Ape Entertainment today announced in partnership with Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit educational organization, the release of the first comic book featuring the cast of the beloved children’s show Sesame Street with the first release to coincide with Free Comic Book Day on May 4. The new and original comic book series emphasizes educational and entertaining content for younger readers.

A Free Comic Book Day edition of the standard comic will be made available for free from participating comic retailers.  The premier issue of Sesame Street comics will be available in stores nationwide on Wednesday May 1. Produced in full color, the standard Sesame Street comic edition features 5 interlocking covers, which when placed side by side depict an “on the Street” scene featuring Elmo, Big Bird, Cookie Monster, Grover and the whole Sesame Street gang. Each of the 5 editions is full color, 28 pages, includes 5 Sesame Street stories and retails for $3.99.

The premier issue also includes the first in a series of “How to Read a Comic” features for parents to help new comic readers. Each “How to Read a Comic” highlights aspects of reading a comic aloud.  The first in the series describes how speech bubbles provide the narration and dialogue of the story. The “How to Read a Comic” features will be part of each Sesame Street comics issue and are also available online.

I can’t believe there hasn’t been a regular comic! Congrats to Ape and hopefully this grows the comic market.