Tuesday, 23 October 2012

Spreading The Love: Giving Away Comics Is Awesome. part 1.

This past summer, the time had finally come for something I never thought I'd do. I sold some of my comics. Not a lot really, less than I wanted to, but we had a garage sale and a big section of it was some of my comics.
I noticed a kid looking through my random $1 box, he'd look at them, then go see what his parents were doing, then come back, then find them again, back and forth a few times. I knew he was really interested. I assume his parents were teaching some lesson about the importance and value of money because they really needed to be worn down in order to finally give this kid a dollar. As he looked through the box, judging each comic only by the covers, I could see myself digging through boxes when I was younger, no idea what I wanted until I saw it. I knew what needed to be done.
"Special sale right now, 4 for a dollar." When they all pulled away in their van, his mom said out the window that I made his day. That felt great but what felt even better was the fact that he had made my day too.
With my daughter now old enough to have a birthday party to go to at least once a month (or more, it feels like), my wife and I have unintentionally fallen into the habit of putting in a comic book with whatever else is being given as a gift. I don't know when it started, but it's been pretty consistent, an issue of Superman Family, old Tiny Titans back issues, the Green Lantern kid's series, boy or girl, everyone gets something.
So when I saw that you could get mini-comics just to give away at Halloween, I ordered big. After enjoying spreading comics through birthday presents and garage sales, I was really psyched to see what handing them out for Halloween felt like.
Sold in bundles of 20, I found a friend I could talk into splitting an order with me and for $15 each we got ten copies of six different books, hopefully something for everyone.
 

I also love the idea of handing out Basil Wolverton to the kids in my neighborhood.
 
 
No idea what the reaction will be, we'll have to save that for part 2.