There are many things that I do wrong in this world. One of the things that I do right is to give out comics at Halloween; they are popular, they don’t cause cavities, they encourage reading. And this year, I get to give out some Peanuts comics in the mix. In recent years, the comic book industry has been offering special mini-comics for giving to trick-or-treaters, sold in packs of 20 with a list price of $4.99. Most comic shops don’t carry these for sale, you have to preorder… right about now. And one of the books this year is put out by Boom!, and includes short stories from Peanuts, Adventure Time, and Fraggle Rock. Other ones available include Betty&Veronica, Angry Birds, and Plants Vs. Zombies. Some publishers do well by it, others have sometimes just run the first 16 pages of an issue, cutting off mid-story… but certainly with Peanuts, they have short stories to use, the same with some of the other ones (and the Archie/Betty&Veronica ones are usually new stories done just for these Halloween packs.) Alas, the major superhero publishers just stay out of it altogether, so there are no little Spider-Man, Superman, Wonder Woman or Avengers comic to give out. If you’d like to be slipping kids comics this year, you can stop by your local comic shop and ask them to order some for you, but do it soon, as they’re about to finalize their monthly orders.. Or you can do what I’m about to do, order them from an online shop. This link should take you to a listing of all seven available titles for this year. (Note, that is not a sponsored link in any way.)

Added later: BEFORE YOU CLICK THROUGH on that link, you might want to click through here; Westfield seems to be running a half-off-list-price-for-your-first-order promotion. They limit it in various ways, so I don’t know if it applies to the minicomics packs, and they limit it to one per item… but it’s worth trying!

Share the news!