Comic Book Day

What the day is

Comic Book Day is observed on September 25. It celebrates comics as a format and as a habit: the monthly issue, the long-running series, the shop visit, and the stack that accumulates beside a bed.

It is separate from Free Comic Book Day, the retail event held in May, when shops give away specially printed issues. This date is the quieter one, with no industry machinery behind it.

Origin and background

The origin of the observance is not documented, and no founder or sponsoring organization is reliably known.

The format's history is clear enough. American comic books began in the 1930s as cheap reprints of newspaper strips, with Famous Funnies in 1934 usually cited as the first of the modern kind. The business changed permanently in 1938, when Superman appeared in Action Comics and demonstrated that original characters could carry a title. A crowded golden age followed, then a sharp contraction in the 1950s under public pressure over content, which produced the industry's self-imposed Comics Code and decades of cautious storytelling.

The medium reopened in the 1980s. Direct-market shops let publishers sell to committed readers rather than newsstands, and a run of ambitious books established that comics could carry adult work. Manga's growth in the same period made the form global rather than American, and today translated Japanese and European comics outsell much of the domestic superhero line in bookstores.

How to take part

• Visit a comic shop rather than ordering online. Shop staff are unusually good at recommending, and the browsing is most of the pleasure.
• Start with a complete story if you are new. A self-contained graphic novel avoids the decades of continuity that make superhero series hard to enter.
• Read outside your usual lane: manga, European albums, memoir, or newspaper strip collections.
• Pass one on. Comics circulate well, and lending a book you like is how most readers were made.
• Check your library. Graphic novel sections have grown substantially and borrowing costs nothing.

If you have old issues in a closet, store them flat, away from sunlight, in acid-free bags. Most are worth little, but the paper is fragile regardless.