Free Comic Book day is tomorrow, May 6th!!!!

This e-mail, sent to me by an old high school friend, has all of the details. And now you know what kind of people I hung around in high school.


It is I, your Geek Ambassador, and I come before you today with a
message from My People:

Free Comic Book Day is this Saturday, May 6.

Go into a comic book store on Saturday, and they'll hand you some ...
(wait for it) .... free comic books.

See how that works, there? The elegant simplicity?

Last year, in the interest of public safety, I provided a list of
phrases you Normals could deftly employ to pass yourself off as Geeks
during your visit. (We are a Proud but Skittish People, chary of
outsiders; we startle easily.)

Examples (note: these will actually work):

"Is this Elseworlds or Hypertime?"
"This series used to be canon, but then they totally retconned the
earlier reboot, so now it's out of continuity altogether."
" Liefeld."
" The New Guardians."
For that matter: ""
etc.

It was a phrasebook of sorts, your own passport to Geekistan, a kind of
"Let's Go: My Mom's Basement."

This year, though, I hope to make you understand that Free Comic Book
Day is more than an opportunity for you to go down to the strip mall and
play Margaret Mead in Geek Samoa. Instead, in its own halting,
emotionally stunted way, Free Comic Book Day is a rare example of
something that My People are historically loath to engage in: outreach.

Consider: once a year we poke our (sallow, blotchy) faces out of our
(dank, Hot Pocket-strewn) caves to stand blinking in the sunlight of the
upper world. We comb our hair, put on a freshly-laundered(!) Boba Fett
t-shirt, toss out the Mountain Dew empties, promise ourselves we'll keep
the hectoring discussions of the relative merits of Blue Beetles (past
v. present) to under twenty minutes, run a quick Swiffer around the
place, and invite the Normals to stop by.

It's really quite a fragile, beautiful thing, if you stop and think
about it. It's like the end of a Lifetime movie, with the slow tinkly
piano music and Judith Light standing up to look out the hospital window
with a wise, reflective smile.

Or, wait, better -- we're Rain Man, see, and you, all of you Normals,
you're all Tom Cruise's freakishly enormous melon head.

No, follow me, I'm going somewhere with this.

Once a year, we Geeks sort of tip our wizened Rain Man head forward,
ever so slightly, so our forehead rests lightly against your gargantuan
Tom Cruise fivehead.

Reaching out, see. Fleeting, yes, wildly out of character, yes, but all
the more precious for it.

You don't want to miss that, do you?

What to expect:
It's likely that there'll be a bunch of super-hero titles in your free
batch of comics, sure, and you may be one of those people who don't tend
to warm up to stories about mesomorphs who wear their underwear outside
their pantyhose. I get that. But, hey: free.

And, sure, there's usually a bunch of worthless movie/tv tie-ins in the
mix as well -- this year, for example, there's a Star Wars/Conan title
(two separate books bound together, not a crossover, unfortunately --
'cause how awesome would THAT be? Shyeah!) Again: free.

But there'll also be books for kids, and books for depressive, emo,
"nobody understands me" types, not to mention books about troubled
romantic relationships, books about ninjas, books about spies, books
about vampires, books about robots, books about vampiric spies in
troubled romantic relationships with robot ninjas. And all of it, free.

Where to go:
If you're in DC, you should hit Big Monkey Comics in Georgetown -- on
Wisconsin Ave. just south of P St. It's open 10 am to 9 pm this
Saturday. They're good people. Good, geeky people. Buy something from
them.

If you go to the Monkey on Saturday with someone who already has a
subscription at the store (say, me), you get the Sidekick Discount -- 5
percent off. If you go to the Monkey and you're under 12 years old,
it's 10 percent off.

If you're not in DC, and you don't know where your nearest comic book
store is, go to: http://csls.diamondcomics.com/ and enter your ZIP
code. Most stores will have something going on on Saturday. (I saw one
flyer for a comic book store that breathlessly touted its big Free Comic
Book Day plans with two bullet points:

"We'll have:
* Raffles!
*Snacks!"

And that was it, the whole flyer. Which pretty much proves my point
above, re: when introverts outreach, it can be kind of an adorably sad
thing.)

Now, I can't promise you that someone won't accost you and demand that
you name your favorite member of the Legion of Super-Heroes. Normally we
try to be on our best behavior on this day, but, you know, it happens.

(Safest answers: Saturn Girl, Lightning Lad, Cosmic Boy. AP answer: Ask
if members of the Legion of Substitute Heroes count, then say
Chlorophyll Kid. Gay answer: Cosmic Boy in his 70's costume, which was
basically just a bustier, some speedos, and cocktail gloves. Emo answer
(only to be attempted by the bold): Triplicate Girl's third triplet,
the one that was killed by Computo, which forced her to change her name
to Duo Damsel.))

I have about 1000 old comics in my closet somewhere...haven't looked at em in years. I'll go down to the old comics store just for the memories alone!

I hope they've heard of free comics day where I used to go...

You can put in your zip code, and it will get you a list of local comic book stores.