I’ve arbitrarily decided that we’re going to have a column here suggesting ways to get kids to start reading comics again. Because, let’s face it, they don’t. And if they do, it’s because they have nerds like us as parents.

So, for this inaugural column that I would invite all of the other robots here to participate in, I’m going to offer the following advice to the major 3 comics publishers:

Get comics back in Grocery Stores and at the checkout lanes!

Going through my comics I found a book called “DC’s Blue Ribbon Digest” that wasn’t anything more than a reprint of “Legion of Superheroes”. This was picked up by me as a kid in a grocery store. I couldn’t read it, but hell, Superboy was in it and I liked looking at comics. (”Matter Eater Lad” was in it, too. No lie.)

I begged and begged and begged at the checkout counter to get it and I got it. It got thrown on the conveyor belt with the groceries.

As I got older I shifted my interest to comics they kept in the magazine racks and found myself reading lots of those (without having to pay!). I know there are a couple of you who were in the same boat as I was on that front.

But my point is this: kids don’t just wander into comic-book stores. I know, I owned one. If they did, it was to buy Heroclix and Pokemon cards. I literally had to give them comics to read to get them interested. They do, however, have time to kill in grocery stores and would be more than willing to nag their parents for crap at the checkout counter. And really, in these times of skyrocketing rates of obesity and illiteracy, wouldn’t Marvel and DC be doing the world a favor by directly competing with Snickers and Twix for the affections of young kids?