Avid consumers of graphic fiction, it’s time for you to grab a small stack of comic books or a good graphic novel and head out to a public park, coffee shop or other crowded venue. Today is international “Read Comics In Public” day and coincidentally also the birthday of legendary artist Jack Kirby.

The point of reading comics in public is to help end the feeling of embarrassment associated with reading comic books, explains Editor of The Daily Cross Hatch Brian Heater, who came up with the idea.

“Take to the streets. Be proud. If someone asks what you’re reading, say, “a comic book” (the phrase “graphic novel is also acceptable, but let’s face it, it sort of defeats the whole purpose). Heck, lend them a book, if you’ve got an extra””what better way to make a new friend and convert a new reader?,” Heater writes on the Day’s official blog.

To further the cause, there’s also a flickr pool set up for people to snap photos of what they’re reading.

I’m going to go a step further than these guys and say everyone participating should do more than just read comics in public. Ripping a page out of Marvel Comics Chief Creative Officer Joe Quesada’s book — once you finish reading those comic books in public, leave them for others to find and read. Of course for big time collectors, this might present a problem, but everyone has that stack of comics that they don’t want to file into their personal stash. Don’t throw them away (ever).

Read them in public, leave them in public.

Check out what the Geeks of Doom staff is reading below…

That’s right Marvel Zombies, the Mondo Marvel panel at the 2010 San Diego Comic-Con started off with a bang. Marvel’s new Senior V.P. Creator and Content Development C.B. Cebulski announced a little over 10 new series and limited series.

This was all followed up by Brian Michael Bendis saying he was excited that the character Killraven was coming back to the mainstream. Jeph Loeb, Marvel’s newly appointed Head of Television, talked about the upcoming plans for some Marvel anime project, the first of which is featuring Iron Man.

Well I should probably jump right into it then because what everyone is here for, just like at the panel, was the titles being announced. The first announcement was that a new Loki series starting in October 2010. Not many more details could be announced for this series.

Siege #4
Writer: Brian Michael Bendis
Penciler: Olivier Coipel
Inker: Mark Morales
Colorist: Laura Martin
Letterer: Chris Eliopoulos
Marvel Comics
Price: $3.99
Release date: May 12, 2010

I’ve written about the previous three issues of this series, so I may as well go four for four. The first three issues of this series were great, and fortunately, the end of the series does not disappoint. Siege #4 wraps up the story well, and sets up the new status quo where our heroes can work in the light and we don’t have to see Norman Osborn in fifteen different titles each month. With this issue writer Brian Michael Bendis closes a storyline that basically started all the way back with Avengers: Disassembled. Now we get to see what he does next.

Since this is the end of the story, in classic comic book fashion, we get a big throw down of a fight, this time it’s between the Sentry’s evil side, and the assembled Avengers, Young Avengers, and Nick Fury’s young heroes. There are a couple of not really surprising deaths in this issue and each one is handled pretty well.

The Heroic Age: The Avengers #1
Writer: Brian Michael Bendis
Penciler: John Romita Jr
Inker: Klaus Janson
Colorist: Dean White
Letterer: Cory Petit
Price: $3.99
Marvel Comics
Release date: May 19. 2010

After the last few years worth of Avengers stories where they are constantly on the run or fighting a lot of street level villains, Avengers #1 gets us back to the old school, “Let’s take on a classic threat” story. The action gets moving quickly, and I’m glad to see that writer Brian Michael Bendis wastes no time setting up the team and getting straight into the story.

Kang has come back with a line straight out of Back to The Future. It’s your kids, mighty Avengers, you have to come to the future to stop your kids! It seems this issue is adapting the story from the Next Avengers animated movie from a few years ago. They have certainly taken the character designs for the kids from that movie and used them in this issue. It’s an odd choice for me, and I don’t know if seeing the movie will spoil the last page of this issue (I’ve never seen the Next Avengers movie), but this is the kind of story I think I would like to see out of an Avengers book.

Siege #3
Writer: Brian Michael Bendis
Artist: Olivier Coipel
Inker: Mark Morales
Colors: Laura Martin
Letterer: Chris Eliopoulos
Marvel Comics
Price: $3.99
Released March 17, 2010

The march towards Marvel‘s Heroic Age continues, and with this issue of Siege we finally get the moment that many fans”¦okay, even that is saying too much. There are so many awesome moments in this book that you can’t turn a page without a surprise, and I don’t want to be the one to ruin those moments for anyone.

I will just say that Brian Michael Bendis pulls out all the stops, and fills the issue with a lot of great dialog. As I said with the last issue, the shorter story length is working very well for this series, forcing Bendis to cut to the chase and focus on the big moments. A problem I had with Bendis’ last two event minis, House of M and Secret Invasion, was that they dragged in the middle. This series does not have that issue, and is much better because of it.