free Comic Book Day.” There’s no part of that phrase that isn’t awesome. Free is awesome, comics are awesome, books are awesome (though comics are technically a subset of books), and writer/actress/web content producer extraordinaire Felicia Day is awesome.

In fact, Felicia Day wrote one of the free stories; a spin-off from her popular web series The Guild; which will be part of the Buffy/The Guild flipbook. The Buffy the Vampire Slayer story is written by Andrew Chambliss (who’s written Buffy and Dollhouse comics, as well as writing for the TV shows Dollhouse, The Vampire Diaries, Spartacus, and Once Upon a Time).

There’s also the option of a Star Wars/Serenity flipbook, with both stories written by Zack Whedon (whose comic credits include Serenity: Downtime, Terminator 2029-1984, and Doctor Horrible; and he also wrote for the super-villain musical comedy Doctor Horrible’s Sing-a-Long Blog, which the comics were a spin-offs from).

Star Wars. Serenity. Buffy. The Guild. These are arguably some of the best franchises ever.

If you go to a comic book store today, they’ll give you free comics! How cool is that? (And some of them will have discounts on other comics, too.) However, not every comic book store is participating, so you’ll have to check the official site to find your nearest one. If you can't get to one, then don't worry, because as one Whedonesque commenter says: “I e-mailed darkhorse a while back, and it will eventually be available digitally. I assume for free.”

An event like this is clearly designed to bring in new comic book fans, and hopefully this will be the case. Given the current (deserved) popularity of comic book movies, perhaps some of the fans of the movies will be inspired to check out the adventures of their favourite heroes (and others) on the page. In fact, if people have seen and loved The Avengers, then they should definitely check out Free Comic Book Day, because the free comics are written by people who’ve worked with The Avengers writer-director Joss Whedon (himself a huge comics fan).

Comics are awesome. Not only are they, as with any other mode of storytelling, capable of genuine depth and character insight and emotion and blah de blah de blah, but also, in their simplest, most direct, most quintessential form, they are, for lack of a better word (because it’s a perfectly awesome word)…awesome. Comics are about good guys fighting bad guys, they’re about people with superpowers doing cool things, they’re about style, they’re about panache, they’re about that heroic moment underscored by the perfect cheesy, bang-on-the-nose line of dialogue. Forget the critics; comics are amazing.

So walk – no, run (or fly if you have the appropriate superpowers) – to your nearest comic book store, and get reading those books with pictures in!

As legendary Marvel comic creator Stan Lee would say, Excelsior!

The official site for Free Comic Book Day:

http://www.freecomicbookday.com/Home/1/1/27/992

See also:

Felicia Day hints at secret cameos in The Avengers
The Amazing Spider-Man trailer online
NYC Event: TropFest Short Film Festival

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