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Health & Fitness

Unleash Your Inner Nerd

Free Comic Book Day is Saturday, May 7.

Comic book stores weren’t around when I was a kid. I would get my fill of superhero antics by accompanying my mother to the grocery store and then sitting cross-legged in the aisle by the spinner rack maniacally, voraciously trying to follow as many story-lines as I could while avoiding being flattened by shopping carts. 

  I built my early comic book collection slowly. My grandmother would bribe me into going to church with her by taking me to the tobacconist/news vender to pick up a couple issues every Sunday. (On a side note: Who in the early 1980‘s knew that newspapers and tobacconists were both endangered species?)

   As I got older I still enjoyed reading comics, but it became a furtive hobby, something to hide from my friends, like an appreciation for musical theatre or an alcoholic father.

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   Comics just were just not perceived as cool, and I turned away from them. At the same time, due to new distribution deals and less mainstream popularity, comic books began to disappear from the shelves of supermarkets, drug stores, and corner stores. At the grocery checkout counter today you might find an Archie Digest sandwiched between the America’s Fattest Celebrity and Naughty Tricks to Drive Your Man Wild magazines, but surely you won’t find the racks of old, brimming with stories.

   So, now we have the comic book store: dens of depravity, filled with mouth-breathing, basement-dwelling, socially awkward men. 

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   Well, yeah, sometimes, but mostly, not really.

    It turns out that a group of us nerds who were into comics as kids grew up, and even though we might be able to have long, long conversations about who is stronger, Superman or Hulk, we actually got kind of, dare I say, cool. How different is it to memorize the stats of the 1989 Mariners compared to memorizing the looping chronology of Spider Man?

    For the most part, comic book stores are clean, well lighted businesses. And what do businesses need? Customers.

   On Saturday, May 7, there is a national event taking place called Free Comic Book Day. Your local comic book store (Castro Valley has a great one: Crush Comics) will be giving away comics. If you haven’t picked up a comic in a while, or you want to pique your child's interest, it’s a great time to come out. Maybe reacquaint yourself with some old friends in chain mail and Lycra. Maybe just find something new and interesting. Maybe you just need a desperate last-minute Mother’s Day gift.

   Unleash your inner nerd. Buy a few books, pick up some free books, reignite an old hobby, or start a new one.

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