Get Free Comics on Saturday at Westlake Porter Public Library

Head to on Saturday for free comic books and a chance to make your own superhero in honor of National Free Comic Book Day! is teaming up with Westlake Porter Public Library to hand out 2,000 comics and to bring comic artist John DeLucca to help kids learn to draw their own superheroes.

Astound Comics has worked with with Porter Public, as well as other libraries, for the past few years to attract young readers on Free Comic Book Day. This year, Astound is taking a new approach, since owner Scott Rudge decided to move the store online to FastComics.com.

“Since we closed down our store operations, we can’t do it like we’ve done in the past,” Rudge said.  “So we’re looking for  a new way to do it. We didn’t want to give up on it. As far as I know, every single store that participates in Free Comic Book Day does it with the idea of a profit, or doing big sales that day or drawing a lot of customers to the store. Since we don’t have a store anymore, the big difference is that we’re pushing comics, especially with younger readers,  as an outstanding means of communicating an idea.”

Rudge said he himself starting reading with comics as a child and hopes to see more kids get started.

Astound Comics will be giving away 20 different comics from Archie to Spiderman to the Green Lantern.

“There’s a lot of ones related to the movies this summer,” Rudge said.

This year will be a test run for future Free Comic Book Days at the library. Next year will be a “pretty big to-do,” Rudge said.

 Check back with Westlake Patch on Saturday for more comic book talk with Scott Rudge!