Comicon Takes Free Comic Book Day 2026

The first Saturday in May is Free Comic Book Day. It’s one of the biggest geek events of the year, driving thousands of fans into comic book stores, and bumping sales to a level usually reserved for the holiday season. But often, the books themselves don’t get talked about, so we here at Comicon.com wanted to take a look at a handful of the actual stories, and give our thoughts.

Now, there were two clear trends this year. The big one was that this was the year of the reprint. A huge amount of Free Comic Book Day releases were reprints of other stories readily available in collection form, online or even with single issues still on the shelf. Hell, one major publisher released no original material at all. 

The other was the trailer comic. This has been a prevalent trend in Free Comic Book Day for a few years now, but almost all of the remaining books were more of a teaser of what’s to come than an actual stand alone story, with varying degrees of success. So without further ado, here’s what we thought!

Dungeon Crawler Carl (Vault Comics) By Matt Dinnaman, Aethon, Teaugah, Laurel Pursuit

So, I was specifically going to call out all of the reprints at the end of this piece. Seriously, it’s a lot. But one book was a massive sensation, even with it just being a print edition of a Webtoon series — Matt Dinnaman’s viral LitRPG sensation Dungeon Crawler Carl.

And here’s the thing — if you’re not already a Crawler, don’t bother with this. This will not give you any reason to dive deeper into the series. Wait until the full collection of the print edition hits later this month (or better yet, read the novel/listen to the audiobook, then get the print edition). This edition is really just the first two Webtoon chapters, reformatted off vertical scroll and put in print. That means this is almost exclusively exposition, cutting off right when it gets good.

For Crawlers though, this is a fun preview of what the print edition will look like, which is mostly exciting. Also, the cover was a really nice, heavier stock. So that was cool.

Rating: 6/10

–Tony Thornley

Spider-Man/Queen In Black/Infernal Hulk (Marvel Comics) By Joe Kelly, John Romita Jr., Scott Hanna, Marcio Menyz, Al Ewing, Iban Coello, Guru-eFx, Phillip Kennedy Johnson, Nic Klein, Matthew Wilson, Joe Caramagna, Clayton Cowles, and Cory Petit

Once again, Spider-Man gets a spotlight on FCBD, and Kelly and Romita continue to surprise me. This is simply the best Amazing Spidey run of the last decade. In their story, an obscure Spider-Man villain battles frustration with the modern misinformation stream. It’s a fun action story, with a very Spidey resolution and a thinly veiled condemnation of AI.

Queen in Black and Infernal Hulk are both essentially trailers for the upcoming stories, but they’re fun teases that actually were way more engaging than I expected. Queen in Black appears to be way more Marvel Cosmic rather than Asgardian, and Infernal Hulk just reminded me how much I need to catch up on Johnson and Klein’s run.

Rating: 8/10

–Tony Thornley

Masters of the Universe: Telling Tales(Dark Horse Comics) By Tim Seeley, Andrew Krahnke, DJ Chavis, and Andworld Design

Welcome to the table, 

This MOTU story is a really fun one that comes off more like a highlight reel than anything else. It’s a well-produced highlight reel, mind you, the art is great, the few moments of the current story are fun banter between Prince Adam and Teela, but the majority of the story follows a seemingly drunk Prince Adam telling a woman he thinks is a Milk-Maid about the various happenings on Eternia. 

Adam explains that Hordak and the Horde show up from across the stars and subjugate Skeletor and his technological resources to unleash his Fright Zones, techno-organic energy-draining devices that spread like a plague across the land. Adam continues calling out that He-Man was needed to help push back these forces, but in doing so, He-Man was caught in a brainwashing slime pit, giving Skeletor time to summon King Hiss and his serpent legion to fight Hordak. 

After a while, Adamn explains that He-Man is more than just pure muscle and has other strengths of note, and using his keen mind, he is able to break free of the Slime Pit and defeat Hordack giving King Hiss time to overthrow Skeletor, subjgating him again and while the day was saved, Adam relays to the Milk-Maid that the legion of serpents now serves as a new foe lurking in the shadows. 

It all reads like a mini-comic from the classic Masters of the Universe figures, or a 3-minute commercial break during Saturday Morning cartoons. It shows off all the major players, cool vehicles, items, and locations that could easily be playsets, and it gives you an idea of who’s who while catching you up on the current events in Dark Horse’s MOTU comics. 

Easily a 10/10 for me because it does what it set out to do in a really entertaining way, and I respect it.

Rating 10/10

-Anton Kromoff

Dungeons & Dragons: Magefall (Dark Horse Comics) By Jackson Lanzig, Collin Kelly, Alessandro Miracolo, Valentina Taddeo, and Haley Rose-Lyon

I don’t have enough time in this mini review of the Free Comic Book Day offering from Dark Horse to dig into the lore implications of this half a comic story, but before we get into what is on the page and not the larger implications to… everything foundational in all of Dungeons & Dragons I do need to say that this is one of the most unhinged reality breaking lore altering bits of media in the D&D space I have seen in ages and I’m still wrestling with how many ways this could shift everything canonical in D&D. 

Not your Home-Brew, not whatever agency you want to take in telling your own stories, but the actual canonical lore of the Forgotten Realms is about to go to some really unique places if this is not some kind of fever dream because … wow. 

Let’s get into it. 

Radiant Zael, the Grandmaster of Flowers, Fist of the Dragon God, and follower of Bahamut, shows up at a Lord Mage of Greyhawk, Last of the Eight, Lost Child of Oerth, Mordenkainen, the Archmage of Cosmic Neutrality’s tower of high magics. 

Zael informs Mordekainen that he needs to detach himself from his tower and his magics and go live a life of quiet reflection rather than be someone who has a great destiny. Mordekainen says no, and Zael turns into a dragon and strips Mordekainen of all his magics, destroying his tower, and leaving him alone in the snow with no connection to the weave or the webwork of magic that binds all those who know how to use it. 

Then Mordekaien says the hardest line in all of D&D canon I have read, “Balance is not an idea to me. It is a sacred, eternal wall. And whether magic-touched or god-forged, when tyrants good or evil seek to push that wall to ruin… it will be Mordenkainen that pushes back.” 

I mean, just a conflict between what is largely accepted as the most powerful “good” aligned god and a wizard without his magic is alone a brilliant setup but the far reaching implications into past adventures like Vecna: Age of Ruin, the whole Kass the Betrayer storyline, Mordekainen’s network of allies, and a story that is setting up a Hero clashing with a “good” deity rather than the same old “Good Vs. Evil” tropes makes this such a powerful standout to so much. 

I will dig in more, but this sets the stage for a new D&D comic coming this fall that has a tag line, “They took his Magic. They did not take his Power.” 

I’m so beyond excited for whatever this turns into, and I really hope they give it the issue count it really deserves. 

Rating 100,000/10

~ Anton “The Storyteller” Kromoff

Deicidium: Omens (Image Comics) By Ram V, Evan Cagle, Anand RK, Aditya Bidikar, Tom Mueller

Okay,  admittedly, I was really frustrated by glut of reprints and “previews” that were included in this year’s FCBD/CGD offerings. I am not ashamed to say that this is easily the exception. A 22-ish page preview of the upcoming graphic novel series from Ram, Cagle and RK, Deicidium did exactly enough to tease and intrigue me, without giving too much away. I was already interested. Now I’m hooked. This is a totally new sci-fi world that clearly has a lot of influence from Jack Kirby’s Fourth World without being a derivative.

I’m in.

Rating: 10/10

–Tony Thornley

Conan: Tides of the Tyrant King (Titan Comics) By Jim Zub, Jesus Merino, Jao Canola, Richard Starkings & Comicraft

Zub’s work on Conan continues to fly under my radar, with every release reminding me that I need to pick up more of it, and Merino knocks it out of the part art-wise.

This is a great tale of Conan as a mercenary, displaying his prowess on the battlefield, then his honor off it. It’s a pretty standard Conan tale, but it’s genuinely good. Intertwined with it is a very interesting story set during and after World War I, which ends with the tease that the story isn’t as disconnected from Conan’s as it might seem.

I clearly need more Conan in my life.

Rating: 8/10

–Tony Thornley

Keenspot Spotlight (Keenspot) By Mark Spears, Ethan Page, Brett Murphy, Wilson Gandolpho, Tim Seeley, Matt Fife, Matt Rodgers, and J Hammond

What the hell was that?

After last year’s excellent Monsters short from Spears and an absolute banner year for Spears and Keenspot, I was looking forward to Keenspot’s release most. I mean, Monsters is literally the best selling indie book of the last year (admittedly in part thanks to a couple blind bag releases). But instead of a Monsters story, we get an interview with Spears, and a few shorts and preview pages from the rest of the Keenspot line.

A few of the shorts were interesting, but I’m not sure why Keenspot would have done this instead of commissioning another Spears story, even if it was shorter than last year’s issue-long story, then leading into the previews of other books from the line.

Rating: 2/10

–Tony Thornley

Avengers: Armageddon/X-Men (Marvel Comics) By Jed Mackay, Ryan North, Chip Zdarsky, Frank Alpizar, Delio Diaz, Francesco Mobili, Federico Vicentini 

All three of these stories are, essentially, trailers for upcoming events: Zdarsky’s Avengers: Armageddon event, DNX spinning out of MacKay’s X-Men, and on a much smaller scale, North’s upcoming Doomquest miniseries. Of the three, the X-Men story is perhaps the most satisfying as a story unto itself, featuring Cyclops’ squad of Alaskan X-Men battling a 3K-backed group of Hydra Agents, featuring some strong art from Federico Vicentini. The Doomquest story serves as a sort of direct prologue to the miniseries, in which Doctor Doom travels through time in an effort to rewrite history in his image, depicting the moment when he actually enters the timestream. It gains a little something from being told from the perspective of a Doombot, with North wringing a surprising bit of pathos from that in the brief story. 

The centerpiece of the issue, the Avengers: Armageddon story, is effective as a tease, showcasing big events – the rise of a dictatorial Red Hulk, the deaths of significant characters, the long-term imprisonment of Steve Rogers – but doesn’t really answer the question at the heart of the story: how is this different than the last big Marvel event, “One World Under Doom,” which also featured its central antagonist conquering the world to create a united state they claimed was altruistic but was still fascistic and built on the suppression of free will? Of course, that’s not really the job of this free comic giveaway story, but everything presented here begs that question pretty directly. It is, at the very least, well-drawn by Alpizar and Diaz, featuring the kind of loud, energetic images a story of this scope needs along with intriguing reimaginings (such as the futuristic Maestro-like Red Hulk) to help entice readers to seek out the event. 

Rating: 7/10

–Austin Gorton

And as far as the frustration with reprints go, all of the following was reprinted material or preview pages for an upcoming release. (And this is just the stuff that I’m sure about.)

DC X Sonic #1 (DC Comics)

DC Next Level Sampler (DC Comics)

Aquamanatee (DC Comics)

Nice House on the Lake #1 (DC Comics)

Flash Gordon #1 (Mad Cave)

Stitch! Best Food Forever! (Tokyopop)

Stitch! #1 (Dynamite)

Supernatural #1 (Dynamite)

Garfield #1 (Boom! Studios)

Jem/My Little Pony (Boom! Studios) 

Sonic the Hedgehog #1 (IDW Publishing)

Locke & Key #1 (IDW Publishing)

World of Archie #1 (Archie Comics)