Dr. Who Special (50)
World's Of Aspen (49)
The Phantom Special (48)
Steampunk Goldilocks (47)
Defend Comics (46)
Lady Justice (45)
Chakra The Invinceable (44)
Cleopatra In Space (43)
Ice Bayou Blackout (42)
Comics Festival (40)
2000 AD Special (33)
Kodansha Comics Sampler (29)
Now onto the list!
38. Overstreet Comic Book Marketplace (35)
I really liked when Bleeding Cool used to release a magazine for FCBD. It had great tidbits, interesting info and lots of great guides. I expected the same from Overstreet as it was high up on my list a couple FCBD's ago but I wasn't able to get it, I heard bad things so it fell on this year's list and now I can safely say that it was well earned criticisms as it was the worst FCBD book I read.
37. Super Mutant Magic Academy/Step Aside Pops (31)
I'm not sure what made me rank this so high pre-FCBD, maybe it was the name and Super Mutant Magic Academy had a few decent moments but overall the story was still poor, add in the awfulness of Step Aside Pops and this really deserves to be at the bottom of this list but Overstreet wasted so much more of my time.
36. The Stuff Of Legend/Thanatos Diver (41)
Thanatos Diver was more than bad but the tweet wouldn't let me fit any more than a 4 letter word. The Stuff Of Legend's set up was amazing I thought to myself "Wow! This is going to be one of the best books this year! But then letterless pages of art, I hate when they give us unscripted art as you will see more of at the bottom of this list.
35. Legendary Comics Sampler (13)
Well here's this year's winner of biggest fall, Legendary fell 22 spots because this book is mostly unlettered. I love anthology books since it gives you a bit of everything but this book gave you a cover and a quick synopsis on the same page and sometimes gives you some art sheets... We did get one comic that was "complete" which allowed Legendary to stay ahead of The Stuff Of Legend
34. Hatter M. Love Of Wonder (20)
This is another book that excited me a lot last year but I missed out on picking it up, the anticipation allowed it to move up on this year's list and unfortunately again I was disappointed. The art was rough to put it lightly and the story was heavily wordy with barely any action sequences, something you don't expect looking at the cover and the synopsis. But hey, lesson learnt.
33. Bob's Burgers (36.)
Not much to expand on here, my girlfriend thinks Bob's Burgers is the cats meow... I was indifferent to it after watching a handful of episodes, and the comic did not change my mind.
32. Avatar/Plants Vs. Zombies/Bandette (34.)
Not much else to say here, all three books left me feeling "meh". I've read more Plants Vs. Zombies than the other two, but even than not much so I didn't really care for any of the characters so you really need to make me like these unknown characters. Dark Horse Comics failed to make me care however.
31. Transformers Robots In Disguise #0 (25.)
The only thing that got this Transformers book ahead of the previous book is for the most part I enjoy Transformers, I'm not in love with them or anything but they're at least fun characters, but when you release an all-ages Transformers book with no action, you're gonna have a bad time!
30. Motorcycle Samurai (38.)
This books art and premise was interesting... But like the tweet says I couldn't decipher if it was good or bad, Motorcycle will have to settle for a passing grade.
29. Tales Of Honor (30.)
It's very hard to write a good sci-fi book with page constraints, more often than not you have to explain all this out-of-this-world technology as well as alien beings, so I can't fault Tales Of Honor for scuffling on a FCBD edition but all said it was a solid, if not a little bit confusing story.
28. Captain Canuck (37.)
Even though one of the ads was for the best comic book store in the world (Big B Comics) I couldn't help but be annoyed, not to mention the classic story was heavy on dialogue... If the ads were replaced by my story this would likely be a Top 25 book, if it was all the modern story it likely would've challenged for a Top 15 slot.
27. Rabbids (23.)
After getting through Rabbids I thought this book had strong potential with The Smurfs and The Garfield Show coming up, although The Smurfs was strong Garfield disappointed and then Ariol was last and bad as usual (you'll remember the last 2 years the Ariol back-up held down great books like The Smurfs and Mighty Morphin Power Rangers).
26. Grimm Fairy Tales Wonderland (24.)
I'm not sure why GFT by Zenoscope is ranked so high as I really haven't been impressed with anything else they've released other than Robyn Hood, but even then I just read a short story and haven't jumped into the full length graphic novels, nonetheless Wonderland is middling just like the other Grimm books I've read.
25. JoJo's Bizarre/Yu-Gi-Oh! (12.)
The appeal of this book was always the Yu-Gi-Oh! story, and it was probably one of the top stories this year, what I didn't realise though is that Jojo's Bizarre would be so confusing that it would drag a Yu-Gi-Oh book into the bottom half of this list. I really feel a little bit of back story, like what the hell Jojo's Bizarre is about would've helped, but alas here we are.
24. Street Fighter (22.)
The backup material more than lacked, there was these weird little newspaper snippets that were meant to be funny but just weren't, the main story had me lost at first but then after the second transition I realised what they were going for. It ended up being fun, however the "any given Sunday" ideology has been overused especially when it comes to fighting games.
23. Savage Dragon Legacy (27.)
Similar to Jojo, Savage Dragon had a strong first half with the modern story and then the classic story bored me, the advantage that Savage Dragon had over Jojo is that the good story was over half the book, not the opposite way where the backup is the only good part.
22. Bongo Comics Free-For-All (8.)
In past years most of the all-ages stories let me down but The Simpsons were never among them, they consistently delivered... Until this year, as noted the lead story was strong as usual but give the fact that Bongo gives us a bunch of stories and all the other ones were mediocre or worse.
21. Valiant Anniversary Special (14.)
So X-O Manowar, Valiant's flagship title let me down story-wise and the art in Bloodshot was lacklustre so I really expected to jump on the Valiant bandwagon after this title, but now I'd consider picking up Ninjak and that's about it. Oh well, maybe next year.
20. SpongeBob SquarePants (16.)
I'm a fan of SpongeBob, unfortunately his comics have let me down in the past and although I really did enjoy the stories here the art didn't look anything like the TV show. Not that that's always a bad thing but it is when compared to the art here.
19. Fight Club 2/The Goon/The Strain (7.)
Again, Fight Club 2 rocked my socks. The Goon and The Strain lacked in comparison, well actually they lacked in general but The Strain at least had pretty art, though the story moved slowly causing me to lose interest. But hey at least it still made it into the top half!
18. And Then Emily Was Gone/Oxymoron (17.)
And Then Emily Was Gone had rough art but it did set up the ongoing series pretty well and I'll likely consider jumping into it again at some point but the Oxymoron series has jumped up my list of must reads from ComixTribe.
17. Mercury Heat Debut (39.)
I'm not really a Kieron Gillen fan, I picked up Uber last year and it was one of my bottom books so that hurt Mercury Heat's placing this year but I was so stoked after reading it, the story was great sci-fi action and I'm looking forward to picking up some single issues of this. As mentioned though the end with all the notes from Gillen about how the book came to be with illustrations and world building was a little much, but hey it's still the biggest jumping book going from my 37th ranked book out of the 38 I picked up and here it is at #17.
16. Terrible Lizard (19.)
This was one of the first books I read on Free Comic Book Day, and although I didn't give it a glowing review as I read more I didn't find that many all-ages books outshone this one. I think it is partly because I love Cullen Bunn's writing and this isn't as good as some of his other work I've read.
15. Avengers/Uncanny Inhumans (11.)
I really do like this new Avengers team headlined by Sam Wilson's Captain America and also featuring new faces like the female Thor, Nova and Ms. Marvel. I figured the Inhumans books would get better now that Johnny Storm was going to be showing up following the conclusion of the Fantastic Four books, unfortunately it didn't wow me and left me with the same taste that caused me to stop buying them after Inhumans wrapped up.
14. Jurassic Strike Force 5 (32.)
Too bad that Mercury Heat made such a huge jump, otherwise the honour may have gone to Jurassic Strike Force as it was the 31st ranked book I grabbed but this all-ages book about a bunch of dinos that survived extinction and living underground while still fighting to help mankind can't be too upset with a 17 book jump.
13. Dark Circle Comics (18.)
As you'll see later on the fact that I thought I was getting something and was left without doesn't necessarily make the book a failure right off the bat, but it does make it an uphill battle to get back to neutral ground. Luckily the dark toned Black Hood and it's perfect counter balance in the light hearted The Fox allowed Dark Circle to not only make it back to neutral but get a couple upticks. I'll definitely be grabbing these in trade likely soon.
12. Scooby Doo Team-Up/Teen Titans Go! (15.)
As you'll see as we creep closer to number one, this was a great year for all-ages books. Any other year and this would be among the best of the best but unfortunately this is a strong year and it doesn't even come close to the top 5 all-ages books. I'm really enjoying what I've seen from Teen Titans Go! thus far and Scooby Doo surprised me with a truly great story starring the super friends... Gross.
11. Bodie Troll/Drone/Creature Academy (21.)
Creature Academy which I didn't talk about on twitter was an unspectacular story with decent art but it was the shortest of the three. As mentioned I'm becoming a big Bodie Troll fan between his backup in Atomic Robo last FCBD and his lead story here where he gets drunk! Too bad Drone and Creature Academy held it back just enough to miss the Top 10.
10. Hip-Hop Family Tree/Cosplayers (10.)
I really enjoy the Hip-Hop Family Tree books as they educate me on something I'm interested in but know very little about. Ed Piskor does a great job writing interesting stories about some of hip-hop's greatest talents and then there's the Cosplayers backup... My mom always said not to say anything if I have nothing nice to say.
9. March Grand Prix (26.)
Now this is interesting. Last year Hip-Hop Family Tree was my biggest mover, but in 2nd place was The Adventures of Jellyby, a book I only got because my girlfriend wanted it, well I ended up loving it and now Jellyby writer Kean Soo is back with a new series about animals that race cars and it's even better than Jellyby!
8. Perfect Square Presents Pokemon (9.)
As I mentioned earlier, we'll see books that lied in their synopsis still getting good grades, case and point this book. Pokemon promised a battle between two legendary Pokemon which never happened the X and Y story ended just as someone said it was happening but we never seen it but all 3 stories (Emerald, Black & White and the aforementioned X & Y) were great and may just cause me to read some Pokemon manga soon.
7. Gronk & Friends (28.)
Okay so here's another 21 spot jumper, partly because I underrated, partly because I didn't realise Hero Cats of Stellar City would be included! I love those cats so they're inclusion alone causes a big jump. Not to mention the fact that Gronk was a great story in it's own right, too bad new readers of Hero Cats wouldn't understand their comic since the story is jumbled together from different books so it doesn't make a ton of sense.
6. The Tick (5.)
We're now at the part of the list that doesn't change a lot because they are all known quantities, this was the weakest of the FCBD Tick comics but it's still a great read unfortunately it gets bumped out of the Top 5 due to the strength of the other books that were originally in the top 6 with The Tick.
5. Boom Studios 10th Anniversary Special (6.)
Essentially swapping positions with The Tick, Boom bet that more is better and they were right, even though they had bad books the good outweighed by a large margin. Regular Show continues to be a favourite of mine every FCBD despite not watching the show, in fact I didn't even realise it was a Regular Show comic until I looked at the table of contents. Garfield and Adventure Time was also enjoyable, too bad twitter only allows 140 characters, I can go on for ever.
4. Secret Wars (3.)
This is probably a case where Marvel is setting up a major event so it's assumed to be a spectacle so even when the story isn't as good as we assumed there is still an air of excitement surrounding it. It also helped that that the Avengers/Attack On Titan story was way more fun than I would've ever imagined it to be. I also didn't expect it in the book so I was surprised.
3. Sonic The Hedgehog/Mega Man World's Unite Prelude (4.)
Two major events went to war and World's Unite prevailed. Both sides of this flipbook was a lot of fun and although I seen the connection in Sonic's half to the event, Mega Man seemed like a stand alone story to me but it still definitely worked on it's own.
2. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Prelude To Vengeance (1.)
I was really impressed with what TMNT was able to accomplish in such a small book but the IDW series has been impressing me since it's debut so I guess I shouldn't be surprised. The only thing and I mean the only thing that kept this out of the top spot was the sheer perfection of the #1 book, this is not a knock against the turtles at all, no, this is when a top seed finally loses a finals match due to overwhelming shots of his opponent.
1. Divergence (2.)
When DC announced this book I figured it wouldn't be anything special, I mean after all I'm already reading Batman and Justice League so I'd just get a sneak peek at their new story lines and I'm not a Superman fan so it was just going to be okay but boy was I shocked. I loved this Superman story... I can't wait to start grabbing the trades! Batman and Justice League even gave me more than I expected which makes Divergence a perfect book and the best pick up this FCBD.
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