Saturday, May 4, is Free Comic Book Day, which is pretty much what it sounds like. Comic book shops will give away free comics to celebrate the medium. And that medium perhaps has some cause for celebration: the global comic book market was valued at over $15 billion in 2022, according to Fortune Business Insights, and is expected to grow to over $22 billion by the end of this decade.

At Midtown Comics near Times Square in New York, manager Jay Schmidt is expecting a line out the door for Free Comic Book Day.

Some people will then get the comic bug, he said. “You know, we do get a ton of new customers and readers afterwards.”

Some long-standing customers will check it out too, including 38-year-old Christopher Oreckinto, who also draws his own comics. He brought a copy of one of his creations to the store, called “Wrestling With My Demons.” He likes the medium because he feels in control of how he consumes it.

“You can look at it as long as you want,” he said. “If you’re watching a movie, they actually control how long you’re looking at stuff.”

The store relies on people getting hooked on looking and wanting to know what happens next, said Midtown Comics co-owner Gerry Gladston.

“Every Wednesday is new release day in the comic book business. So the faithful come in every Wednesday and they get their fix. We love them,” he said.

Those comic books are also a major source of ideas for the movie industry.

“Comic books were really good at coming up with good intellectual property in the ’40s, ’50s and ’60s. We have the special effects now that can make those kinds of movies,” said Shawna Kidman, author of the book “Comic Books Incorporated: How the Business of Comics Became the Business of Hollywood.”

A lot of growth in the comic industry overall is being driven by sales of graphic novels, she said. There’s lots of choices, from superheroes like Spider-Man to superheroines, like Jo March in a graphic novel version of “Little Women.”