Comic Book Contests

You know what the world needs more of?

Comic book contests. (In case you didn't guess that after reading the title of this blog entry!)

There need to be more opportunities to coax people to become interested in the hobby. World Famous Comics has had several contests over the past few years, but there are two problems with them: a) they generally require a fairly high degree of artistic talent, and b) they're often only tangentally related to comics. I've seen where a handful of comic shops have their own contests -- raffles, giveaways, etc. -- but the problem there is usually one of reaching a good audience. It's great for the folks who already frequent the shop, but no one is going to happen across information about it unless they walk in the store or hit the shop's web site, and it's also generally only good for people who are actually near enough to stop in the shop anyway. No, what we need are more contests online that anyone can enter and have just as good a chance of winning as anybody else.

Over at FFPlaza.com, I just finished up a contest tied in with the Who Wants to be a Superhero? show. It got a bit of attention for my site and the show and I just spoke with the winner of the contest who was quite pleased to have won. Now, the problem with that contest is the same as World Famous Comics' contests: it's only tangentally related to comics.

MarvelMasterworks.com frequently teams up with Tales of Wonder to offer free Masterworks and Archives books, which is great, but it seems a little infrequent. I just found out I missed the deadline on their last contest by just a few days. My local shop just had a raffle event to celebrate their third anniversary, but I couldn't actually swing into the shop over the weekend to participate. Diamond had a great contest for Free Comic Book Day a few years back (which, I might add, I won!) but they haven't repeated the contest.

But think of how cool it'd be if someone could sign up at, say, Amazon.com or someplace big like that and win one or two hundred dollars worth of comic book loot. Maybe a grab bag of Marvel, DC and Dark Horse stuff. Get folks interested in the wide range of great material that's available out there. Can you imagine getting a Fantastic Four Masterworks, The Spirit Archives, and maybe a couple of Hellboy or The Goon TPBs? Tell me that wouldn't be cool!

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