If there's one thing I love, it's free comics. One of the reasons I've come to love Free Comic Book Day slightly less is that a lot of stores that participate in it now only distribute free comics is you buy something from them. This, to me, is intrinsically against the idea that spawned Free Comic Book Day, but then I'm an optimist if nothing else.
And this insert from the comics magazine Hero Illustrated isn't really a free comic. The original purchaser would have paid the cost of the magazine with which it was included, and I likely paid a dollar for it from some dollar bin. But, as an insert comic, it's not an expected part of the magazine with which it was packaged. Wizard Magazine would do this sometimes too, and very often it was original content, not reprint content as this particular issue is.
That said, though the premiere edition of 1963 #5 doesn't contain the whole story, just a taster to get you in the mood, it does contain an interview with Rick Veitch and Steve Bissette about the formation and formulation of the 1963-verse, and those particular artists' reasons for becoming involved in the project.
It also gives me a nice taste of the wonder that is 1963. It's one of the great tragedies of 90s superhero comics that the final part of this series, the legendary Double Image special that would have pitted the optimistic characters of 1963 against the gritty Image heroes, never materialized. In much the same way that Moore's final issues of Supreme, and the giant conflict between Daxia and the Supremacy never came about, we can probably blame the lack of Double Image on the terrible business practices of Rob Liefeld. But that's a conversation for another time, and after much more research.
This ashcan makes me want to re-read the series, though, so that might come up in the next few weeks. We'll see. The other nice thing about it was that it's an ashcan, and so took a bit less time to read on a busy morning.
See you tomorrow.
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