I’ll be honest – while I’m glad that Free Comic Book Day exists, and I’m always happy that lots of people show up at my local shop, I, personally, have a pretty spotty attendance record.

I’m fairly certain that the last time I went out for Free Comic Book Day was whenever it was that DJ Khaled said that he was a selfish jerk who doesn’t head south of the border. I remember that because I saw a lot of jokes about it as I was scrolling through Twitter while waiting in a very long line to get into the shop. (A quick search tells me that was 2018.)

In any case, I did go today, as there were a couple of things I wanted to grab. It turns out there were more than a couple, and the shop’s policy of only five books per customer led me to have to actually make some difficult choices.

I got there earlier than I did the last time, so while I was in line, I wasn’t as far from the entrance as I’ve been at other times.

While we waited for the shop to officially open, they held a raffle.

I ended up winning the final prize.

I also got a bookmark.

Once inside the store, I was given the sticker that can be seen in the featured image for this post.

For the main event, as I said, I had to make some difficult choices.

I’d shown up for the Conan and Red Sonja comics, so I grabbed those right away. The remaining choices were the difficult ones, mostly because I would have liked to have grabbed the 0 issue of DC’s summer event and the Marvel Voices comic, but ultimately, I had to go with the Frazetta book, the comic about Stan, and, of course, Lois.

Who can say no to Lois?

Well, I mean, I will when the actual graphic novel comes out, as I tend to not pick up the YA books, but because it was free, I went with it.

Conan the Barbarian, Red Sonja, Frazetta, I Am Stan: A Graphic Biography of the Legendary Stan Lee, and Girl Taking Over: A Lois Lane Story

Update: If you missed out on getting a copy of Conan the Barbarian, you can download a PDF here, or get it for Kindle here.

Of course, I didn’t plan to limit myself to freebies, even though I just picked up my books for the week on Wednesday, so I took a look around the store and was immediately greeted with something that I’ve been meaning to get into for a while, which was just put on display today.

Paper Girls: The Complete Story

So it was a pretty good haul all around, and a positive experience for my first Free Comic Book Day since we learned that DJ Khaled is a selfish prick.

Who knows, maybe you could have a good Free Comic Book Day, too. There’s only one way to find out. The odds are you’ll at least have a better time than DJ Khaled’s partners do.


Born and raised in the sparsely populated Upper Peninsula of Michigan, Jon Maki developed an enduring love for comics at an early age.


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