KEVIN B. KLAUS/Arizona Summer Wildcat Journalism and communications senior Jon Hobson poses outside of his apartment yesterday with a portion of his comic book collection. Hobson collects comics himself, but also works at Fantasy Comics, a store that will host Free Comic Book day this Saturday.

It's a bird! It's a plane! It's... a UA student reading comic books.

There comes a time in life when fantasy is sorely needed. University of Arizona students made anxious by approaching paper deadlines and tests encounter this time repeatedly.

Comic books can be an elixir for student anxiety. Or in the words of pre-computer science sophomore Alex Trebisky:

"They're kind of fun and cool."

Fantasy Comics, located up the street from the UA at 2595 N. First Ave., is offering another world to students already sick of this one.

Anyone walking in will discover an open room with colorful comic covers lining shelves along the wall. In the center of the room are multiple boxes filled with various comic characters and superheroes, labeled alphabetically.

Owner Tom Struck, who used to read and collect comic books as a kid, will probably be there to greet visitors, or call you by name if you're a regular.

Struck doesn't collect comics anymore, though.

"There's an analogy of working in an ice cream store," he said. "After awhile, you don't eat ice cream all the time anymore. I used to have a large collection but I don't anymore. I have a whole store."

Fantasy Comics sells everything from Archie comics to manga, Japanese animated comics that read from right to left.

Struck said manga has changed his customer gender ratio from almost exclusively male 10 years ago to 90% male, 10 % female, now. He added that manga is very popular at the college level, especially among women.

"We sell more manga to university age and university-type crowd than anybody else," said Struck.

Trebisky said that while he's read a few manga books, he never got into the form because he didn't like the art as much. And art is important to him.

"I like the art the best, but a good writer I'll pick up even if their art is weird," said Trebisky, who said he prefers the more westernized drawings of Batman, Ultimate Spiderman and Ultimate X-men.

"I remember watching the X-men on Saturday morning cartoons and that kind of helped me like (comics)," said Trebisky

Jon Hobson, a journalism and communications "never-ending senior", has been employed at Fantasy Comics for a year. Television and movies helped get him started on comics as well.

"It was kind of a combination of things," Hobson said. "I was really big into the Superman movies, friends collected them as well, and also my sister was a huge Spiderman fan. I remember watching her, she was into MTV and Spiderman cartoons, so between all those elements, I just went and bought a bunch of Superman and Spiderman."

Hobson collects and reads various titles now, but when he was younger, it was strictly Marvel Comics.

"We would just do it for the art 'cause I didn't realize there was a story you were supposed to read along with it, that those word bubbles were there for a purpose," said Hobson. "Now I read a lot. I read close to thirty titles a month."

Now that he pays attention to word bubbles, Hobson said he thinks storyline is more important than art because it keeps the reader engaged.

"Art is just a picture," he explained. "Pictures can only be so good. You need something to back it up with. And for me now, the story takes over the art."

Giving reasons for manga comics' popularity, Struck said manga tends to deal with characters who attend school, and that while the comics come in different genres (humor, horror, romance, etc.), they tend to deal with personal relationships rather than car crashes and explosions.

And whether comic characters kill or kiss, most books build off of back issues.

Struck said a lot of people are drawn to comics because of the character and story continuities.

"People read the comics and they get involved in the storyline, in the reading, and in the quality of the art in the comics," he said.

And comic books aren't just for the youth. While Struck said his base customers are between the ages of 18 and 30, he has a few men and women in their 60's and 70's walk in, some hailing from Green Valley.

Anticipating the Spiderman 2 release June 30, Fantasy Comics is participating in the third annual Free Comic Book Day on July 3.

Free Comic Book Day is a celebration of the comic book art form. The goal of the celebration is to introduce as many people to comic books as possible.

Children and adults will be able to choose from a variety of free comic books, and, as a special treat, Fantasy Comics will host an appearance by comic book creator Patrick Zircher.

Zircher, who has recently drawn Nightwing for DC Comics and Cable/Deadpool for Marvel Comics, will sign books and sell original art from 10:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. this Saturday.

Free Comic Book day kicks off at 10 a.m. and lasts until 6 p.m.

For more details, call Fantasy Comics at 670-0100.