Today is Free Comic Book Day - Support your local comics store!

Just a fortnight after Record Store Day - we have Free Comic Book Day to cheer us up - it takes place on the first Saturday in May (today!).

Comic Book Stores mean much more than just cartoon strips; my favourite - ’Forbidden Planet’ on Saftesbury Avenue stocks an enormous collection of Comics and Graphic Novels, Books, DVDs, Figurines, Art, Toys, and Collectables. I’ve been a long-term fan of comics, from an early obsession with Commando and Starblazer, DC and Marvel, and Frank Miller. This quickly developed into a love of Graphic novels - and particurarly from the mature DC imprint - Vertigo.

My Top 10 Grapic Novels / Series of All Time: (roughly in order of preference)

• Lone Wolf and Cub - Kazuo Koike & Goseki Kojima (1970 - 1976) [Dark Horse Comics]
• DMZ - Brian Wood & Riccardo Burchielli et al. (2005 - 2012) [DC Vertigo]
• Ex Machina - Brian K. Vaughan & Tony Harris et al. (2004 - 2010) [DC / Wildstorm]
• 100 Bullets - Brian Azarello & Eduardo Risso (1999 - 2009) [DC Vertigo]
• Y: The Last Man - Brian K. Vaughan & Pia Guerra et al. (2002 - 2008) [DC Vertigo]
• Elfquest - Wendy & Richard Pini (1978 - 2007) [WaRP Graphics / DC]
• The Invisibles - Grant Morrison & Jill Thompson et al. (1994 - 200) [DC Vertigo]
• Habibi - Craig Thompson (2011) [Pantheon Books]
• Scalped - Jason Aaron & R.M. Guéra et al. (2007 - 2012) [DC Vertigo]
• Cerebus - Dave Sim & Gerhard (1977 - 2004) [Aardvark-Vanaheim]

If you haven’t come across any of those - feel free to check them out ...

Elfquest Comics can be accessed freely online - www.elfquest.com/gallery/OnlineComics3.html

Forbidden Planet is my favourite, but there are 4 Comic Book Stores in London that I like to make use of:

• Forbidden Planet - 179 Shaftesbury Avenue, Covent Garden, WC2H 8JR
• Gosh London - 1 Berwick Street, Soho, W1F 0DR
• Mega City Comics - 18 Inverness Street, Camden, NW1 7HJ
• Orbital Comics - 8 Great Newport Street, Coven Garden, WC2H 7JA

For Second-hand / trades, you can head to the Book & Comic Exhange - 14 Pembridge Road, Notting Hill, W11 3HL

I am still deciding on what my next series is going to be; current front-runner is ’Chew’ by John Layman & Rob Guillory [Image Comics] - this has been going since 2009 and already has 6 volumes out. Chew features detective ’Tony Chu’ - who gets psychic impressions from whatever he eats!

Anyway - all the decent Comic Book Stores are giving away free bags of swag today, and have keen discounts on all other stock - so go treat yourselves by all means, and keep analogue books alive!