The planets alligned Saturday for a confluence of free stuff: Free admission to the grand opening of the new revamped Seattle Art Museum and, just as importantly, the annual Free Comic Book Day at participating comic book stores. Pinch Seattlest's cumulative butt cheeks and tell us we're not dreamin'!

All the action at SAM takes place on floors three and four with an overwhelming mix of integrated everything. We overheard somebody in the crowd compare the museum's new design to the Tate, but we have no idea what that means and didnt ask. From a distance we mistook a Robert Motherwell for a Franz Kline and an old master type we hadnt heard of for a Titian, but we redeemed ourselves and justified three semesters of art school when we totally nailed the Robert Rauschenberg and the Anselm Kiefer from a distance of twenty miles away. Seeing all this great stuff in person in its original glory can't be beat.

We were bummed that Zanadu had a strict one free comic per customer rule, as we wanted both the Drawn & Quarterly/Lynda Barry and the First Second/Eddie Campbell offerings. Impulsively we snagged the First Second one because we haven't been exposed to new Campbell work in quite a while, and we're currently in the middle of Barry's 100 Demons. The First Second freebie is a teaser for Campbell's upcoming book, The Train Was Bang On Time, and if these early pages are any indication this book will kick ass. The best part is when this mute character screams, it takes the form of this giant red word balloon that can be seen above the horizon from miles away. We've read a ton of comics in our time and dont recall ever seeing this device before. Campbell has a terrific and highly regarded blog here and was recently profiled in a cover feature interview with everyone's favorite locally published funnybook revue, excerpt here.

On top of all that, we had no occassion to pull out our AK. Guess it was a good day.