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This e-mail, sent to me by an old high school friend, has all of the details. And now you know what kind of people I hung around in high school. It is I, your Geek Ambassador, and I come before you today with a message from My People: Free Comic Book Day is this Saturday, May 6. Go into a comic book store on Saturday, and they'll hand you some ... (wait for it) .... free comic books. See how that works, there? The elegant simplicity? Last year, in the interest of public safety, I provided a list of phrases you Normals could deftly employ to pass yourself off as Geeks during your visit. (We are a Proud but Skittish People, chary of outsiders; we startle easily.) Examples (note: these will actually work): "Is this Elseworlds or Hypertime?" "This series used to be canon, but then they totally retconned the earlier reboot, so now it's out of continuity altogether." " Liefeld." " The New Guardians." For that matter: "" etc.
It was a phrasebook of sorts, your own passport to Geekistan, a kind of "Let's Go: My Mom's Basement."
This year, though, I hope to make you understand that Free Comic Book Day is more than an opportunity for you to go down to the strip mall and play Margaret Mead in Geek Samoa. Instead, in its own halting, emotionally stunted way, Free Comic Book Day is a rare example of something that My People are historically loath to engage in: outreach.
Consider: once a year we poke our (sallow, blotchy) faces out of our (dank, Hot Pocket-strewn) caves to stand blinking in the sunlight of the upper world. We comb our hair, put on a freshly-laundered(!) Boba Fett t-shirt, toss out the Mountain Dew empties, promise ourselves we'll keep the hectoring discussions of the relative merits of Blue Beetles (past v. present) to under twenty minutes, run a quick Swiffer around the place, and invite the Normals to stop by.
It's really quite a fragile, beautiful thing, if you stop and think about it. It's like the end of a Lifetime movie, with the slow tinkly piano music and Judith Light standing up to look out the hospital window with a wise, reflective smile.
Or, wait, better -- we're Rain Man, see, and you, all of you Normals, you're all Tom Cruise's freakishly enormous melon head.
No, follow me, I'm going somewhere with this.
Once a year, we Geeks sort of tip our wizened Rain Man head forward, ever so slightly, so our forehead rests lightly against your gargantuan Tom Cruise fivehead.
Reaching out, see. Fleeting, yes, wildly out of character, yes, but all the more precious for it.
You don't want to miss that, do you?
What to expect: It's likely that there'll be a bunch of super-hero titles in your free batch of comics, sure, and you may be one of those people who don't tend to warm up to stories about mesomorphs who wear their underwear outside their pantyhose. I get that. But, hey: free.
And, sure, there's usually a bunch of worthless movie/tv tie-ins in the mix as well -- this year, for example, there's a Star Wars/Conan title (two separate books bound together, not a crossover, unfortunately -- 'cause how awesome would THAT be? Shyeah!) Again: free.
But there'll also be books for kids, and books for depressive, emo, "nobody understands me" types, not to mention books about troubled romantic relationships, books about ninjas, books about spies, books about vampires, books about robots, books about vampiric spies in troubled romantic relationships with robot ninjas. And all of it, free.
Where to go: If you're in DC, you should hit Big Monkey Comics in Georgetown -- on Wisconsin Ave. just south of P St. It's open 10 am to 9 pm this Saturday. They're good people. Good, geeky people. Buy something from them.
If you go to the Monkey on Saturday with someone who already has a subscription at the store (say, me), you get the Sidekick Discount -- 5 percent off. If you go to the Monkey and you're under 12 years old, it's 10 percent off.
If you're not in DC, and you don't know where your nearest comic book store is, go to: http://csls.diamondcomics.com/ and enter your ZIP code. Most stores will have something going on on Saturday. (I saw one flyer for a comic book store that breathlessly touted its big Free Comic Book Day plans with two bullet points:
"We'll have: * Raffles! *Snacks!"
And that was it, the whole flyer. Which pretty much proves my point above, re: when introverts outreach, it can be kind of an adorably sad thing.)
Now, I can't promise you that someone won't accost you and demand that you name your favorite member of the Legion of Super-Heroes. Normally we try to be on our best behavior on this day, but, you know, it happens.
(Safest answers: Saturn Girl, Lightning Lad, Cosmic Boy. AP answer: Ask if members of the Legion of Substitute Heroes count, then say Chlorophyll Kid. Gay answer: Cosmic Boy in his 70's costume, which was basically just a bustier, some speedos, and cocktail gloves. Emo answer (only to be attempted by the bold): Triplicate Girl's third triplet, the one that was killed by Computo, which forced her to change her name to Duo Damsel.))
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