The Gaming Den

I just bought 180 comic books from the discount bin at the local comic book store. I'm going to give them out to the kids at Hallowe'en instead of candy.

Last year I was divesting the remnants of my "miscellaneous" box of comics, so I don't know how many exactly I gave out, but I do know I ran out near the end of the night and I'd rather that not happen again.

I like giving comics out. Healthier than candy, lasts longer, gets kids reading. This year, I've even been paying attention to demographics. I splurged on the 1990s - all those number ones, shiny foil and hologram covers, polybagged with trading cards and stuff are perfect for kids and cheap as hell - but I wanted to get a chunk of all-ages stuff for the young readers, Archie and Bongo and Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network titles, and I wanted to get comics with strong female protagonists for the girls. Fuck Barbie, this year I'm handing out Wonder Woman overstock, classic Spider-Woman, Amethyst Princess of Gemworld, and Sojourn.

And the thing is...the thing I really like about this...these are good comics. They're not in shitty condition, they're not expensive or rare, they're all mint or near mint. Some of them aren't even old; at least a third of these books were printed in the last year, they just didn't sell. Hell, some of these are things I would read, or did read back in the day.

The owner was good about it when he heard what I was doing, gave me a discount on top of the discount box price. So I was paying 15-16 cents per comic instead of 30 cents an issue. Better than some bags of candy.

I had to be careful in picking stuff out. No nudity, no bad language, not too much blood or horror or gore. Which makes buying some modern overstock hard, but there's s still lots of stuff out there. I could easily have filled up my Hallowe'en quota with overstock Secret Invasion and Fear Itself nonsense.

So I'll put my jack-o'-lantern out there and see how many kids I get. There were a goodly number last year, and they seemed to like it. Asked for Batman and Captain America, and I tried to accommodate them. This year is leaning more towards Star Wars and Spider-Man, Jack Kirby and Courtney Crummin.

I suspect they'll like it.

This is a damned fine idea.

Awesome idea, if kids came by my house, I'd totally do this.

This is a great idea! My mom doesn't like to pass out candy, either. Since most of the kids that go to her house, though, can't read, she passes out those stupid party blower things. For some reason, kids really like those.

That is a fantastic idea, and I may steal it or something close to it.

I saw, possibly on nifty or on failblog (win section) a cool idea that I would love to implement someday- basically, a free library for neighborhoods. A big birdhouse-looking box by the road that opens up to reveal a library of books. I'd love to put one out in front of my house full of kids books and a few older/adult books that are not inappropriate for younger audiences. (Things like LoTR and the like).

Another thing I would love to do is have a projector and screen, and on warm weekend evenings, play a movie in the front yard for the neighborhood kids to enjoy.

But, first things first, halloween. I don't know that I have a comic book avenue, but I do have a lot of kids books in a range of reading levels....

That's a cool idea. If kids came to my house trick-or-treating, I'd just fire my nerf gun at them, shouting "THIS IS NOT AMERICA!" But were I in America, I'd probably do something like that, yeah.

Koumei wrote:That's a cool idea. If kids came to my house trick-or-treating, I'd just fire my nerf gun at them, shouting "THIS IS NOT AMERICA!" But were I in America, I'd probably do something like that, yeah.

It could be some Irish kids, as they're the reason America even has the holiday.

I think you'll find that we are a BRITISH colony, we don't hold with such things!

I just buy whole candy bars to give out. The comic idea is pretty rad though.

For the record I'm okay with Slutty Cosplay Halloween Parties (though when in Melbourne they tended to be folded into the "bigger" issue of "Get people pumped for NaNo!", and I'd go to that despite not really caring about NaNoWriMo).

It's just sending children around to ask strangers for sweets that I take issue with. Partly the "this is not America" thing, and partly because we're supposed to be teaching them to avoid paedophiles.

We have one of those book birdhouses in our neighborhood- I'm just a block away from the "Community Experiment" as it is called- big beautiful mural/mandala painted in the intersection, different things on each corner- tea stand, kids' playhouse, bulleting board, etc. Lots of cob structures. But anyway, the book exchange cupboard thing was great for the first couple of years it was there- always interesting things, occasionally a weird CD or DVD. I can't tell you how many boxes of books I've put in the thing, but for a while it's been perpetually empty. (I don't count the shitty magazines people stack in there). It's like the book scouts consider it a target of interest or something.

Trick or treat last for three hours.

We started the night with 180 comics, 56 fruit snacks, and about 15 miscellaneous toys, chinese fortune cookies, etc.

We ended the night with 61 comics, 4 fruit snacks, and 4 miscellaneous whatsits.

Which is not bad. Some kids double-dipped us, I think, but we gave out all of the strong-female-leading character comics to the girls so that I was handing out issues of Star Wars Classic to the princesses and teenagers with painted-on cats whiskers near the end of the night.

Which is not bad. Last year we didn't have nearly as much and ran out early. I'm actually rather pleased at how things tuned out.

I wish you lived where I lived, then I could get free comics instead of cavities, stomach aches, sugar highs, and regret.

We only had our next door neighbors come to our house to trick or treat (and then I and my boys joined them to go around hittin the rest of the neighborhood). So I guess it's just as well that I didn't have time to troll the comic stores around here. This is the first Halloween in a while where I haven't been able to request off like a 4-5 day lead up to Halloween allowing me to do things like carve awesome pumpkins, get fun costumes and decorate.

So this year's pumpkins I kinda just mailed it in and my wife did the superior carving work, and she actually had to touch up my carving for me since I didn't have time to finish it.

Ancient History wrote: Which is not bad. Some kids double-dipped us, I think, but we gave out all of the strong-female-leading character comics to the girls so that I was handing out issues of Star Wars Classic to the princesses and teenagers with painted-on cats whiskers near the end of the night.

Did you have them sorted before hand, or did you have to dig around to look for stuff as people were at the door?

Pre-sorted into All Ages, Strong-Female-Lead, and Boys/Teens

That's very cool. A local store here in Indy was selling longboxes for pennies on the dollar under a "Rot Their Brains, Not Their Teeth" Halloween comic reading push.