So today was free comic day, an international event where you can get your hands on… well free comics.
This is my first free comic day and I had underestimated the sheer pull of something for free. Having had a lazy Saturday morning filled with nice coffee, Saturday Kitchen and tasty pastries I ambled out to town at about 1:30pm. With my nearest Forbidden planet mere minutes walk away my wife and I strolled leisurely to nerd central only to be faced with a packed store full of kids, stressed out parents and those hard core comic geeks you find browsing the obscure Japanese aisle. Having wrestled through the queue my heart sank as the stressed out checkout guy pointed to the very empty free comic shelf. I say empty, in fact there was one solitary Archie comic that nobody but Peter Griffin would touch.. even for free! Apparently everything went by 9:45am. Note to self – comic book fans get up very early!
Luckily their rival store The Travelling Man was just round the corner and thankfully they had plenty of gems left for the taking. I basically grabbed what I could. The store awash with a different crowd consisting mainly of teenagers this time, some in badly made cos play gear being loud and young in and around the entrance. So here’s what I got:
Four titles I’d never heard of but I’m more than willing to give them a go. I suppose that’s the point. I was never going to get the very popular Superman comic I saw advertised without denying myself a precious lie in so I’ve now got something brand new to appease my recently restored fascination for comics.
My relationship with comics is a strange one. When I was young, a comic was the Beano or Whizzer and Chips. Sure I’d heard of proper comics but at that age preferred the diluted full on action of their movie and cartoon counterparts. I was around 10 when I first got my hands on a proper graphic novel, and even then it was by accident. By 1990 Turtle fever had gripped the planet and there were several book versions of the popular kids cartoon doing the rounds. For my birthday one year I had asked for one of these and instead was bought the Eastman and Laird original. My eyes were opened instantly and I found a comic world very different from the tame cartoon I had spent several years idolising. From then on I started to look at other adaptations and a few years down the line got into the Aliens Vs Predator graphic novels. In my early teens I fell in love with these fantastic extensions to the classic films I had cheekily been allowed to watch.
I think it was gaming that got in the way back then with the SNES dominating my entertainment needs along with a swelling VHS horror collection. Mario is a powerful mistress and my thumbs were too busy in training for the next generation of consoles to be bothered with page turning. The next graphic novel I picked up was not till I was 18 and that was partly due to gaming. I had developed an addiction to naughty game emulation, catching up on classic titles that weren’t available to me in the SNES and NES heyday. One of these was The Death of Superman. It was loosely based on the graphic novel of the same name and I instantly took a morbid interest. To me Superman was always the invincible Christopher Reeve battling Gene Hackman and this was obviously a massive event I couldn’t miss. I rushed out and bought the Death and Return of Superman trilogy and re-immersed myself into the old familiar world of page turning. Although I was confused by the huge roster of characters it was a compelling story consisting of an epic battle to the aforementioned death and a look at how the world coped without Superman. Of course he comes back in the end but none the less I was hooked. The only problem this time was cost. Having shelled out nearly 60 quid on three books and struggling with my meagre dole payments it just wasn’t possible to dig further. So that’s where it ended.. again.
It’s only recently, after years of catching up on the excellent Warner Brothers Justice League cartoon adaptations and revisiting the old 90’s X-Men cartoons that the comic book store has drawn me back. The final push came from a comic riddled work colleague who introduced me to Watchmen about a year before the film was released. I received the mighty tome for my 1st wedding anniversary from my wife and it awakened that long dormant comic gene. From there the whole world of DC opened up and with the help of the modern wonder that is Wikipedia I found myself on the ultimate path that is DC’s massive Crisis story arc, an arc that started all the way back in 1985 with DC cleaning house with it’s continuity and one revisited many years later to again restore a bit of balance to things that had gone astray. My latest jaunt into the world of comics is all now lubricated by a comfortable income and time to read.
My collection is now growing (the Crisis is expensive and long!) and I’ve learnt more about the characters of DC in six months than I have in 30 years yet my experience of going into comic shops is still an odd one. Now bear in mind I HAVE NO SHAME. I’m that one who quite happily shouts at queue jumper at Tesco or pesters the guardians of Dixons for a discount but I fall to pieces in comic shops. I don’t know if it’s the Simpsons fault that I think all comic book guys are silently judging my browsing (“oh my god he’s not just looking at Batman is he?”) or if it’s my own insecurity bred from not scrubbing up on my comic history in my teens but I just can’t cope. I walk in having researched what I want to buy, pick it silently from the shelf, pay for it without catching middle aged Comic Book Guy’s eye and swiftly leave. All the time the only word going through my head is ‘NOOB’. But I’ll get over it. I’m in it to see what I’ve missed and have picked up some true treasures like the Hellraiser collected works along the way.
So that’s why I’m glad for Free Comic Book day. The kids in the stores today were reading things they’d never normally read. Geeks and non-geeks (and those of us in-between) got together for some free goodies and that awkwardness I usually feel was surprisingly absent. I’m slowly getting there and I by no means consider myself a comic expert, going straight to the big ol’ paperbacks rather than the weekly comics but as I approach 30 it’s been a fantastic way of rekindling that wonder I felt as a 10 year old Turtles fan.
Now to discover who the frig this Doctor Solar guy is…
