Taking a Dump: Free Comic Book Day Style
Last Saturday (May 6, 2017) was national Free Comic Book Day! With that in mind, I’m gonna dump my reflections and pictures on it here, hence the title!
First of all, Free Comic Book Day is exactly as glorious as it sounds: It’s literally a day where you and all your broskis (“broskis” is a gender neutral term according to me just now) can go out to participating bookstores, comic book shops, and libraries in order to obtain completely free comic books and do other cool comic related things! That’s pretty fucking amazing for a number of reasons if you ask me:
- If you’ve always wanted to get into comics but didn’t know where to start and/or you were financially limited? Bam. You can start your collection and journey into comic book madness completely free of charge.
- If you just really love comics and always have? Bang. It’s a no brainer. Add to your colorful paperback armada.
- If you just really like to hoard free shit? Ba-zing! Here’s your chance to indulge.
- Cosplayer? Boom! Many of the places hosting Free Comic Book Day events welcome and even encourage cosplay! Some even hold costume contests (and if you’re anything like me, you may have a mild addiction to contests)
I’ve actively celebrated Free Comic Day for the last 4 years, and this year has been my favorite so far because I actually made it point to get free comics (in previous years, I mostly just went out to cosplay with friends and ended up either forgetting to grab the precious printed goodies, or just randomly grabbing without thinking and ended up disappointed) and because I was in super great company with my daughter and my friend Maria. All three of us cosplayed and attended two different events in our city.
Fun fact: I didn’t think of who to cosplay until 10am that morning 😅 I finally settled on Harley Quinn, but as I was applying my facepaint, I realized how flat it looked. Cue the random cel-shading details! Turned out pretty well considering it was super last minute! My munchkin and I were two different versions of Harley Quinn, while Maria cosplayed a super cute Kiki from Kiki’s Delivery Service.
At one of our local libraries, we made it just in time…for me to be lowkey upset that they were no longer accepting costume contest entries! Look, I have a problem, ok? An addiction. I see a contest, I wanna enter it. When I can’t, I have withdrawals (ಠ_ಠ) Lucky for us, there were other activities there to distract me from this pain. These activities included facepainting, free arts and crafts, artists selling cool prints, and a photo area complete with accessories for anyone who wanted to unleash their inner model. We made some blinged out superhero masks and then had our fill of selfies and other photos:
Once we’d had enough of being world class supermodels, we headed over to a really cool comic shop that I’m really fucking angry at myself for not having visited sooner: Superhero Beach. The staff was super friendly, and they made it really quick and easy to obtain free comics. Rather than rummage through bins or having a chaotic Free for all, they had a numbered display of each of the free comics available, with a limit to three comics per person. You just had to write down the number of the comic you wanted, tell the guy at the register, and he’d go grab your comics for you! Simple and clean. (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧ My choices were Street Fighter V, Lady Mechanika, and Vampirella. The reasoning behind these decisions were as follows:
- I’ve always wanted to get into Vampirella but didn’t know where to start.
- I like the Street Fighter games and characters, so why not give the comic a try?
- Lady Mechanika looks super cool and cosplayable.
All I all, it was a cool day. Stay tuned for reviews of the free comics I got; I’ll be writing one blog post for each of them soon ^_^
As always, thanks for reading, and if you liked it, share it! You can also subscribe to my blog and check me out in these places on the interwebs. You also free drop me a tip so that I can continue to make more cosplay and content!
~DeLa Doll 💖
DeLa Doll is a culture writer, cosplayer, and artist based in Florida. She has been writing professionally since 2016, with some of her work being featured on sites like HuffPo and /Film. She is an advocate for meaningful diversity and representation in media, a gamer, a mom, and an avid user of DIY hair dye.
