Last year I found out after the fact that September 25 was National Comic Book Day. When I looked at my calendar the other day, I saw that I had added a reminder of this auspicious (suspicious?) day for this year. It’s an odd day because it doesn’t seem to have any official standing as a national holiday, and, according to a few blog posts that I read while researching this, also doesn’t have any industry (or fan) support.
Regardless, I say that we should take advantage. Sure, we have Free Comic Book Day, but while settle for one day purporting to celebrate this thing that we love when we can have two? So, how can we celebrate National Comic Book Day? The obvious answer is read some comic books, but you do that every week (day?) already, right? Perhaps we can go to the local comic book shop and buy more comics, even though we did that yesterday. Even better: buy some comics for someone else, especially if it’s someone who doesn’t know the majesty and absurdity, not to mention the pure fun and joy, that comics can bring to her or him.
For example, comic books got me through the difficult years as a preteen when my parents divorced and we moved to the desert of Washington state, miles from just about anything. I had no friends, and the kids at school thought I was “special” because I had to have the paperback versions of the textbooks having enrolled in the school late in the semester. But you know what? If not for that hellhole, I sometimes wonder if I would have been drawn so completely and wonderfully into comic books as I was that fateful fall. Thirty-seven years later, I have never stopped reading nor loving this medium I call life, aka comic books.
Longbox Review 