Rich Biedrzycki of Dreamland in Schaumburg, Illinois had a great Free Comic Book Day, but took issue with ads and subscription cards in the free comics:

Hello, I would like to be one of the first to say this year's Free Comic Book Day was one of the best we have had.  Despite all the negative comments about changing the date from May to July we had non-stop people all day long, sometimes as many as 100 or more in line to meet Spider-Man and get free comics.  Lot's of first-time customers and kids, which was what we were hoping for.  We did a lot of advertising and it paid off.  People love comics and kids, once exposed to them, seem to love them too.

That's the good, now the bad.  While looking through some of the books as we unpacked them last night, I noticed Gemstone felt the need to put a subscription card in all the Mickey Mouse Comics.  The card read 'if you can't find a comic store,' which is totally stupid as anyone having that book obviously found a comic store.  After all MY hard work and advertising dollars I spent to get these people in my store, I refuse to give them a subscription card soliciting them to buy direct from the publisher.  I took every card out of the books and in the garbage they went. 

The worst offender by far was Arcana Comics who had a great looking preview book.  We at Dreamland worked hard selling their new titles the past 6 months.  The folks at Arcana, for some reason, felt the need to place a full-page advertisement at the back of the book for an on-line comic site offering discounts to MY customers.  Well no one in my store got those books and the folks at Arcana can look forward to getting hundreds of copies of their FCBD book returned to them on Tuesday.

Why do these publishers need to try to steal the retail customers during a promotion that was started by and squarely aimed at attracting new customers into COMIC STORES?  Next year any publisher putting direct advertising in these books will have them all returned to them by us and we will refuse to pay for them.