{"id":386,"date":"2015-05-01T01:43:41","date_gmt":"2015-05-01T06:43:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thinkulum.net\/blog\/?p=386"},"modified":"2015-05-01T02:21:08","modified_gmt":"2015-05-01T07:21:08","slug":"this-saturday-is-free-comic-book-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thinkulum.net\/blog\/2015\/05\/01\/this-saturday-is-free-comic-book-day\/","title":{"rendered":"This Saturday is Free Comic Book Day"},"content":{"rendered":"

Around the beginning of March I innocently clicked on a related YouTube video and discovered a friendly little channel (okay, it has almost 111,000 subscribers) that reignited a recurring interest of mine–in a big way. The channel was NerdSync<\/a>, and the interest, as you may have wildly guessed from the post title, was comics.<\/p>\n

I’ll save my history with comics for another time. I’ll just say that this time around I’m trying to get a little more involved in the community side of comics. Things like finding other fans to talk with, listening to comics podcasts, and supporting local comics stores, if I can convince myself to spend money. I might even go to a convention. You can see some of my developments in my recent tweets<\/a>.<\/p>\n

So even though the term “free comics day” had floated by me in previous years, I didn’t pay any attention until this year when NerdSync brought it back into view. The host, Scott Niswander, spent this week’s podcast episode<\/a> interviewing the founder of Free Comic Book Day, Joe Field. It’s an interesting interview that covers the history and purpose of the day and the benefits of comics in general.<\/p>\n

One point they made that I hadn’t thought about is that reading comics is a very active process that uses both sides of your brain. I thought back to my comic reading experiences and noticed that the activity of interpreting the text and images by each other and stringing the panels into a coherent narrative really is work sometimes. But it’s fun work. If you’re interested in the dynamics of comics as an art form and medium of communication, Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics<\/i><\/a> is a good place to start.<\/p>\n

Back on the topic of the post, Free Comic Book Day is an industry-wide promotional event that takes place each year on the first Saturday in May. It sometimes coincides with the release of a comic book movie. This year it’s Avengers: Age of Ultron<\/i><\/a>. Basically you can walk into any participating comics store and pick up some of a selection of free comics. Some stores have other events going on the same day. Half Price Books<\/a> is also participating, though I’m not sure if their free comics selection will be the same as in a regular comics store (also at HPB you have to buy something to get a free comic).<\/p>\n

The FCBD website<\/a> gives more details, including a list of the official free comics<\/a> with descriptions and some previews, a search engine<\/a> for finding participating stores near you, and a set of brief articles<\/a> that survey the comics industry for people who are new to it.<\/p>\n

Now don’t tell Joe Field I said this, but if you aren’t ready to brave an actual comics store, there are other ways to read comics for free. If you aren’t even sure comics is a medium that would interest you, by far the easiest way to check it out is by reading some webcomics<\/a>. You can also sign up at comiXology<\/a> and read some of their free comics<\/a>. ComiXology sells digital versions of print comics by the major publishers. And the next time you’re at your local public library, take a look at their graphic novel section. If it’s anything like the libraries near me, it’ll offer an interesting variety of genres that will give you a good idea of what’s out there.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Around the beginning of March I innocently clicked on a related YouTube video and discovered a friendly little channel (okay, it has almost 111,000 subscribers) that reignited a recurring interest of mine–in a big way. The channel was NerdSync, and … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[90,58],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-386","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comics","category-life_updates"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thinkulum.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thinkulum.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thinkulum.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thinkulum.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thinkulum.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=386"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/www.thinkulum.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":393,"href":"https:\/\/www.thinkulum.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386\/revisions\/393"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thinkulum.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=386"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thinkulum.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=386"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thinkulum.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=386"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}