The free comic book wall is set up for Free Comic Book Day at Tramp's. (paNOW Staff/Nick Nielsen)
Flipping the pages

Local comic book store prepares for busiest weekend of the year

May 2, 2025 | 5:01 PM

It’s a big weekend for comic book enthusiasts in Prince Albert. Not only is it National Comic Book Day on Saturday, May 3, but then Sunday, May 4 brings Star Wars Day.

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‘s Music and Books store is celebrating with their ‘free comic book day’ on Saturday with a wall full of comics that anyone who comes in is allowed to take for free. Store Manager Jed Forsman said that it is one of the biggest weekends of the year for them.

“It’s huge when it comes to comic books and of course Star Wars fans across the globe, it’s a pretty big weekend with the fact that they somehow decided to do them both on back-to-back days. Usually that doesn’t happen, right? Sometimes the weekend after the national comic book day that has to do with different books that are coming out and it just so happened that the sci-fi cosmic gods are colliding right now.”

The store sells more than just comic books including vinyl records, trading cards, vintage video games, posters, CDs, DVDs, and even 8-track and VHS tapes. Forsman said there has been a big resurgance in physical media since the pandemic, and it hasn’t really slowed down.

“People had a lot of free time on their hands and adults that are sort of my age in their 40s reconnected to their childhoods from the 80s and 90s, and things just started spiking. It’s almost like watching the stock market with prices of comics book and collectibles. They spiked, they went down, and now they’re starting to slowly climb up again. So it’s it’s pretty neat. To be a kid that grew up in Prince Albert his whole life, having the opportunity and the fun and the honour to go work at Tramp’s is kind of cool.”

When it comes to why physical media is getting so big again, there’s a number of different reasons depending on the product. For trading cards, you can look at most of the major sports video games, like NHL 25, where there is a mode where you pull trading cards to build the team that you play with. There’s also the large amount of streaming content aimed at kids where people open packs and showcase the cards that they pull.

Then in the comic book side of things, the success of the Marvel movies has been huge for the industry, but when it comes to things that maybe seem a little more niche like vinyl records, Forsman believes that people are rediscovering the physical connection they have with them.

“That’s probably the coolest thing about all this, is physical media is becoming sought after now because you’re you’re connected to the device. You’re connected to the record you hold in your hand. When it comes to the comic books, you’re reading that comic book, you’re looking at the art, you’re looking forward to what’s gonna happen in the next issue that’s coming out next month. It’s the physical media that is what media should be. All the digital stuff, it is great, it’s nice to have the easy access, but there’s nothing like picking up a comic book and flipping through the pages.”

For people coming in to take advantage of free comic book day, there will be a wide selection of titles for people to chose from. While there is five to 25 copies of each comic book on the wall, there are some titles that Forsman is expecting to see some move quicker rather than later. The biggest ones will be around what’s been going on in the movies.

“When it comes to the most popular things, of course it pertains to sort of what’s happening in the cinematic world where we see a lot of Spidermans being redone with the Ultimate Spiderman series, which was very, very highly collectible. Recently there was the release of what’s called Absolute Batman, that was probably the biggest book of 2024.”

Despite a dip in popularity in physical media through the last few decades, Tramp’s has been able to stay strong in Prince Albert for 39 years now. Forsman takes pride in working at a place that helps people escape the tough parts of the life they live and immerse themselves in a totally new world, whether it’s discovering a fantasy land in a comic book, or listening to a good record that brings someone back to the past.

“That’s kind of the beautiful thing about collectibles and about nostalgia, about fantasy, about escaping, about art. It becomes this place that everybody can connect to no matter what’s going on in the world, politically, we just had our election, when it comes to all these things, work, family, everybody needs a little bit of a little bit of a distraction, and when it comes to things like comic books, movies, music, that’s where we go.”

Next year will mark 40 years for Tramp’s operating in Prince Albert.

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