Some FCBD stuff.
So I spent my Thursday afternoon unpacking and sorting the Free Comic Book Day books…approximately one quadrillion of them, give or take a trillion.
Okay, maybe I exaggerate slightly, but I was hip-deep in thousands of the things, and the whole time I was thinking about the other retailers I’ve read comments from, who balked at the fifty buck buy-in in order to participate. I mean, we got more than fifty bucks’ worth of just the Gumby giveaway.
I haven’t had much of a chance to look through this year’s offerings, but Owly, as always, is a quality item, and the Nexus book is a sight for sore eyes, after being gone from the stands for too long. It’s mostly reprints, catching readers up on the character, but features a few preview pages for the new series.
Unseen Peanuts from Fantagraphics is a fine package, not only featuring (as the title may imply) strips previously unreprinted until Fantagraphics’ recent Complete Peanuts series, but also provides commentary for several of the strips. It sorta makes me wish there was a Complete Annotated Peanuts, but I think producing the Complete Peanuts just by itself is causing enough gray hair and headaches.
By the way, a quick look at the eBay once again reveals people selling this year’s FCBD offerings. Someone’s even selling a complete bag of the Star Wars Clone Wars miniature figures…they ordered the bag for FCBD, got it in from Diamond, and immediately tossed it on the eBay as is. Now that’s just a shame.
For the first Spider-Man movie, I was informed in no uncertain terms by my girlfriend, whose favorite comic book character is ol’ Web-head, that “penalties will ensue” if we did not see the film on opening night. After driving from theatre in theatre in a panic, desperately trying to find a showing that hadn’t sold out, we managed to luck onto a 10:45 PM screening that still had a few seats left. And that’s why I live to tell the tale today.
Anyway, I’ve learned my lesson, and for Spider-Man 2, I bought the tickets about a month ahead of time. For Spider-Man 3…I’d almost let it slip by me, but last Monday I swung by the theatre for tickets for a late evening showing on the film’s May 4th debut.
I totally forgot that May 5th was Free Comic Book Day, which means I’m going to have to get to the store early to prep things for the event. I may be one tired funnybook salesman that day, it seems.
