Susan Hillwig
Staff
I'm not crazy, my mother had me tested.
Posts: 1,612
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Post by Susan Hillwig on Oct 7, 2010 1:11:49 GMT -5
This is our first Halloween in our new house, after years in various aprtments, so we finally get to give out treats. Well, aside from the bags of Hershey bars and Snickers we bought, we decided to be "the cool house" and give out comics, both new and old. I'ts a fairly broad selection (Ultimate X-Men/Spidey, West Coast Avengers, Star Wars, Batman, a couple of old Marvel Star Treks, and some misc. stuff), and though I pre-screened them so we don't accidentally slip something offensive into Junior's bag, I'm thinking that we'll not give any to the 10-and-under set, just in case. Hence the candy bars.
Anyone else ever do this? Or perhaps trick-or-treated at a house that did it? I've heard some of the comics pros do it, but then they get comped books by the boatload.
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Post by Matt Erkhart on Oct 7, 2010 14:49:47 GMT -5
A couple years ago they offered a 10-pack of ashcans through Diamond... Pretty sure it was a mix of several publishers, mostly Marvel (Ultimate Spidey, FF, X-Men) and DC (Action, Batman, Teen Titans) of course, but a few Dark Horse books as well (Star Wars, I think?). Anyway, they started selling them at my local comic shop around the beginning of October for something like $4 for the pack of 10. It's a bit pricey to do for ALL your Trick-or-Treaters, but it's relatively cheap and already made for the kids.
You could check at your local shop and see if they have something similar this year!
Aaaand to answer your original question? We handed them out to the younger kids mostly, and Star Wars and Spider-Man in particular were BIG hits! X-men and Action were big as well. Batman was KING, wanted by all... We ran out of Bats before anything else.
All in all, giving out comics? HUGE WIN. We had kids coming back asking for more books, chocolate be DAMNED. It was epic. Gotta start'em off right, y'know?
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Susan Hillwig
Staff
I'm not crazy, my mother had me tested.
Posts: 1,612
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Post by Susan Hillwig on Oct 8, 2010 12:09:15 GMT -5
Our shop's been doing a similar packaging stunt, but they're bundles of a single title (20-30 random issues) to help them reduce their back-issue stock. Bought a Gotham Central bundle, but I don't remember how much it was...8 bucks, maybe? Virtually the entire run, minus a dozen issues. Not bad!
The books we're giving out, however, came into our hands in a different manner. My husband works at Salvation Army, and a few weeks ago, somebody dropped off a box of comics, roughly 150 inside. Now, their branch of the SA doesn't normally sell these things -- they ship 'em to another location where they get sorted through and anything really valuable gets marked up for sale -- so my husband asked to flip through them beforehand. It was all quarter-box stuff, even the newer titles, but there were some good-but-cheap reads in there, so he asked the boss if he could just buy the whole box. After some minor haggling, he got it for 5 bucks. A week later, they got another box of comics, about the same amount (and some of the same issues as well!), so he doled out another 5 bucks.
For weeks, we had books spread out all over the kitchen table as we sorted and shuffled the two stacks together. Going by the majority of the contents, we think these are the leavings of two failed speculators: we nabbed a good chunk of Walt Simonson Thor, New/Mighty Avengers, lots of Civil War tie-ins, Infinite Crisis, GL Rebirth, lots of random #1 books, and enough Ultimate X-Men/Spider-Man issues to choke a horse. We kept a good portion of it (them kids ain't gettin' Thor!) and the rest we were just going to take to a show and see what we could get in trade (figuring $30-40 for the bulk), but then I got the idea of giving some out on Halloween. So we went through them AGAIN and pulled out the kid-friendly titles.
I expected some kids might come back for more, and if they do, I hope we haven't run out beforehand. If it gets really crazy, maybe I'll run upstairs and grab some old trade paperbacks we've got! ;D
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