4 out of 5

FCBD’s are not a crapshoot – they generally strike a surprisingly consistent balance between proof-of-concept for new readers and winking gifts to those who traveled and probably waited to nab their limited copy.  So while you might not prefer the title, I haven’t yet seen a truly bad FCBD edition of anything.  It seems like it’s liberating to the creators, giving them a few mostly contextless pages to show off their characters or a vague idea they’ve had.  Still, if the book doesn’t grab you, it doesn’t grab you.  Compilation books – like this Archaia ‘flipbook’ (you can read halfway through it from either side by flipping it over and around to the accepted ‘spine on the left’ format) – are probably the best and worst parts of the day.  At best, free exposure to several titles at once, at worse, a collection of two pagers that feel like previews and tell you why you should read instead of showing you.

The Mouse Guard tale on side A is the star – David Peterson’s art and balance of poetic dialogue / easily understandable modern phrasing are, as usual, paced well and drawn beautifully, and the few pages gives him reason to experiment with a more text-based narrative.   ‘Rust’ on the flip does the task of getting me interested in checking out the hardcovers, but doesn’t really give me a gist of the what the series would focus on, just interesting visuals and readable characters.  Centered in the book is an awesomely creative Cow Boy strip that absolutely has convinced me to check out the trade, and that takes advantage of the ‘flip’ of the book to do a cute and easy story reversal.  Buffering this all out, rather unbelievably, are two more strips – a Labyrinth strip and a dinosaur fantasy thang called ‘Bolivar.’  These aren’t for me, but they stick to the concept of actually doing something with the pages available.

So it’s a damn fine example of a free book and if the purpose of this day is to grab new readers, it’s done its job.  The lack of star is just because I’m a dick, but also because it’s hard to get too amped up about any given story.  The creators are going to be careful to not anything here that’s required reading for followers of a regular series, so while the entertainment level and quality are high, you could just flip through the book (womp) not reading it too closely and get the gist.