MLGG: Pop Culture News, Reviews & Interviews

For this year’s Free Comic Book Day (FCBD), I visited the Forbidden Planet closest to me.

They made quite a big deal of it, which was great – they set up a table, with a huge number of pre-prepared bags of comics, from which they handed out a bag to anyone who visited the store.

While the random bag of goodies – which featured more than just comics; I got a Death Stranding card wallet in mine too -was excellent for casual fans, it was a bit disappointing for people like me who had already checked out the FCBD selection in advance and wanted to get hold of specific comics.

It felt awkward and somewhat ungrateful to ask them to swap out any comics in the bag with other ones; suffice to say, I missed out on numerous issues I was really looking forward to picking up.

In previous years, they’ve simply set up a table with all of the issues on offer, allowing customers to take one each of anything they want – unfortunately, this does lead to numerous issues being left untaken by the end of the day, so you can see why a random bag of comics is a better way of handling the annual giveaway.

In any case, one comic I hadn’t seen promoted in the lead up to this year’s FCBD was Tom Holland’s Fright Night #1.

No, not that Tom Holland.

Tom Holland was the director of 1985 vampire horror comedy Fright Night, which sees a teen teaming up with a washed up actor – who’s ended up presenting Hammer Horror-esque monster movies on TV – to take on the very real, very sexy vampire next door.

It’s funny, it’s gory and it’s full of great practical effects; Roddy McDowall does a fantastic job as the actor-turned-vampire-hunter Peter Vincent too.

Also: good luck trying to find a sexier vampire than Chris Sarandon, even up against stiff competition from other hot 80s bloodsuckers in The Lost Boys, Near Dark and The Hunger.

This FCBD issue mostly retreads the plot of the film with some unusually caricatured art, which almost gives it the feel of an old school underground comic. There’s a new element here, however, which is presumably setting readers up for a continuation of the classic story.

It’s quite fun, but the writing is a little awkward and the art is a bit of an acquired taste.

A return to the world of the original Fright Night is always welcome, however – and it’s great that this issue is rounded out with interviews and other behind the scenes material.

Interestingly, this reprints material from a comic that released way back in 2021 – having never heard of it, clearly it was a good plan on the part of publisher American Mythology to get the comic in front of more readers.

Though FCBD 2023 was a bit disappointing for me because of the way it was handled locally, I did get hold of some interesting new stuff and I can’t fault the volume of comics that Forbidden Planet gave to each customer either.

I may not necessarily have got all of the comics I wanted, but I got a stack that’ll last me a while and will definitely introduce me to some great new stuff I would otherwise have missed!

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