It’s Almost Here… Free Comic Book Day!
Yes indeed. This Saturday is the greatly anticipated annual Free Comic Book Day. The first Saturday in May your local comic book shop (most, anyway) give away free comics as part of this great promotion. The idea is to get people into the store to see that comics are still a great source of storytelling entertainment, and hopefully pick up a few new readers along the way.
This year’s slate of free comics looks terrific, including familiar faces and some new and unique title ideas. I see the reboot of The Green Hornet from Kevin Smith is one of the lot… I wonder if this is the first appearance of the Green Hornet in comics since the days when NOW Comics had the licensing rights to the character.
Anyway, get down to your local comic book shop this Saturday and bring a couple of kids with you… if you can get them to put down the xBox/PS 3 remote long enough that is… and show them some great graphic storytelling.
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Yeah, then we can tell the kid that comics, in fact, are NOT free and actually cost upwards of $4.00 a piece. Or, to look at it another way, ten comics would equal the price of a new video game, yet only supply a fraction of the entertainment time.
Leaving all of us thirty and forty-something “regulars” to return to the store the next week….minus the mythic “new readers” we keep hearing about every Free Comic Book Day season.
But hey….I’ll still be getting my Free Comics in my monthly comics shipment…probably a month from now!
Sigh…. yes. Things cost more money today than they used to. A gallon of milk is now $3.50 and a paperback book is often over $10 and the average price of a new car is $29,000, etc. etc. etc.
If comics still sold in the millions of copies range they’d probably be half the price, but sadly that’s not the case.
Tom, you are the best. I am thirteen, brazillian, and I like so much your caricatures. Oh, before I forget, if in a far away day you have no ideas for caricatures… Don’t forget George Harrison. Thanks!
“A gallon of milk is now $3.50…”
Where are YOU shopping? 😉
Wal-Mart!
Crap! I just saw Kevin Smith live tonight in Fargo! I should’ve brought the new Green Hornet #3 for him to sign! Ah well.
I’m looking forward to the annual cornucopia of free comics this Saturday as well!
Don’t despair man. While Mark’s right that you won’t see youth congregating in comic shops, I don’t know of a great many youth that pick up comics do so with concerns as to how they’ll feed, cloth, and house themselves. We’ve got generations coming of age that don’t care how they get what they want, just that they can get it with the negative points to be worried about later. More likely than not, you’ll see comic readership pick up. Unfortunately, I will agree that it will not be through comic shop purchases, but digital downloads, both the free and low cost kind. Which makes me curious as to how the comic creators kept at it back when comics only cost less than a quarter.