A gift sure to bring joy…
By PETER BOSCH
Hi, everyone, this is just an idea if you’d like to do a very special treat that is well appreciated for this gift-giving season. It’s something I like to do each year, and that is to give brand-new comic books, digests, and coloring books with crayons to a children’s hospital. I can’t think of anything sadder for a child than having to be in a hospital on Christmas (or Hanukkah) but seeing the gift of a lot of comic books and the like is one that makes them happy.
It’s easy to do, too. Gather up a bag of them and take them to the reception desk at your local kids’ hospital, tell them it’s a gift for the holiday, and they will be glad to receive them. The only thing is the items need to be brand new and unread (for health reasons) and I highly recommend they be very light-hearted, and not with a continuing storyline into some other issue they may not have. (The Archie digests, for example, fit perfectly in this category.)
Again, this is just a suggestion that will brighten up their holiday immensely and will make you feel good, too.
Have a Merry Christmas, everyone.
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MORE
— HO! HO! HO! Dig This Double Dose of Christmas ARCHIE. Click here.
— SNEAK PEEK: New ARCHIE Digest Boasts 192 Pages of Classic CHRISTMAS Stories. Click here.
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NOTE: This first ran in 2024, but it bears repeating every year. Happy Holidays! — Dan
December 21, 2024
Peter, what a wonderful idea. Merry Christmas.
(Speaking of Archie comics, have you seen the Kickstarter to re-print Golden Age Archie comics like Pep?)
December 19, 2025
Do you have a link for the ML Heroes Kickstarter?
December 20, 2025
Here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/macroverse/archiecomics/posts/4348682 Be sure to do your homework. There’s been some criticism over how they are fulfilling their campaign.
December 22, 2024
Great idea, Peter! My sons’ Cub Scout Pack does a lot of service projects and this is a wonderful idea I’ll suggest.
December 19, 2025
Just make sure they’re all ages. The hospital staff has better things to do than review and decide which books are appropriate for which kids.
December 19, 2025
For the most part, in my opinion, comic books are mostly NOT written or drawn for kids anymore. It’s sad. They just don’t know what they are missing out on.
December 19, 2025
Some facsimiles and Marvel’s sadly discontinued True Believers line are child friendly. I gave a buncn of Mighty Marvel Masterworks books to the Marine’s Toys for Tots Drive.
December 20, 2025
>> Mighty Marvel Masterworks books to the Marine’s
>>
That’s a great idea. They are a perfect size for kids and are a nice price point. Shame Marvel stopped publishing them.
December 20, 2025
>> organization in the industry called ComicBooks For Kids!
>>
Mark, thanks for sharing. I’ll definitely be checking out your site/organization.
December 21, 2025
Yeah, some of the books I’ve seen in those polybags at stores like Dollar General or Wegmans are, at best, not going to bring in new, young, readers and, at worst, a PR disaster waiting to happen.
December 19, 2025
Sadly, the hospitals in my area have not accepted comic books for years – I’ve tried repeatedly. They want video games for the kids.
December 19, 2025
Hello everyone. My name is Mark Weiss and I run an organization in the industry called ComicBooks For Kids!
CB4K.org
We have one mission and that is to provide comic books and Papp culture items to children in hospitals and Cancer centers. Already we support well over 200 hospitals in every state across North America.
I only want a caution that we have learned that some hospitals will throw away your comic books if it does not come from a source such as ours.
That is not to say that they will, but we do know of some hospitals that do throw away paper products when they are donated.We know who to get Comics to and you can always send them to us where we can provide them to hospitals, even if there’s a specific one you’d like us to get them too.
Sorry for the long post, but we love the idea so much that we started this organization to do that exact thing that is written about in this post.
December 20, 2025
I have to agree with Buck. Even if a comic doesn’t have violence that hospital officials may shy away from, most stories continue over many issues. I remember as a kid in the 70s, when I didn’t know when my next opportunity to get a comic would be, shying away from Marvels, which usually had at least two-part stories. (Don’t hate me. I’ve read many Marvels since then.)
Besides current Archie comics, some comic shops do sell old Archies, Harveys, etc. at low prices.