The Tease of Things I Don't Need

Free Comic Book Day

A mostly sunny, pleasant Saturday this year, for once they landed Free Comic Book Day on a weekend that wasn’t also premiering a major motion picture derived from a comic book. I don’t know how calculated that was this time, though I recall speculating that they may have wanted to give it more open space to be mentioned in local papers on Friday. It seemed that most papers in the previous three years didn’t mention FCBD, and I couldn’t have been the only one to wonder if each paper’s editor decided that the large articles for a Spider-Man or X-Men movie was quite enough comic book chatter for their paper for one edition.

So, I set out at mid-morning with an itinerary. There are many comics shops in fairly easy driving distance, but I decided to stick mostly to the familiar. I’d checked the opening times for each of the stores and mentally decided on the route.

Since malls open earlier, I went to the nearby Plymouth Meeting Mall first, to a shop that until recently was called Legends: The Comic Stop but which is now apparently a branch of Comics and More.

I thought it was still Legends, and knew they weren’t listed as a participant - moreover, I knew that last year they hadn’t participated either – but the mall was on my way to the PA Turnpike, the store was open an hour ahead of any of the stores I was headed for, so I checked it. As it turned out, the shop was participating.

Not wanting to just grab some free stuff and run, I took a quick look around. DC’s building up to a huge event they’re hyperbolically calling Infinite Crisis, and while I hadn’t ordered any of the four miniseries that will be leading up to it I’d subsequently gotten interested in them. Spotting one of them, the first issue of Villains United, I picked that up. That left me with two others I’d be looking for, which gave me items to look for at later stops.

They’d renovated the store, ditching the almost claustrophobic feel it had had as a Legends location, opening it up and bringing the illumination way up. Much improved. It’s not a large space, but this made it look larger than it had ever seemed. Not much was happening so far, and the young guy who was manning the counter looked as if he had a terrible headache or was dealing with a lousy blast of allergies. As it turned out it was his new contact lenses working over his eyeballs.

I asked him how they were working the free comics (each store takes a different approach) and at first he said to take one, but almost immediately said I could take two. At first I stuck to one, hoping to make my second freebie the Batman clix I’d talked about before, but he said they hadn’t gotten any. Much like their missing out on being officially listed as a participant in FCBD, they hadn’t gotten any of the promotional clix. So, I dipped back over and picked up a second comic. I picked up the Flight comic from Image and the Roninhood of the 47 Samurai comic from Beckett Comics, deciding that it was in the best spirit of the event to choose two items I was the least familiar with. As far as I know, this location wasn’t having any special sale to commemorate the event and help draw in people.

Onto and down the Turnpike towards the area I spent the largest chunk of my life in, I went to the only comics shop on my short list that opened at 11 on Saturday: Bagged & Boarded.

This was a spot I had vaguely been aware existed because they used to advertise through the AMC theatre at the nearby Neshaminy Mall. It had come more to my attention when my lab assistant, Mike T., mentioned it was his new comics shop after a recent move.

Another open, bright comics store, it was nicely appointed with glass shelves and cases towards the front with an array of genre statues, busts, maquettes, etc. Plenty of space to move around, a solid, well-kept stock, and a gaming area in the back with 3D structures. They’re a venue for Heroclix games, and on Saturdays have free demonstration games for anyone interested.

Mike (we are legion, you know), the owner, had actually opened the store about 20 minutes early. By a little after 11 he was anxiously awaiting his cashier. Keeping in upbeat, good spirits, he pressed on and tended to anyone, regular or newcomer, with aplomb. He didn’t say anything about a limit on free comics, but knowing I had two more stores to go to and seeing as how he did have the Batman clix, I limited myself to two comics (the Star Wars one from Dark Horse and Impact University from Impact/ F+W Publications) a Batman clix - which Mike had intelligently enough placed on display back in the gaming area on the map table – and a special FCBD Lego robot. (His was the only store where I saw any of those, btw.)

Noticing that, unlike most other places, Bagged and Boarded had a shelf full of Legacy boosters, I decided to make two of those my purchase at Mike’s store. (I opened them out in the van, btw, and pulled an Ultraman unique out of one of them, so it wasn’t a complete waste. I’m edging towards another eBay sale soon anyway, and that’ll be another to add to the mix.)

Bagged and Boarded was running an event-day sale, but had decided to make it a VIP Cardholder-only event, presumably to get people interested in signing up for that.

In hindsight I should have stuck around and gotten a better feel for the place, including seeing how rapidly titles went from open wall displays to bagged, boarded and presumably marked up cost (what usually happens in comics shops) in the upright file rows in the center of the store. It wasn’t for lack of time, as here it was not much after 11 and the final two stops wouldn’t open until noon. I ended up driving around the Levittown and Fairless Hills area for a while, looking over places still entirely too familiar, save for spots that have undergone recent changes.

Perhaps a minute past noon I rolled into the parking lot of the strip of stores where Wade’s Comic Madness, where Wade greeted me by name while rushing around to keep the flow of customers moving.

Wade’s been plugging away at this for years, and has a well-stocked shop to show for it. Generally speaking, if you’re looking for it he has it. If it’s come out in the past 6 months, perhaps even more, you’ll likely still find a copy of it on the shelves for cover price.

Moving around in it is fairly easy, but having seen how much comics stock and related items were worked into the previous two shops I can’t help but think that a renovation might be a good idea down the line. None of that is a complaint – and I certainly know that running a retail operation like this is no fountain of cash – it's just an observation after having seen the way some other newer shops have been laid out.

I picked up another of the DC miniseries kick-off issues, Day of Vengeance #1, along with a couple Teen Titans issues I’d need to bridge the gap between the second trade paperback and where I started ordering monthly issues. Also, I went for the 6th issue of Marvel Team-Up, a Captain America and the Black Widow pairing, to see if it was an improvement over the 5-issue opening arc that I hadn’t cared for; a friend had cited Kirkman’s work on this series as one of the recent bright spots at Marvel and I wanted to give a newer issue a try.

I asked about whether or not Wade had any copies of The OMAC Project, the last of the first issues of those DC miniseries I’d missed, but he was down to few copies of that first printing and it was marked up to $10 (something Wade generally doesn’t do, but these had sold out solidly for reasons I’ll try to remember to get into in a separate post – this one is too large as it is) so I opted to wait until the May 18th release of a second printing at the normal price.

Doing the event up right, Wade had a big, open to all sale going on, and the place was hopping. It had only been open a few minutes and people were milling around everywhere. When I checked out he had bags of FCBD comics ready to go. Fifteen FCBD comics, it looked to be pretty much all the ones listed on the event’s site. Not shabby.

I also picked up another of the promotional, purple-ringed Batman clix there. Sure, I had one already, but not only had I driven all that way but there was a good chance that at least one friend who had been sucked into a Mother’s Day weekend trek, and would miss the day, wouldn’t be able to get one later in the weekend. I wanted to be sure I had at least one extra.

Leaving Wade to his busy day, I moved off to my final FCBD stop of the day, Steve’s Comic Relief.

Founded by Steve Gursky, this store is the longest-established comic book store in my old area, Levittown, PA. Steve started his store up originally as a booth in a mart that doesn’t exist anymore, before opening back in the 80’s the location I visited today. In the course of looking to see if they had a website I came across this critical blog entry to which Steve himself responded in the comments. Until reading this I didn’t know that Steve had sold off his ownership in the 9-store chain “quite a few years” ago. I’m presuming he’s maintained a direct financial interest in the stores, though, not only because of what he says in his response but because he was at the Levittown location, making some changes at the store while several comics creators were holding a signing at tables out front. Steve saw me and asked how I was doing, and even invited me to create a display if I wanted to, which was what he was doing at the moment. I laughed and passed on the offer.

I found another issue of Teen Titans I was missing, along with what I suspect is the most recent issue of Marvel Team-Up (#7, with a Spider-man/Moonknight pairing) and decided to pick up a couple hundred comics storage bags. While I didn’t notice a sign indicating a sale, there must have been one going on because the total came up several dollars less than I’d roughly estimated.

Perhaps worried that they would run out of the freebies too quickly, they limited the number of FCBD comics to three – which was reasonable enough. I picked up another Ronanhood copy, along with an Uncle Scrooge and a Flare Adventures, which I didn’t know if I’d picked up along the way. Any extras I’d end up with will be passed along to someone who couldn’t get out to a participating comics shop.

And... that's quite enough of that for now.