Hey, Kids! Comics! Witnessing Free Comic Book Day

Despite being inveterate comic books geeks here at Crisis On Infinite Midlives, I don’t think we’ve ever actually gone to a comic book store on Free Comic Book Day. We missed the first one, on May 4, 2002, because we had spent the night before driving around Boston looking for a theater that was showing Sam Raimi’s first Spider-Man movie that wasn’t sold out before finally catching a late show in Cambridge and then closing out our local bar, drinking and babbling excitedly at how Raimi really captured the visual style of the character. The only way were were gonna make it to a comic store the day after that would be if they were also selling the chick drinks I would have needed to stop the screeching pain in my head without making me throw up.

Besides, there wasn’t a hell of a lot on that first Free Comic Book Day to bring me into the store. There was a reprint of Ultimate Spider-Man #1, a reprint of an issue of Greg Rucka’s Queen And Country, a copy of Justice League Adventures and a couple of other books… but I already had most of those comics. Let’s face reality: Free Comic Book Day hasn’t, historically, been an event for people like me. The point of the event has always been to use the publicity surrounding the release of whatever superhero flick that, by 2002, was inevitably gonna come out in May, to draw new readers into the art form that inspired those movies. And that art form had made me its bitch 27 years before some poor Hollywood costumer had to puzzle out how to hide Tobey Maguire’s junk in those spandex pants.

Further, and this is not meant as a slam, but my local comic store, where they know me by name and ask me to remember that attempts to leave the store with freebies will be followed with pepper spray, is not known for holding any kind of event. I love the place, which has a huge selection of new books and back issues as well as a ton of pop culture paraphernalia, but in the 13 years I have been a regular customer there, there has never been a creator signing. Or a reading. Or a panel discussion. Or a gaming night. There was one sale, once, but that was when a lost lease led to a move down the block, and the owner didn’t feel like hauling all his shit to the new address. And even though I remind him that that sale led to my finally buying the entire original First Comics run of American Flagg! and my Glenn Fabry-inspired John Constantine statue, I doubt there will be a recurrence any time soon.

So I’ve never seen much point in heading to the comic store on Free Comic Book Day, since it happens on a Saturday (and I’d always had that week’s new comics on Wednesday) and I didn’t anticipate much of anything going on there. But today, Amanda and I were out for lunch at a new restaurant down the street from the comic store, so we decided to swing in to see what was happening and maybe grab one of two of the free books, and…

Holy shit.

Since Amanda and I normally go to the store after getting out of our day jobs on Wednesday evenings, there is a group of guys we always see there. And it is just a group of a few guys, all with something in common: we are all middle-aged white guys with white collar jobs (with the exception of Amanda, who actually matches that same description minus the wang) who have been reading comics since the 70s. Sure, the odd stoner or tweaker comes in looking for the barber shop (you know, the one where a lot of young men go, but where very few get their hair cut, if you get my drift), and we all stay a little longer until they leave in case he’s packing something in hopes of scoring from the geek store to pay for his “haircut,” but generally, we’re it.

We’ve become a pretty tight-knit group, as these things go. A few of us met up at last year’s Boston Comic Con, and we saw a lot of people, frankly, like us: middle-aged guys, some of whom brought their kids.

So it is easy for me to think that we are comic readers these days: long-timers who will never stop, and, in a world of digital video and Internet, who may never be replaced by new readers. Which is why it never struck me as abnormal that our local store never ran events; why bother, when the customer base is set and loyal, if not hooked through the bag and back again? I took it as a given that kids will learn about Spider-Man from the movies, get their continuing fix from TV cartoons, and comics will remain the purview of those of us who remember spinner racks.

So I wasn’t expecting anything different when I went into the store today (which is why I have no photos; I didn’t think to bring a camera)… and the fucking place was packed. Sure, the owner was there, and Amanda and me and one of the other regulars (who has been a regular so long he was helping the owner out behind the counter), but, well, we were the only old farts in view.

There were a ton of adolescents and college-aged students. Some kids at junior high age who needed to be told, somewhat forcefully, that only the books on the front shelf were actually free. And a bunch of kids with their parents, picking over the Bongo Comics and the Rocket Raccoon free comic. And when those kids went to the counter to “cash out?” The owner, who holds no events and, to my knowledge, has never done any wild-assed event to drum up publicity? He asked the kids their name, talked about the books they had chosen, and gave them a Free Comic Book Day balloon.

I was gobsmacked. I’ve been buying comics from direct market stores since about 1988, which was about the time the last spinner rack I was aware of – one in the local supermarket I worked at in high school, which is why most of my comics before then have UPC codes instead of the direct market Spider-Man head or DC bullet you found in comic stores. And during that time, I’ve see a lot of people who looked just like me. From teenaged years to young adulthood to old fart, the customers in those stores have aged out just like me.

And while I love comic stores, I have often maintained that the direct market, which concentrates comics in destination locations and keeps them out of the wild where casual readers and kids might find them, might eventually be the end of the medium. Sure, one always hopes that a big comic movie might bring in new readers, but I sure as hell never see them.

But I saw them today. And sure, I probably won’t see any of them again soon; after all, you can get any dingbat to show up someplace for something free, but it takes a lot more to get them to come back and lay their dollars down a week later. But they were there today. And sure, most of those kids might read the books and like them just enough to ask Dad to put Justice League Unlimited and Ultimate Spider-Man on the DVR… but a few of them are gonna ask their parents to bring them back next week for some more comics from the friendly guy who gave them a balloon and talked about superheroes. Which is why I left quickly, since I am a ready-made reason for a decent parent to say, “Hell no. Did you see some of the unholy, degenerate freaks hanging out in there?”

I never thought a lot about Free Comic Books Day, because it didn’t really offer a lot to a reader like me. But that’s the point; I don’t need to be convinced to walk into a comic store – hell, we picked the location of the Home Office in no small part because it was close to the comic store. But it turns out that it really is bringing kids into the comic store. And it was exciting to see.

And not just because for once, they weren’t kids I needed to worry about robbing the place for meth.