I intended to do a round up of various posts and stories about Free Comic Book Day, but figured I’d waited too long. As it turns out, though, Free Comic Book Day isn’t over yet, as least for one store in Canada — Strange Adventures in downtown Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada. Don MacPherson talks about showing up at the store last Saturday to find it closed due to flooding in the area, while store manager Derek Nichols posts an update on their website:
While the flood waters didn’t get closer than a block to the store, we’ve had water in our basement (rising water table) and no power since Thursday noonish. Flood waters are going down and power will return probably Monday.
But we didn’t give up that easily! The day was spent out on the sidewalk giving away a comic to the passersby and making sure they knew the real event would be on May 10th!
It wasn’t super busy today downtown - after Thursday and the throngs of Flood Tourists - people have heeded the advice to just stay away from downtown. With power off to over half of downtown, and all major parking lots flooded, there wasn’t a lot of reason to come down. We did though get comics (DC Universe 0 and Marvel Adventures Iron Man) into peoples’ hands who were around, and look forward to the real FCBD on May 10th, as do the customers!
Don points out that this may work to the store’s advantage, assuming that Iron Man is still a hot topic next Saturday (I’m pretty sure it will be):
In one some way, the delay could be of benefit to Strange Adventures, as it will be the only shop that had copies of the two new Iron Man titles — Invincible Iron Man by Matt Fraction and Salvador Larroca, and Iron Man: Viva Las Vegas by Jon Favreau and Adi Granov — available for sale to its Free Comic Book Day attendees, whose interest may be piqued by the already popular and successful movie.
So what about last Saturday’s event? Well, in addition to the CAPE report Aron Head did for us last weekend, Jamie S. Rich and Scott Kurtz also report from the big event in Dallas. Matt Brady was at Heroes Aren’t Hard to Find in Charlotte, while Comic Book Resources had their crew all over the place.
Several retailers have reports from their shops, including Chris Sims, Chris Butcher, Mike Sterling (here and here), Brian Hibbs and our own Carla Hoffman, who also wants you to know she’s seen Iron Man. Both Johanna and Atomic Romance hit multiple stores. Creators reporting on their Saturday include Evan Dorkin, Jeff Parker and Faith Erin Hicks, who did sketches:
No requests to draw Venom or Iron Man, thank goodness. I think I kind of lucked out with that, because I was seated beside this guy who drew in a very superhero-y style (his name was Matt and he did trading cards and I’ve forgotten his last name, dur), so he got the “hey, can you draw Spawn?” requests, and I got to laugh and laugh and be glad I didn’t have to draw Spawn. Spawn sucks! I got several requests for Wonder Woman, one for Aquaman (I made him very hot, it was fun), one for Superman, one for Death and most of the requests were actually for Zombies Calling or Demonology 101 characters, which was fantastic. I was really surprised. A couple of people even brought in their ZC books for me to sign. Very cool. It all went by very quickly, and before I knew it, the whole thing was over and stuff was being packed up.
And what would Free Comic Book Day be without photos of our favorite little stuffed bull? Check’em out here.
