It´s more blessed to give than to receive

It´s been a long time since my last post, in fact so long that Christmas is right around the corner. So, since I can´t put it off any longer it´s time to announce The Big 2013 Christmas Contest of Tales From The Kryptonian.

And when I say " contest " I mean just a convenient excuse for me to give away free comics. Yes, I must be crazy to do so but, hey, it is Christmas ( and when I say " it is Christmas " I mean " I´m so busy with stuff right now that when next I have the time to do the next post or check my e - mail it WILL be Christmas " ) and how do I know I´m not crazy ?

So right now you are probably thinking about all those fantastic comics and trades and hardcovers I´m handing out, which will be gazillions and the newest stuff and just beyond cool. But you can hold it right there buster. As longtime readers of this blog know, all the comics and trades and hardcovers I review on this very blog ( although there haven´t been that many reviews lately ) I have to buy from my own pockets. Except the comics I get sent by the fine folks at BLACK TOWER COMICS & BOOKS ( and when I say " the fine folks at BLACK TOWER COMICS & BOOKS " I mean " One man band Terry Hooper " who, in his infinite kindness, not only sends me these comics for free - and which I don´t review as often as I should - but also never tires of plugging this blog ) I don´t get any comp copies so there will be none among the comics I´m giving away.

When I said that I will give away free comics that´s exactly what I will do. Meaning that instead of hoarding all the free comics I get from FREE COMIC BOOK DAY and GRATIS COMIC TAG and the likes, I´m giving away all those comics I don´t want to keep. I always saw those events as chances to check out series I don´t know or to remind myself of the great comic series we often tend to forget with all the super hero drama and reboots and relaunches and new 52s. So unlike other comic readers - especially in Germany - I don´t have to get ALL the comics of GRATIS COMIC TAG or FREE COMIC BOOK DAY, just the ones I find interesting.

Not that there´s anything wrong with those guys who want to have them all. Hey, any comic reader who doesn´t understand the primal collecting instinct should give away his comic club membership card right away.

Because collecting comics is what we all do, right ? It´s just the kind of comics that we collect where we differ. But back to the free comics : every year I intend to do a post ( and when I say " a post " I really mean " a series of posts " because I can never fit it into a single post ) about all the free comics I DO get and more often than not it doesn´t work out. Now, unlike some of the other comics I review, the comics from FREE COMIC BOOK DAY and GRATIS COMIC TAG have kind of an expiration date since you probably don´t want to read about last year´s free comics.

So once the year is over that ship has sailed the port so I don´t have to keep them any longer in the hopes that I will review them later. Even if I did, nobody would want to read it anyway. This year I have been lucky enough to get almost every comic from FREE COMIC BOOK DAY and GRATIS COMIC TAG I wanted to check out and since I have already chosen the ones I´m going to keep, I will give the rest away. Now you are probably asking yourself where I get my free comics that I can pick and choose and even afford to give some away. Well, for GRATIS COMIC TAG I have my regular comicshop, the SAMMLERECKE in Esslingen where they always have all the issues and they are always kind enough to reserve the ones I want. I also got a lot of FREE COMIC BOOK DAY comics from them the first time I participated ( the final post of that years series on FREE COMIC BOOK DAY is still the most popular post of this blog ) but the second time was when they moved the entire shop and some of the issues I wanted got lost and it took a few months until I had a handful.

So I´m not doing the whole list thing since I don´t go there as often as I used to which might have something to do with the quality of current comics ( and when I say " the quality of current comics " I really mean " all that crap that the big two are publishing " with all the constant Marvel NOW restarting and renumbering and the whole NEW 52 s - word that for the most part is so horrible I won´t even go into detail how bad it is ).

My, how the times have changed. Just the other day I was reminiscing how I used to take weekly trips to my comic shop ( the one where I used to buy my comics before the German Customs Authority drove it out of business ) to get all the new comics. It was the highlight of my week after a lot of work and sometimes I would even make another trek during the week. Now I´m down to one trip every two or three months because my pull list is getting shorter each month. But back to them free comics.

There are a lot of comics that I read that are not on my pull list - for various reasons - and for all those plus the comics my comicshop misses I go to an online comicshop ( ANDIS COMICEXPRESS ) where you get one free comic from FREE COMIC BOOK DAY or GRATIS COMIC TAG for every 10 EUROS of your comic order. Now I don´t order crazy amounts of comics there so I get dozens of copies of free comics. But I order there anyway and if I get two or three free comics with each shipment that makes a nice bundle of them. Mind you, for years I did order my comics there without knowing that you can get free comics without doing anything special. It´s not like I have to pay extra to get those comics so I don´t have any problem with giving them away once I´m done with them.

Which means that I read all the comics and - except a few exceptions where I ordered two copies - they are not in mint condition anymore.

It´s not like I used them to build a dam or kill a wild beast either it´s just that some of them might not be in the best condition and I´m only mentioning it because I know that some people are peculiar that way.

Okay, you´re probably already bored by all my ramblings and your next question would be what you must do to enter this Big Christmas Contest .

The answer is : nothing. Or not much.This is the third time I´m doing this contest and the first time I gave my readers a small assignment which didn´t go over to well. So the second time there were no strings attached, readers just had to sent an e - mail or contact me on the forums where I´m going to post similar announcements. Now my brother thinks I should give my readers herculean tasks that they must perform in order to qualify for this contest. And it should be really hard too and if it doesn´t help the entire comic industry or at least helps promote this blog I shouldn´t do it. Which - at least in my opinion - goes against the very idea of giving away free comics without any ulterior motive. Because it´s Christmas, remember ? Or at least it will be when I do my next post. 

So you don´t have to do more than write me an e - mail to the address you can find by clicking the " about me " link. Or, if you are one of my german readers you can contact me via the forums. And if you can´t figure out how to do that just use the comments section but don´t put any links in your answer because the it will be flagged as spam automatically. Of course you may not want to put your address in a section that everyone can read so you might not want to use it.

Forget I said that. Bad idea. Don´t use the comments section. Not good.

So, without any further ado because I want to finish this post which is longer than expected as it is ( since blogger is on the fritz again and doesn´t show the pictures right so I probably have to correct this later as restarting without add - ons and clearing the cache history didn´t help ) here is the list of the FREE COMIC BOOK DAY comics of 2013 :

VALIANT HARBINGER WARS, VALIANT MASTERS, THE STRANGERS from Oni Press, MOLLY DANGER / PRINCELESS from Action Lab Entertainment, KELLERMAN / L´AMOUR from Villard Books, FUBAR from Alterna Comics, INFINITY, STAR WARS / CAPTAIN MIDNIGHT / AVATAR from Dark Horse, BONGO COMICS FREE FOR ALL, RAMAYAN RELOADED from Liquid Comics, MARBLE SEASON from Drawn & Quarterly, GRIMM from Dynamite, WORLDS OF ASPEN and ENDANGERED WEAPON B from Markosia.  

Now because I didn´t get around to do this contest last year all the comics from that are still in the pot but not in separate sections for each year, especially since there are a few where I don´t know from when they are. So even more FREE COMIC BOOK DAY comics : VALIANT 2012, TOP SHELF KIDS CLUB 2012, HALLOWEEN COMICFEST 2012 BATMAN ADVENTURES / SCOOBY DOO WHERE ARE YOU FLIP BOOK, PEANUTS / ADVENTURE TIME WITH FINN AND JAKE FLIP BOOK, BONGO COMICS FREE FOR ALL / SPONGEBOB COMICS FREESTYLE FUNNIES FLIP BOOK; MY FAVORITE MARTIAN, WORLDS OF ASPEN 2011, THE DARKNESS : CONFESSION, FRACTURED FABLES, WELCOME TO RADICAL UNIVERSE, GREEN LANTERN ORIGIN / FLASHPOINT SPECIAL EDITION and CYBER FORCE 5.

There are also Halloween mini comics I´m giving away, but keep in mind that as mini comics they are smaller than the other comics : AXE COP, HOT STUFF THE LITTLE DEVIL, BONE and TOYS IN THE BASEMENT.

And for my german readers - which are the ones who will most likely benefit from this contest since it´s cheaper for me to send these comics to people here - here are the comics from GRATIS COMIC TAG 2013 :

BEFORE WATCHMEN : ROHRSCHACH, BENNI BÄRENSTARK - BENNI MACHT DAS RENNEN, SUSKE UND WISKE, MONSTER ALLERGY, KOMA, DOPPELTES GLÜCK MIT DEM ROTEN AFFEN und WELTEN DES SCHRECKENS. The issues from 2012 are EWIGER HIMMEL, PIRATENGOLD, DON QUIJOTE, COSA NOSTRA, ZOMBIES, THORGAL, BONGO COMICS FÜR UMME, SWEET TOOTH, DONALD DUCK, DER VAMPIR VON BENARES, COMIC GIRLS, FRÄULEIN RÜHR MICH NICHT AN, DIE PAUKER / DIE ZAUBERSCHULE FLIP BOOK, DIE WELT DER SCHLÜMPFE, DIE KATZE DES RABBINERS, ZUCKERFISCH and HORRORSCHOKER. From 2011 BLACKTOWN, ICOM and CANARDO, and from 2010 HORST, COURTNEY CRUMRIN, CUBITUS, AMELIA IST DIE GRÖSSTE, DONJON and ZWERCHFELL A - GOGO. Quite the list.

So that´s it for the Christmas Contest and I hope you find something you were looking for. I will be doing reader´s requests which means that I will do another order before the end of the year and I will go to my comic shop where I might be able to find a copy of a book that´s not on the list.

The last time I did the contest the deadline was around Christmas but since I only managed to announce it shortly before this year there will be no deadline for now. I will start sending the comics out as soon as I have some participants and we´ll see how far we come with the comics I got. You can ask for as many comics as you like and if nobody else is interested in the comics you want you´re home free but keep in mind that other people might want some comics too so don´t be too greedy. Yes, I want to get rid of them all eventually but we can all share now, can´t we ?

BEFORE THE YEAR ENDS AND CLOSING TIME

I haven´t been as active as I wanted to be this year due to some things that interfered as always. I´m not sure how many - if indeed any at all - posts I can manage before the year is over but in any case I wanted to enter this picture for EL BLOG DE JOTACE´s annual BIG CULO DAY ( which is a wonderful tradition ). As usual I have no idea who the woman with the spectacular backside is but we need more booty on comicblogs.  

One thing I managed to finish are the episodes of DOCTOR WHO I was missing. There was one serial THE TOMB OF THE CYBERMAN that was too big because it was 4 episodes in one but I managed to solve that problem.

Right now I´m in the middle of the Tom Baker episodes and when I´m finished with all the classic episodes I´m going to backtrack to the William Hartnell and Patrick Throughton episodes I haven´t seen yet. I wanted to watch the colour episodes because I was a bit tired of black and white and I didn´t want to wait until I had all the serials where so many episodes were either reconstructed or animated. So I started with the first Jon Pertwee serial SPEARHEAD FROM SPACE and am binge watching forward until I run out of colour episodes. And DOCTOR WHO specials.

As for the 50th anniversary special THE DAY OF THE DOCTOR I didn´t like it on my first watching which - as I found out later - does have something to do with the german dubbing because the guy who speaks the Doctor ( or the Doctors as in plural ) is really bad. It was much better on the second viewing in the original language and hearing Matt Smith, David Tennant and especially John Hurt in their original voices adds SO MUCH to it it´s not even funny anymore. So if you ask me I loved it and I will probably watch it again before the year is over. Because the one brother who is also a DOCTOR WHO fan hasn´t seen it yet ( he bailed on the DOCTOR WHO marathon FOX was showing before the anniversary episode so he´s also missing the last two episodes of the season ) but even when I can´t persuade him I´ll probably still watch it - alone if I must.

Today´s video at the end of the post is not related to Doctor Who or free comics. Instead it´s a documentary about superheroes from PBS.

It´s the first part of a 3 hour special on PBS about superheroes. I don´t know if there is anything that wasn´t covered in previous documantaries but the fact alone that a tv station is willing to do a 3 hour event about superheroes - hosted by Sabretooth Liev Schreiber - does my heart good. It´s a really entertaining and informative documentary and you also can find part 2  : GREAT POWER AND RESPONSIBILITY and part 3 : A HERO CAN BE ANYONE on YouTube. Right now I´m watching AMERICAN CINEMA, a 10 part series about - you guessed it - the american movie industry which is also terrific and which can also be found on YouTube.

So here is the first part : Truth, Justice and the American Way. Enjoy !



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