02 May, 2009

It's a Holiday! Where's Toaster?

As the higher-ranking nerds among you may know, today is a Very Special Holiday in The Nerdness. For the rest of you more sensible people, it should be clarified that today, May 2nd, is Free Comic Book Day.

Free Comic Book Day began in 2002 as an effort by all the major North American comic book publishers to introduce comics to new markets, promote new titles that we otherwise wouldn't hear about*, and thank the die-hard comic book readers. It falls on the first Saturday of May after the release of a major film adaptation of a comic book (this year's being the Wolverine** X-Men movie) to ride with the heavy film marketing. It is currently being celebrated at Toaster's awesome local comic book shop (they're by the robot part supply store downtown), and Toaster is not there.

Why not?

Because upon every occasion that I go to the comic book store I wind up spending more money than I should. And even though today is Free Comic Book Day, that doesn't mean that every comic is free or reduced in price. I'd wind up walking in, being disappointed with the free comics (usually 8-page promos from Marvel, DC, Dark Horse, and IDW; not much of substance or maybe I've always gotten there too late), picking up my subscriptions (Hoxford and Wormwood: Gentleman Corpse [below]), and then wind up buying TPBs and HCs trying in vain to complete the Hellboy, Fell: Feral City, and Neil Gaiman's Sandman series as well as resisting the urge to begin collecting The Walking Dead, Y: The Last Man, or Frank Miller stuff.



This would not be conducive to paying other things, such as rent. And high-ranking nerds, lest ye deem me of lesser street cred because of my non-attendance, let it be noted that without paying rent Toaster would have no shelter and therefore all of the comics and video games he has collected would ruin out in the rain. Also, dearest Amazon, could you please possibly hurry up and ship me the copy of Zombies vs. Robots vs. Amazons that I bought back in February? Zombies vs. Robots is looking kind of lonely.

*Contrary to what one might expect, Battlepope is actually a well-established title.
**On this note: if any of you lived in the X-Men universe (any of them), which character would you want to be? You may not choose a Skrull.

2 comments:

Eppendork said...

Neil Gaiman's Sandman = Respect - he is a legend.

sarcozona said...

So don't kick me out, but I've never actually read an X-men comic book. Or any comic book actually. But I did really really love the cartoons when I was kid. I wanted to be Gambit, mostly because I was in love with Rogue. However, I gave up on my dreams of attracting her when I could not learn to throw cards well.