Classic EBI #9: Free Comic Book Day 2: The Recap by taic ()

And to accompany the previous post, here's my recap of FCBD2, originally presented on May 7, 2003:

Free Comic Book Day: The Recap

Well, having absolutely no numbers and no verification and nothing to back myself up other than my own two eyes and my eternal optimism, I’m going to declare Free Comic Book Day 2 an outstanding success that has resulted in everyone in America except Barbara Streisand taking out a subscription to Leave It To Chance.

That said, Free Comic Book Day was, at the very least, a lot of fun for me, and it showed me exactly what I wanted to see -- lots of extra people in my local comic book store, including people of the younger variety, which I am on record as saying is the sort we need the most.

So if you’ll indulge me, I’d like to dedicate this week’s column to some of the highlights of my day -- be warned, though, I will also include rampant discussion of a small independent motion picture entitled X2: X-Men United, so if you haven’t seen it yet and don’t want to know how it ends, skip the stuff after the last bullet-point and then send me money. Or just do the part with the money.

• Upon arriving at the local comic store with my non-comic-reading buddy Jason, we ran into another friend of ours, Renée, who was flipping through the free books and coming down off the high he got watching X2 the night before. He tells me he didn’t get the ending until someone else explained it to him, at which point he felt like a total dope. Since I haven’t seen the movie yet, he writes down a note and tells me to read it afterward I see it, although he figures I’ll get it anyway.

• The rest of our comic-reading friends arrive -- Mike, Chase and Chase’s fiancé, Jenny. It’s Chase’s birthday this week, so I present him with the Challenge of the Superfriends DVD. He nearly weeps.

• I notice an awful lot of parents here with their kids in BSI Comics today. I’m feeling good about this. My good feelings are given a temporary coronary when I see that a girl of approximately 8 years old is selecting an issue of Barry Ween, Boy Genius: Money Tales as one of her free comics. I am an extreme fan of this series, which I hope Judd Winick will return to after the current Green Lantern/Green Arrow fiasco is over, but I also know that if any normal American mother sees her young daughter reading this title, she’ll forbid comic books from coming into the house until the daughter is old enough to have boys forbidden from coming into the house instead.

I try to figure out how to approach the subject delicately, perhaps by suggesting she take the Carl Barks issue of Donald Duck Adventures, but I can’t think of any way to do it without making the kid more adamant about ol’ Barry. Fortunately Scott, the store manager, proves why he’s in charge of running and marketing a comic book store while I’m just shooting my smart mouth off in this column once a week.

“You know, the books on this side of the table are more for grown-ups and teenagers,” he said. “You probably won’t be interested in them. It’s pretty boring. Why don’t you take a look at some of the stuff we’ve got over here?”

Success! By not explaining that the book was full of curse words and overtly suggestive situations, which is actually the problem, Scott has averted disaster. The child leaves with Donald Duck and Archie and Friends.

• The mother of the child who has recently averted disaster is imploring one of her other kids to make up her mind. She laughs. “She’s always like this,” she tells me. “Do I want this one or do I want that one?”

“I used to be like that,” I said. “Then I got a job. Now I just get them both and say very nice things to the credit card people.”

• As we’re purchasing our weekly comics, Chase and I get into an argument about the X-Men titles. I say I haven’t been following X-Treme. He says I should since that’s the second best X-Men book these days. I say that isn’t difficult since Uncanny is a misogynistic mess these days that I would have dropped already if Ron Garney hadn’t at least saved it, art-wise, and that I will drop it with issue 425 if it hasn’t improved, a prospect I hold in severe doubt.

Mike, whose basic stance in every argument is to go against majority opinion just to generate conflict, like a character in a CrossGen comic, doesn’t know which side to take in this balanced fight. I implore Jenny, as a woman, to be offended by Chuck Austen’s writing, but she’s too busy being amused at the argument to offer an opinion. This is a typical day at the comic shop for my group. The argument finally concludes with Chase and I agreeing that New X-Men, at least, rules, and Mike, satisfied that there is finally a consensus to disagree with, saying it sucks.

• We go to see X2. The four of us who read comic books feel our eyeballs drip out of their sockets in sheer delight. The ending, of course, is plain to us, and we all know with extreme certainty what X3 will be about. I fish Renée’s note out of my pocket and hand it to Jason, the comic book agnostic in the group. Using my best Karnac impression (the Johnny Carson character, not the Inhumans character), I predict that upon the piece of paper he will find the words, “Dark Phoenix.”

“Yeah,” Jason said. “And he spelled ‘Phoenix’ wrong.”

The four comic readers then stick around through the credits trying to figure out how on Earth Renée could have needed that explained to him, except for Mike, who rushes off to make use of the facilities. The rest of us immediately make a pact to tell Mike there was something really cool that he missed at the end of the credits, settling on an image of the blazing Phoenix-Force rising out of the water. Mike probably believes us, but it’s so hard to tell with him...

So you see, my friends, this is what comic books in general, and Free Comic Book Day in particular, can mean to people. A chance to get together. A chance to exchange ideas. A chance to prevent a prepubescent child from accidentally reading a comic book full of remarks about dinosaur genitalia and language that Tony Soprano may find excessive. A chance to lie to your friends just to make them feel bad about having to execute necessary bodily functions.

That’s what comics are all about. As least, it is for us.

Blake M. Petit is the author of a novel, Other People’s Heroes, a stage play, The 3-D Radio Show, and tons of stuff at EvertimeRealms.com. E-mail him at Blake@comixtreme.com.

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