Welcome to the October edition of the Outsider newsletter / update / thing! Let’s get right to it!
In case you missed it we’re now an *award winning* local comic book store! We won the 2024 Cross-Cultural Champion Intentionalist Award earlier this week, literally right on our anniversary!
Speaking of the anniversary, I wrote up an anniversary update blog post. tl;dr: We’re not financially sustainable yet (2024 is poop for lots of small businesses) but thanks to your support we are losing significantly less month per month than in 2023! Thanks for your continued support!
AAAAAAA!
Free Candy! Free Comics!!!!!
Did you know that Halloween is like, a secondary Free Comic Book Day? We’ll be giving out free candy for kids from 3 to 6 as part of Fremont Trick or Treat, Fremont’s annual Halloween event. We’ll also be giving out free comics to kids and adults as well!
And then after 6 we’re turning the lights slightly down and the music slightly up for some Halloween Vibes. Come by for free comics between 6 to 8 and like, hang out at a comic book shop for Halloween like you’re a teen (again)!
We Have So Many Creator Events!
Thanks to a convergence of book releases and travel schedules we have three creator events at Outsider in the first week of November!
First we have Silver Sprocket artists Lonnie Garcia and Yugo Limbo reading from their comics and answering questions and generally chilling on Friday 11/1 from 6 to 9 PM (we’re open late for this special event!). If you like queer comics, weird scrunkly art, and cool indie comics this is the event for you!
On Sunday 11/3 we’ll be hosting a signing for Palestinian-American author Jordan Alsaqa’s newest book Cooking with Monsters Vol 2: Farm to Table, the continuation of his series of YA food battling cooking fighting manga that serves up piping hot action and queer romance! This is an all ages event and we will also have many copies of Vol 1 for those who want to start getting into it! Bonus: Jordan’s a cookbook writer too so you know his cooking comic’s legit!
Finally, we’re proud to host Sage Coffey’s Seattle book tour stop for their new comic Wine Ghost Goes to Hell on Thursday 11/7 at our usual Thursday evening event time. Join Sage and local artist Chan Chau in a conversation about Wine Ghost and Sage’s other work like Silver Sprocket’s Abortion Pill Zine and @SickOfWolves’ Not a Wolf and get your stuff signed!
Limited Time Only: We Want Your Old Comics!
From 10/22 to 11/22 we are partnering with local mutual aid group WashMasks to gather donations of comic books and graphic novels for kids of WA state farm workers for the December holidays. Let’s give back to the families that work hard for not enough pay to keep all of us fed this holiday season by bringing them some joy!
You can drop off your donation of kid/teen-appropriate new or gently read comics and graphic novels at Outsider during out regular hours from 10/22 to 11/22. You can also donate by purchasing kid/teen books at Outsider! Finally, we are collecting cash donations with which we can purchase Spanish language comics and graphic novels to gift to rural farm worker families—many of whom native readers of Spanish—as well.
(If you’re donating more than, say, 10 lbs of books, just e-mail us ahead of time to make sure we have room for them!)
Learn to Play D&D at Outsider!
We are partnering with Dante Santos of Chance Encounter Games to bring you some awesome introductory D&D workshops! Learn to create a Dungeons and Dragons character with the newest 2024 rules update and participate in an introductory adventure tailored for new players. Plus: workshop attendees get 10% off Dungeons and Dragons products at Outsider on the day of the workshop!
For more details and to sign up, take a look at the events page!
New Animal / Pet Policy!
After an extensive discussion with the team (which went like this: “Hey so our dog policy is kinda outdated since nobody working here is allergic to dogs at this point wanna allow dogs again?” “YES I LOVE DOGS”) we are revising our pet policy!
We welcome well-behaved, dry, and leashed/contained pets (mammals and birds only please). especially if we can say hi to them! However we will prioritize humans over pets if issues like allergies occur, and owners assume responsibility of all damages done by their pets in store.
So yes please bring your cat in a backpack if your cat is into that.
Finally, Here’s Some Comics We Recently Read and Liked
You may like them too!
- Ms. Marvel by Saladin Ahmed – As much as we love G Willow Wilson a 10 volume series is really hard to get into for a new reader. Saladin Ahmed’s run, though, is a perfectly sized saga (with two story arcs that are mostly self-contained) for new and experienced Ms. Marvel readers alike. It meshes classic superhero vibes with Ms. Marvel’s modern ideals and problems and is nearly contained in a single thicc book. Also: it introduces Amulet, a thicc and gentle Arab-American from Detroit!
- Destroy All Humans They Can’t Be Regenerated – Finally published in English after too many years, Destroy All Humans, a Magic: The Gathering Manga, takes the reader back to the 90s when games like Magic, Pokemon, and Yugioh first became popular. Unlike Yugioh and other card game manga, Destroy All Humans focuses on middle school kids in a regular middle school. No weird holographic tech or destined chosen isekai or ancient artifacts, just kids who love gaming and their relationships. There are still gorgeously drawn battles though; after all the imagination of teenagers provide the most vivid fight scenes. (Also vol 1 comes with a promo card from Tempest to *really* take you back to the 90s.)
Leave a Reply