Though there’s no new comic book-based movie out at theaters this weekend, it’s still the first Saturday in May, which means Free Comic Book Day.
The 20th Free Comic Book Day at Chimp’s Comix & Video Games, 919 E. Winona Ave., Suite 4, Warsaw, is 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Saturday, May 4. Each person that walks through the day can receive two free comics, but no duplicates.
“If you want any additionals, then we ask for a nonperishable food donation item for The Salvation Army, who will be here to pick that up,” said Chimp’s owner Nick Kelley. This is the 19th year the business has collected food items for The Salvation Army in conjunction with Free Comic Book Day.
For example, if a person brings in 10 nonperishable food items, then they will get their two free comics plus 10 for the donations for a total of 12.
Last year, about 1,700 items were collected for The Salvation Army.
There are only specific comics for free. Not all of the comics at Chimp’s are part of the free selection.
There are 48 new comics this year to choose from. Of those, Kelley highlighted “Disney’s Encanto,” “Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends,” “Star Wars” and “Star Wars Young Jedi,” “Pokemon,” “Dr. Who,” “Snoopy,” “Bloodhunt” for Marvel’s new crossover event, “Spider-Man and the Ultimate Universe,” “Marvel Voices,” “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,” “Transformers” and “Conan.”
Kelley said, “Those are probably some of the bigger highlights.”
The “Deadpool & Wolverine” movie is scheduled to be released this summer, so there is a release of the reprint of the “Spider-Man & Deadpool” issue 1 that Chimp’s is using for Free Comic Book Day.
For children, there are 19 new comics to choose from; 26 for teenagers; and three for adults.
Kelley expects the Pokemon and Spider-Man comics to go pretty quick.
There also will be a number of sales at Chimp’s on Saturday for customers to take advantage of, including 50% off normal back issues; 30 for $20 dollar bin comics; $0.50 comics will be $0.20 cents each; 10% off key back issues; 10% off wall comic books; 20% off statutes; 10% off video game accessories; a number of Magic sales and more. Items are sold on a first-come, first-served basis.
“We get a lot of people who get real excited about (Free Comic Book Day),” he said. “Of course, we see a lot of kids getting to try their first comic book that day and kind of getting some variety that way because all the movies and shows and things like that, there’s a lot of popular ones based on comics, so kids will watch those and they want to come in and watch Spider-Man. Well, Marvel doesn’t do a lot of Spider-Man comics, which is why the ‘Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends,’ being all-ages, will probably go pretty quickly.”
Free Comic Book Day is a national event held the first Saturday in May to promote reading and comic books. Kelley said it definitely gets kids to read.
“We want to get people to be reading more and enjoying that, enjoying the hobby,” he said.
While Kelley doesn’t have the time to read all the free comics himself, he said he normally gets to read five or 10 of them.
“There’s just too many comics in the world for me to read them all, especially when we’ve got over 200,000 comics or so!” he said.
Normal business hours for Chimp’s are 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Mondays and Tuesdays; 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Wednesdays through Saturdays.