Free Comic Book Day 2020 Canceled Due To COVID-19 Coronavirus Concerns

Coronavirus outbreak is causing a lot of fan conventions to be postponed indefinitely or even get canceled. Biggies such as Anime Boston 2020 and Anime Japan 2020 have already been canceled. 

Every year, on the first Saturday of May, Free Comic Book Day is held where each person who visits a participating shop gets a free comic book. Though it looks like Corona has taken it too far this time as it’s about to take away your free comic from you this year.

Diamond Comic Distributors announced on Thursday that this year’s Free Comic Book Day (FCBD) event had been postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“With restaurants and other businesses closing and many areas implementing event restrictions, we know that Free Comic Book Day will be impacted to varying degrees throughout the world. With the books already printed and en route, we have worked with our publisher partners to give retailers as much flexibility as possible in their handling of this event.

“To minimize the impact on our primary distribution operations, prioritizing the distribution of weekly new comics and restocks, several FCBD titles will be included with each regular weekly shipment for the next several weeks. These titles will be invoiced at no charge, as we extend the billing out approximately 90 days, to the first week in August. The books may not be in separate boxes from the rest of the shipment, except when full cases are shipping.

With a longer period to utilize the books before being invoiced, retailers will be free to use the books in whatever manner suits their individual marketing needs, beginning May 2, 2020. We anticipate stores needing to be creative in how they hold events, perhaps having to distribute the books in new ways or to smaller groups of customers than the single big day you typically experience. To that end, we will be referring to the event as ‘Free Comic Book MAY’ and retailers can use their online Comic Shop Locator Service / FCBD profiles to update customers on their plans.”

~ Steve Geppi, the founder of Diamond Comic Distributors

Each year, Free Comic Book Day serves as an annual promotional event which offers 47 selected titles available for free to people attending the event at participating local comic shops across the globe.

Free Comic Book Day 2020 is supposed to include titles such as Naruto, Samurai 8: The Tale of Hachimaru, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, Splatoon Squid Kids Comedy Show, The Fox, and the Little Tanuki, and Sue and Tai-chan manga.

About Free Comic Book Day:

Free Comic Book Day is an annual promotional effort by the North American comic book industry to expose new readers to comic book stores. It is a yearly event that occurs on the first Saturday of May, and it first started back in 2002.