Holiday Toy Drives

[garrideb.livejournal.com]

The holiday season is coming up fast, and for many people that means cooking, decorating, and lots of shopping. It also might mean passing toy donation bins such as the ones for Toys for Tots, or donation trees set up in churches, hospitals, and stores.

Books might not come to mind when it comes to toy drives, but they are actually a very high-need item. A lot of children grow up in households with very few books, and this can harm their literacy and enjoyment of reading.

So, how does this concern our interests as cap_ironmanians? (cap_ironmanites?) I feel that comic books make a perfect donation item for holiday toy drives. As comic fans, we have the chance to give a young comic fan a happy holiday, or possibly spark a love of comics in a child.

I'm hoping members can suggest specific trades that would make good gifts in the comments, so that we can get a big list going. I'll start by recommending:
Marvel Adventures: Avengers Vol. 1: Heroes Assembled - The happy version of the Avengers battle villains.
Blue Beetle: Shellshocked - A teenager living in Texas is forced to fill the shoes of a popular superhero.
Rapunzel's Revenge - a retelling of the fairy tale where Rapunzel rescues herself and then goes on adventures with a young thief.

If you have any ideas or specific charities you'd like to promote, feel free to do so in the comments! I'd love for our community to make a difference this holiday season.

Comments

Re: Hmmm, not all my recs are Marvel, I hope that's okay.

[garrideb.livejournal.com]

Those are some awesome suggestions! I haven't read Runaways (yet) but the things I've heard about it makes it sound good for a young reader. I was worried that Young Avengers wouldn't be a very rewarding read to someone who hadn't read the Avengers, but that was probably just because I get blinded by the hug-and-fly scene and forget how great the story is.

All of a sudden I've been hearing good things about Spidergirl, while a week ago I had no idea this comic existed.

Thanks for all the ideas - this should make it easier for people to pick something up to donate.

Re: Hmmm, not all my recs are Marvel, I hope that's okay.

[jazzypom.livejournal.com]

All of a sudden I've been hearing good things about Spidergirl, while a week ago I had no idea this comic existed.

Because it's cancelled. :(

It's been out for a while actually (I think it stopped at issue 100), so there's enough trades to go around. You don't need to follow the story, because each trade had a (more or less) self contained story arc.

Well, most people would know about iron man, and even if you don't know about iron man or captain america, it is explained in the book (in terms of Cap being paternal, and Eli saying that there was a black Captain America before a white one). I do remember being young and just enjoying the comics for what they were (I lived in the WI so I didn't get much comics).

Archie Digests... they are fun, although I wince at Betty and Veronica vying for Archie's attention, but I'm coming from the school of throwing anything after a child to read and something might stick. My mum bought comics for my older brother because he just. Wouldn't. Read. And ended up having three comic buffs for kids.

Oh, Cloak and Dagger is a cool trade too. I remember loving Cloak and Dagger when I was a tween.