Failing on World Free Comic Book Day

A post shared by David Pearson (@allmec) on

Saturday was, as the title suggests, free comic book day. We failed at this fairly spectacularly. The ten year old had been made aware of it by some other agency than me, so had his usual unrealistic expectations. No, you’re not going to be able to get the shops entire stock of Spider-Man comics for free, what there will be is a limited number of a few specific titles.

As it turned out, when we made it to the comic shop just after lunch, there were no comics at all. As we mooched around, several small boys came in and approached the chap behind the counter who had to tell all of them that the free comics ran out a couple of hours previously. I imagine the people queuing for the shop to open got the majority of them; free isn’t really free if you have to invest the time to queue, and we had plans first thing.

That’s okay, I said, have a look round and pick a comic and I will buy it for you. 45 minutes later, he couldn’t decide, so we left, planning to go to the toy shop and then Bricktraders, our local independent LEGO shop.

We left Bricktraders in a state of upset as they had a couple of Death Stars (£475 a pop) and I wouldn’t buy one, despite it being the best thing in the history of things.

We then got sidetracked into a trip to Waterstone’s to look at the comics there. Immediately there was an obvious price step; I’d been encouraging him to look at single issue comics in the £3 range at the comic store, in Waterstones we were looking at compendiums at £11 upwards. Of course the boy being the boy, the first one he spotted was a Cable & Deadpool compendium at $125. Waterstones usually do a $1/£1 translation rate so I felt it my civic duty to point out to him I had actually offered him my original 90s Deadpool & Cable comics a while back but they hadn’t been so alluring when they didn’t cost over £100…

We ended up with two to choose from, both £10.99 (I’d be taking a hit but put in to the perspective of the $125 book or the £475 Death Star, I’d still be quids in) but he couldn’t choose, and actually chose to have neither, saying “Whichever one I pick, I’ll be sad I didn’t get the other as soon as I get home.” Welcome to buyers remorse kid and I don’t think he was even angling for me to get both of them (usually he’s not this subtle, he’ll just demand both).

SHARE: