By 
Comic Book Guys
courtesy of lorigoldberg
This is a guest column on comics by Ian Cyr of Arlington, VA.
Are you going to go see The Avengers this weekend? Did you enjoy The Dark Knight, and are looking forward to seeing what the next Batman movie brings? Are you looking forward to the Spider-Man reboot this year, or did you prefer the earlier movies by Sam Raimi? If you even know what I’m talking about, then you might be interested in another event going on this weekend. Plus, you could get free stuff–and who doesn’t like free stuff?
This Saturday, May 5th, is Free Comic Book day. This is a yearly event put on by comic book shops all over the United States in an effort to show people what awesome stuff is happening in the realm of comics at this point in time. It’s held on the first Saturday of May, and while it obviously includes free comic books, it also often is accompanied by other events at the comic books shops, ranging from guest appearances to trivia contests to drawing lessons. Obviously, not all of these happen at every shop, but they could be happening at the comic book shop near you!
This year will see 48 different comics available for free at your local comic book shop. Now, these aren’t just free issues of comics that you’d normally need to pay for, but instead issues specifically produced for this event. This doesn’t, however, diminish the quality of these books – it just means they’re written to help those that don’t usually read comics get involved with the story, instead of dropping them into some long-running arc that they may not completely understand. In fact, one of my favorite comic book stories in the past several years was released as part of free comic book day.