The Best Present You Can Give A Kid This Year
This is a longbox full of random comics. Your local comic book store has tons of them– various stuff he’s picked up and hasn’t filed yet, or overstock that he couldn’t sell, or low grade books, what have you.
My father used to go to Port Comics, a little store off of exit 64 of the Long Island Expressway (the same store where I first met Tom Brevoort, when we were both young punk fans) and every so often he’d buy a longbox or two from Bill the owner and give them to me.
And as you’d expect from someone who now runs a site like this, I devoured them. I had no idea what I might find– DC horror books, Marvel reprints, Archie superhero titles. Didn’t care. It was all new to me, it was all neat to read, and it got me discovering wondrous stories and characters and art and more, and getting even more involved in a medium that I loved.
And right now, you can probably pick up one for around $30 and give it to a kid this holiday season. Or you can wait until he’s home sick with a bad cold this winter and give it then, when he’ll have time to read. Or drop it off at your local Toys For Tots drive, and imagine the look on the volunteer’s face who first tries to pick it up.
So go to your local comic store and ask for a longbox or two filled with random stuff. Be sure to ask for few duplicates, you don’t need 200 copies of Spawn #1. If you don’t know where your nearest comic store is, go to the Comic Shop Locator to find out. Or go to eBay and search for “comic lot” and find something in your price range.
Just be prepared to answer questions:
“Who’s this Darkhawk guy?”
“Where does the Black Widow know Daredevil from, I thought she hung around with Iron Man?”
“How does Cosmic Boy keep his uniform up?”
And hopefully you’ll get the best question of all– “Hey, when can I get some more?”
I have done this for a different holiday…Halloween.Candy lasts a few minutes at most, but you give a kid a comic book when they say “trick or treat” and most are shocked. Only once has a kid ever complained (and he was too old to be trick or treating, anyway, as far as I’m concerned). I’ve already made my Toys for Tots donation this year, but this is a great idea for next Christmas. I can’t believe I never thought of it before.
I do this every year. (“Why rot their teeth when you can rot their minds, right?”) Particularly satisfying this year when, on seeing them, one group of kids called out “They’ve got comics!” and the group instantly tripled in size.
I have done this for a different holiday…Halloween.Candy lasts a few minutes at most, but you give a kid a comic book when they say “trick or treat” and most are shocked. Only once has a kid ever complained (and he was too old to be trick or treating, anyway, as far as I’m concerned). I’ve already made my Toys for Tots donation this year, but this is a great idea for next Christmas. I can’t believe I never thought of it before.
I do this every year. (“Why rot their teeth when you can rot their minds, right?”) Particularly satisfying this year when, on seeing them, one group of kids called out “They’ve got comics!” and the group instantly tripled in size.
I have done this for a different holiday…Halloween.Candy lasts a few minutes at most, but you give a kid a comic book when they say "trick or treat" and most are shocked. Only once has a kid ever complained (and he was too old to be trick or treating, anyway, as far as I'm concerned). I've already made my Toys for Tots donation this year, but this is a great idea for next Christmas. I can't believe I never thought of it before.
I do this every year. ("Why rot their teeth when you can rot their minds, right?") Particularly satisfying this year when, on seeing them, one group of kids called out "They've got comics!" and the group instantly tripled in size.
2010 was the first time in years that I’ve been home to hand out comics on Halloween. We’re the last house on a dead-end street in a small town so we don’t have a lot of trick-or-treaters but everybody who came seemed happy with a comic instead of candy. None of what I handed out had any monetary value but there were some good stories. I try and match what I hand out based on the age and gender of the recipient.My own little boy, age 8, has five monthly titles that I buy for him–soon to be six when “Young Justice” starts. We already have his Christmas presents for this year but maybe a long box of back issues could be part of his birthday present next year.
2010 was the first time in years that I’ve been home to hand out comics on Halloween. We’re the last house on a dead-end street in a small town so we don’t have a lot of trick-or-treaters but everybody who came seemed happy with a comic instead of candy. None of what I handed out had any monetary value but there were some good stories. I try and match what I hand out based on the age and gender of the recipient.
My own little boy, age 8, has five monthly titles that I buy for him–soon to be six when “Young Justice” starts. We already have his Christmas presents for this year but maybe a long box of back issues could be part of his birthday present next year.
2010 was the first time in years that I've been home to hand out comics on Halloween. We're the last house on a dead-end street in a small town so we don't have a lot of trick-or-treaters but everybody who came seemed happy with a comic instead of candy. None of what I handed out had any monetary value but there were some good stories. I try and match what I hand out based on the age and gender of the recipient.My own little boy, age 8, has five monthly titles that I buy for him–soon to be six when "Young Justice" starts. We already have his Christmas presents for this year but maybe a long box of back issues could be part of his birthday present next year.