A GEEK DADDY: FREE COMIC BOOK DAY

A trip to our local comic book shop on the first Saturday in May has become a family tradition for me and my kids. It's FREE COMIC BOOK DAY!!! This event is a great way for parents to spend a morning bonding together with their children over super heroes and science fiction. My kids love perusing through the selections and picking out a few favorites to bring home with them. Normally I find some that catch my interest to bring home for myself as well. Then we spend a couple of hours reading through and chatting about everything we brought home with us.

This year FREE COMIC BOOK DAY will be on Saturday, May 5, 2018. It has become a hugely popular annual event hosted by comic book retailers and publishers to entice new customers to visit brick-and-mortar stores and reward existing ones for their continued patronage. Selections being handed out for free range from specially printed one-shot stories published just for this event to reprints of previously published work that promote a particular character or series. There normally is something for everyone with comics meant for young readers as well as those aimed for more mature audiences.

This year there are 50 comic books that can be selected from at participating locations. Note that each comic shop has its own rules for the event so in some circumstances you may only be allowed to take one or two books and in others it is first come, first serve and people can take one of each of them. CLICK HERE to find a participating location near you.

After looking through the list of available comic books on the event website, my son and daughter are hoping they'll be able to pick out these titles for sure on FREE COMIC BOOK DAY: Miraculous Adventures, Pokémon, Star Wars Adventures, and Howard Lovecraft' Big Book of Summer Fun. Comic books are first come, first serve and based upon what quantities each participating comic book shop ordered for the day so you never know for sure what you'll actually be able to pick up; but that adds to the excitement of the day as well as you search through what is in stock.

As usual there are a few books I'd like to pick up for myself to read as well during this year's FREE COMIC BOOK DAY. They include Image Comics' Barrier, Relay, Silver and The Tick.