Freedom isn't free

But comic books and HeroClix are.

Today, anyway.

If you're a nerd, a geek, a dork, or a simple fanboy/girl, River City is the place for you. While Free Comic Book Day limps haltingly in utter obscurity elsewhere in civilization, here in River City, it is a celebration on a par with Christmas or Cinco de Mayo. Celebrities pour in from all over the world to celebrate Free Comic Book Day here, mixed drinks and rich pastries are named after it, businesses close, fireworks are detonated by the ton, and parades are enacted in its observance. Cheerleaders cheer, baton twirlers twirl, public speakers speak, and a variety of C list used-to-be's get really really drunk and puke on streetcorners. Everywhere you go you see Free Comic Book Day banners, the newspapers and airwaves are chock full of notices of thousands of different Free Comic Book Day Celebrations.

I grant you, the municipality is a little confused; they spell 'Free Comic Book' in a way peculiar to the local provincial patois, which is to say, 'Kentucky Derby'. But, still, free comics and HeroClix are free comics and HeroClix, and River City has taken the geeks' holiday to its regional bosom with style and aplomb.

Having skated out to a few of the local geek shops today, I've come home with a small pile of free comics and several of the free Batman promo clix. A time may come when someone will want to trade me something for one of them, or, alternatively, I can feed one to some dog I don't like in the middle of a great big wad of raw hamburger.

Here's the haul to date --
* the Nexus' Greatest Hits sampler that Rude Dude is putting out to promote the new Nexus strip they have coming out soon. Always happy to see Nexus return, especially with Baron scripting and Rude drawing.

* Legion of Superheroes in the 31st Century, a comic obviously based on the TV cartoon, which I have yet to check out.

* a Free Comic Book Day edition of JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #0, which I doubtless don't need, but what the hell.

* a Free Comic Book Day edition of that HOW TO DRAW feature from WIZARD that attracted so much flack from the Fangirl Furies a while back, with all the cheesecake shots that so enraged the Distaff Daemonites carefully omitted.

* something I'm sure is dreadful called LIBERTY COMICS, featuring something I'm equally sure is equally dreadful called Liberty Girl. However, as SuperWife noted upon perusing the cover, Liberty Girl at the very least has very small boobs for a superheroine, meaning that they are merely bounteous, shapely, and curvalicious by the standards of normal humanity, without being obscenely gijugular and ultrabosomesque, as is more normal amongst the spandex set.

* something with a cool Alex Ross cover that appears, on first, scant flip through, to be all about Hindu deities in the far flung future doing... something, I can't be sure what, and may never be, either. From the couple of pages I've read, the art is lovely and the script pretty appalling. You may never hear another word about it from me again.

* Marvel Adventures featuring Iron Man and the Hulk. Did they have Civil War in the more kid centered Marvel Adventures universe? I don't know. I'll probably find out, though.

* The Amazing Spider-Man. Well, we'll see how that goes.

Plus, a big heap of promotional Batman HeroClix, if, by 'big heap', you mean, after I got one and all three kids each got one, there's one left over. And whether or not that's what you mean by it, well, it's what I mean by it, so, yes, a big heap, indeed.

SuperWife and I continue to mend our respiratory ailments; the SuperKids are off to their bio-dad's for a week, Deadwood Season 2 is nearly done for in our DVD player, and a shortage of funds dictates no viewing of SPIDER-MAN 3 this weekend. I may well grill some burgers tonight, or, on the other hand, just eat leftover roast beef. It's the way of things. Our lives are made of these small hours... these little wonders... these twists and turns of fate.

Indeed. Indeed.