![]() In the days that followed, I did actually manage to scatter more than a few comics at no less than four Starbucks coffee shops, all within a mere miles of one another. Why couldn’t every day be Free Comic Book Day? I guess I believed that the world could love comics the way I loved comics they just needed to be exposed to them. It was basically a “free sample” model that 2008 me thought would serve to both lighten my comic book load and at the same time exponentially increase comics fandom. The idea was that people would pick up a free comic, be so enthralled by what they read and then seek out more of these beloved books. coffee shops, Laundromats, fast food restaurants, etc. Nevertheless, here’s what I was thinking at the time: I would simply place random comics in a series locations where people congregate i.e. I don’t know why I was so compelled, to be perfectly honest, but I was on a mission of sorts, crazy as it was. This definitely falls into the category of confusing retrospection. I have a theory and it goes something like this: You can look back at almost any moment in your life and the question “What was I thinking?” will almost always be appropriate. Thus began a process, a scheme if you will, to scatter my comics around the greater Los Angeles area like some sort of comic book Johnny Appleseed. I wanted my castoff comics in the hands of non-fans who I imagined would read them and in effect become new comic fans. But as I was looking at the stacks of soon-to-be-discarded books, I realized that I wanted to find a way to get them in the hands of people who wouldn’t otherwise read them. Do you donate them? That’s always an option. Be nice if they were worth something on EBay, but that’s just not the case. But the question of what to do with “unwanted” books is always there. I find myself looking at my collection and can’t help but see issues that I know I’ll never read again. Every so often I get the urge to purge, to lighten the comic collection load. It was some time around 2008 and I was going through one of those phases where I was feeling compelled to get rid of some of my comics. That email message of newly found comic book appreciation from my pal also reminded me of an episode some years back, a moment in my life that can best be described as my own peculiar and perhaps misguided effort to turn on complete strangers to the wonders of comics. And many people judge comics without ever having read one in the first place. So many people judge comics for what they think they are as opposed to what they really are. There’s something special about that moment when you realize that someone who wasn’t previously a fan is now one. Every Christmas I enjoy the task of finding just the right graphic novel or comic to give to the people on my list who I see as fans who just don’t know it yet. This exchange reminded me how much I like exposing people to comics, especially those people who never thought they’d be reading comics in the first place. I’d never pushed comics on the guy, but I like to think I had a little something to do with his openness to the medium, if only because I’d always been so outspoken about my own adoration of comics. Simply put, he wanted me to know that he now “got it” and was now seeking out the next series of books in which to completely immerse himself. ![]() ![]() He was of course well aware of my love of comics and apparently he wanted to share with me this the fact that he had partaken of the art form in all its glory. Now this wouldn’t be such a big event, but the friend in question wasn’t nor had he ever been a big comic book fan. He told me that the story had “hit him in the bones.” A comic book had affected him that much. I recently received an email message from a good friend that indicated he had just powered his way through the entire run of Y: The Last Man over the course of a weekend.
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