Free Comic Book Day is a fledgling tradition to comics retailers. The idea is that publishers create sampler books and direct market outlets give ‘em to the people. The thought being the old ‘first hit’s always free’ cliché, and the motivation being that both the DM and its audience are dwindling year after year. So FCBD is designed to garner attention, media play, and good will; it’s a day to get people actively into stores looking to see what’s what, and hopefully some of them come back for, uh, Not Free Comic Book Day.

The next event is scheduled for 4th of July weekend, to correspond with the release of Spider-Man 2. This date was decided on by some cabal between publishers, retailers, and the distributor that I don’t quite understand, but decided on it was, and stuck with it everyone is. There are active, vociferous complaints about it, too—traditionally, July 4th weekend is a retail graveyard (my albeit limited experience holds that to be true, but many other retailers have said so also). And yet, it’s one of the biggest movie weekends of the year, with summer tent-pole flicks opening to massive numbers all three days. Millions of people go to the movies and stay out of stores.

See the aforementioned Spider-Man 2.

So now then: How difficult would it be to create some synergy between retailers and movie theaters? Most megaplexes, whose 3000+ plus screens that’ll show Spider-Man 2 far outnumber comic stores, are large enough to easily accommodate a convention-style booth (unless you’re Rory Root, who would need an entire wing of the theater to accommodate The Ft. Comic Relief Mobile Retail Battlestation) or set of tables to give the FCBD books away from and sell trades. Or why not give away the books at the ticket booth to folks seeing the films, done up with store names and info on them? Take the mountain to Mohammed, basically. Go where the people are, since the people aren’t coming to you.

While I’m unsure of the vagaries of local chain-theater management, it certainly doesn’t sound like the stupidest thing I’ve ever said out loud, does it?

Does it?