Dungeon Crawler Carl (Free Comic Book Day 2026)

There is so much craziness around this comic right now and I just don't get it. Let's review this specific comic before we get into a larger discussion about it.

The story seems like someone decided to slap together "A Cat on a Hero's Lap" and "Solo Leveling". Right now there are so many different battle system comics/manga out there that it feels over done and unoriginal. The art work was nice and on par with "Solo Leveling." I would be willing to check it out from a library, but probably wouldn't spend money on it due to the lack of originality. I know everything has a niche somewhere and this may be someone's niche.

So, before this Free Comic Book Day I had never heard of this before. I'm deeply entrenched in the geek community and I was totally clueless that this even existed. On Saturday I had remembered one guy saying that he would need to grab 2 copies of it, one for him and one for his kids. I really didn't think much of it since I wasn't familiar with the series. Yesterday morning, Sunday, when I woke up I was scrolling through my news feed and saw an article where this comic was being resold online for over $100. I thought that was totally crazy for what was supposed to be a free comic. Later in the day Mommy Geek had wanted to go to Hall of Justice Comics in Parker since she had missed Free Comic Book Day so we decided to stop by while running errands.

When we got there the staff told use where the leftover free comics were, but that this specific comic was $10 due to its popularity. Giant red lights started popping off in my brain. I have a huge issue with comic stores that charge for free comic books since it defeats the purpose of the campaign, and unless they say the money goes to charity those stores should be boycotted since they are taking advantage of the community they are supposed to be serving. On my way out I decided to ask what the deal was about this comic.

The person I talked to said it was a webzine that was gaining in popularity and that a lot of people had been grabbing copies to just sell them. If they would have stopped there I would have bought that excuse. But no, they then started to complain about people bad mouthing the store on social media and how they didn't care about what those people are saying because they mostly from elsewhere and would never shop there any way. The problem is that the local community can see how you treat people or talk down to them not to mention possible online sales. Also people do travel. I know that I stop by geeky stores and comic stores when I travel. We're a global economy now and this store doesn't realize this. Image means a lot today, and the way the worker I was talking to talked down about people shows how little the store cares about shoppers.

As a local geek that has supported Hall of Justice Comics for years and have posted videos of them to help draw them up business, I can no longer support them and would recommend to others not to support them. Like the video I recorded for them for Free Comic Book Day this year is just getting deleted.

To Hall of Justice, I'm a local geek that you have now lost business and social media support from due to your actions around this comic book and how your staff talk about people in the larger geeky community.

I would also call on the Colorado geeky community to boycott this location until they change their ways and get new staff if the staff opinions do not match that of the owners, but the owners need to step in ASAP to try and correct this...if they care.

#freecomicbookday #freecomicbookday2026 #dungeoncrawlercarl