free comic book day

So there I was, in the midst of Free Comic Book Day at the shop, processing more comics for distribution to the teeming masses and feeling the rest of my hair go gray, when up comes Matt Digges, the artist fella from the world’s greatest webcomic about an awesome hospital, Awesome Hospital. In his hands was an envelope which he hands to me, saying “this is in appreciation for all the hard work you put into Free Comic Book Day.” I said “uh, thanks!” perhaps a bit hesitantly because 1) what was in the envelope? Whaaat? 2) I actually didn’t recognize Mr. Digges, as it’d been a while since the last time I’d seen him, and when it comes to faces, I have the memory of a goldfish that’s been smacked in the head with a crowbar a few times.

Anyway, here is what was in the envelope…a piece of original Matt Digges art, which looks a little something…like this:

In case you need a little context, here you go.

A big thanks to Matt for this great piece of art! To think that before I came along, hardly anyone had thought about any kind of conjunction between Swamp Thing and the Nancyverse. And now, here we are.

What a world.

As for the rest of our Free Comic Book Day…in past FCBDs, when we opened our doors in the morning, sometimes it would take about an hour or so for the crowds to really start pouring in, which would make me nervous for a few minutes: “oh, man, nobody’s coming in, we’re doomed.” But yesterday, as soon as kicked the door open, the store was almost immediately filled with people. And it pretty much stayed that way ’til the late afternoon, with the exception of one ten or fifteen minute lull where the store was strangely empty.

Ultimately, we gave away a ton of comics, sold a bunch of product, and once again made back our costs and then some. And, most importantly, made a bunch of folks very happy!

I had this conversation more than once:

(Customer with bags of free comics in hand) “So, wait, these are free?”

(Me) “Yup. All free.”

(Customer) “Wait…all them? All these here, that I’m carrying.”

(Me, looking to make sure there aren’t any non-FCBD books): “Yes, those are all free.”

(Customer) “Whoa. Far out, man.”

Very special thanks to Employee Aaron’s girlfriend Kempo, who was a trooper, hanging out all day and running Free Comic Central, the tables from which customers picked up their free books. And to Andres, who stuck around for a couple of hours and helped me process some of the FCBD books into age-appropriate bags for distribution. And to Official Store Cook Dana, who brought us cookies, and to Jorean, for filling in for Kempo briefly so the poor girl could get a break. And to Sam, who performed the occasional miscellaneous store duty so we didn’t have to.

A big thank you goes to customers Rob and Dave, along with known child associates Spenser and Morgan, who made the trip from the far-off and nigh-mythical land of Bakersfield just to enjoy FCBD at our shop. That’s quite the trip, and I certainly appreciate their business. (Yes, “business.” They bought stuff!)

So that was our Free Comic Book Day…nothing unusual (well, aside from that pic above), just busy busy busy.

How was your FCBD experience?

Free Comic Book Day is tomorrow, and I realize I haven’t said a whole lot about it this time around. I’ve said plenty about it in the past, and I just spent a few minutes creating a “free comic book day” category so you can click on that and see my many posts on the topic. But, as always, we’re one of the stores that does Free Comic Book Day right, and I’m reasonably certain that we’ll give away lots and lots of comics and we’ll still make a profit while we do it (thanks to concurrent in-store special sales), like we do every year.

As for the actual comics themselves: Pal Dorian has once again presented his comprehensive review of this year’s offerings, which you can read at the Bureau Chiefs site.

Personally, my favorite free book this year is probably Weathercraft by Jim Woodring, but then I’m already a huge fan of Woodring’s work, so this is sort of preaching to the choir, here. It may be a little too much on the weird side for your average “I’m here for your free comics, give them to me” FCBD attendee, but I’d much rather give someone something weird than something boring.

Other good’uns: the Incorruptible/Irredeemable flipbook from Boom! Studios is a solid introduction to Mark Waid’s superhero universe; Yow! from Drawn & Quarterly is a great sampler for John Stanley’s classic kid comics, like Nancy and Tubby; The Tick #1 – a reprint of the very first, very funny issue of the spoof superhero series by creator Ben Edlund; Bongo Free-for-All presents more funny Simpsons comics, and you can’t really go wrong with these; and Fraggle Rock/Mouse Guard…the Fraggle Rock comic is nicely done, very children’s storybook-y.

Other titles:

War of the Supermen #0 didn’t come with that cover people were getting the vapors over, but the actual comic in question felt…a bit disappointing, to be frank. A little too dark and strangely violent for a Superman comic that we’re supposed to be giving to potential new readers.

Library of American Comics – Can’t help but think they should have gone the same route that Fantagraphics did with their Unseen Peanuts freebie a while back, and put out a Unseen Bloom County comic. Well, maybe not an entire comic of just previously unreprinted Bloom County strips, but a sampler focused mostly on BC with a few sampler pages from their other books might have been more of an attention grabber. (There may be contractual things preventing this I don’t know about, but still…it would have been neat to have an actual Bloom County comic book, don’t you think?)

Overstreet Guide to Collecting Comics – I will concur with my colleague Pal Dorian on this item. Free Comic Book Day is about comics as a storytelling medium, not as a collectible investment.

Iron Man/Nova and Iron Man/Thor – I wonder if there’s an Iron Man movie coming out soon? Anyway, they’re both okay, but it would have been nice to have, say, a Captain America comic to remind people that there still is such a thing, after the very publicized “death” a few years back.

Sonic the Hedgehog – I know these are popular with kids, but I swear to God, showing me a Sonic comic is like trying to get the dog to look at something on a TV screen. It’s just…my mind can’t even wrap around it, you know? This must be what it’s like to be a Newsarama commenter trying to read a Grant Morrison comic.

Anyway, that’s just me. Your mileage may vary, so go to your local comic shop and pick up a few. If you’re lucky enough to be near a store that’ll happily give you all of the FCBD books, get ’em all! What the hell, they’re free. And if you don’t like some of them…pass them on!

• • •
Speaking of the Bureau Chiefs, which I was several paragraphs ago, you may have missed this entry I made just prior to my End of Civilization post, with some weekend convention news involving some of my fellow Chiefs.

Okay, let me finally say a few things about your comments re: Free Comic Book Day.

I should note right off that I’m not going to get on any store’s case about limiting the number of books each person gets. With the economy as it is, and the comics industry in particular taking a pretty good hit, I can’t really hold that against anyone. Yes, we did do our usual “everyone gets every comic” deal (with only “age-appropriateness” restrictions – details here) like we have for every previous FCBD, but also like in previous years, an in-store sale on the same day more than made up for the cost. But I realize not every store can do this, and so as long as 1) they gave away comics for free (i.e. not “only with purchase,” which is totally against the spirit of FCBD) and 2) made an event of it (instead of just dumping the freebies in the box by the door with a tiny sign that says “FREE”), I’m not going to give anyone any grief.

Now to specific comments:

• Anonymous wrote
  

  “Some stores will give costumers the available comics free,
  but then charge TWO CENTS per comic in SALES TAX!

  WHAT’S UP WITH THAT?”

  I honestly have no idea. Maybe there’s some local tax ordinance requiring it or something? That barely seems worth the effort unless they’re legally required to do so…or think they’re required to do so, which could also be the issue here.

• Old internet pal Lankyguy asks
  

  “I’ve always thought the point was to bring in NEW customers, so I stay away. I’m already buying the few comics I want.”

  Well, it’s a little o’this, a little o’that. Yes, we want new customers to try out comics…I’ve said before that the goal in some cases is simply to make people aware that 1) comics are still being published, 2) there might be some comics they’d actually like, and 3) hey, if you ever need any comics, well, here we are! But FCBD is also useful for getting the already-converted to try out new and different titles. Sales on comics like Queen & Country and Courtney Crumrin, for example, bumped upward quite a bit to our regular customers following the FCBD exposure.

• Eric L comments
  

  “My local store was neither terribly exciting nor terribly disappointing. It was pretty crowded, but if the guy in line in front of me was any indication (he took way more than his allotment of freebies but only actually spent $2) I’m not sure how much good it did beyond attracting free loaders.”

  Well, I try not to think of it as “freeloading,” as such. We went into this with the thought that “we’re going to give away all these comics for free.” If people came in, got free comics, and left, that was pretty much that. Free Comic Book Day means “free comics,” and no one who came into the store was obligated to do anything more than pick up the free stuff. So, you know, we knew what we were getting into, and that’s okay. That we had a sale that encouraged people to look around the store at least briefly, and got several people to spend lots of money…that was simply a bonus.

  “How do most stores handle handing them out? At my store you could grab 2 FCBD freebies and 2 more from a box of surplus comics they had laying around. It sounded alright to me until I heard of stores just letting people take one of everything.”

  It sounded like a lot of stores only let customers take a limited number of the FCBD books, like 2 or 3 out of the 40 different titles available. In our case, where we gave away one of each (again, per age requirements) to everyone, we handled things a little differently.

  We had tables set up at the front of the store, with the pre-bagged age-sorted assortments of the free books behind it. We also had extras of all the books laid out on the tables, so if people didn’t want the whole enchilada handed to them, they could just pick out the ones they wanted. We limited folks to one of each comic per customer, but we were pretty good about letting even that limit slide if they needed an extra copy or two of something for anyone back home, or for a friend who couldn’t make it in. We’re lucky, in that most of our customers are pretty cool about it, and don’t get greedy and try to make off with a pile of Owly or anything.

  This particular FCBD was much busier than in previous years, so it became apparent part way through the day that the continued pre-bagged distribution of the freebies was going to run us dry right quick, so we debagged the comics, laid them out on the tables with the other extras, and just let people pick and choose in order to stretch the stock out a bit. Still, at the end of the day we had less than one Diamond shipping box of leftovers, from the dozens of FCBD boxes we’d originally received.

• Bully, the little stuffed bull what loves the funnybooks, asks
  

  “What sort of free comic would you produce if you were making one for FCBD? What would you like to see produced that maybe isn’t being done?”

  Specifically, this year I would have liked to have seen a Star Trek comic from IDW, given the current excitement over the impending release of the new film. Ah, well.

  But in general? …I think more self-contained stories, rather than books that lead into continuing sagas. Granted, most of the FCBD books are pretty good about this. However, you’re not going to “trick” or coerce a new reader into coming in and buying all the follow-up trade paperbacks because you gave him or her 2/3rds of the first issue of Ultimate Spider-Man (which Marvel actually did for the first FCBD, if I remember correctly). If the comic is good, that’d be enough to get the reader back in, and a self-contained story I think would leave the reader a little more satisfied than something without an ending.

• Mike Z. asks
  

  “Would you happen to have an Owly copy left?”

  Alas, we did run out. Owly is a popular title every FCBD. This reminds me to note, however, that we did just reorder more copies of Blackest Night #0 yesterday, since we’re getting a lot of after-the-fact requests for that comic.

  We also have a lot of people looking for the Aliens/Predator comic, but there are no more to be had from the distributor, unfortunately.

• Jonboy has this to say

  “Ultimately, I’ve had mixed feelings about the FCBD books in the past. They are either not kid friendly (which all FCBD books should be, IMO), or they are some oddball book that no LCS orders enough of.”

  
  This year the books were intended to be, if not outright kid friendly, at least not filled with swearing and naked people, to avoid any legal hassles should one of the wrong books get into the wrong hands. There’s nothing wrong I think with having some FCBD books aimed at older readers, so long as there’s some discretion on the part of the retailers in distribution. Again, there wasn’t anything too objectionable this time around, but, for example, it didn’t seem likely to us that any 6 year olds were going to be terribly interested in William Shatner Presents, so we didn’t put any of those in the kids bags.

  And we always try to order heavy on the oddball books, as invariably those are the ones that grab the most interest!

• Philip sez
  

  “My shop was limiting guests to two of the Free books, but the clerk also shoved about eight other free non-FCBD books in my hand while I was standing there, but then chastised me for taking an FCBD book because ‘You already have a ton of books in your hand.’ Wha-?”

  I think that clerk violated my “don’t be a dick” rule for FCBD. If the limit was two FCBD books, then you should have been allowed them, regardless of how many other non-FCBD freebies were forced upon you.

• J Joyce wonders
  

  “…Should not the books be free to the shop?”

  It’d be nice, certainly, but if they were entirely free, I can see some stores totally abusing that and ordering thousands upon thousands of everything and letting the publishers eat the whole cost. By putting a nominal charge on the books, it still allows large orders for low costs, but requires retailers to order realistically within a budget, and not just place crazy go-wild orders for all the freebies with no cost risk to themselves.

• David says
  

  “Saturday was my first FCBD. The store I went to let me have 4 free comics with a $5 purchase from the 50-cent bin. The guy in front on me in line bought $80 of new comics and back issues. They let him have five free comics.”

  If they’re tying FCBD distribution to purchase levels, that store is doing it wrong. It’s free period, not “free with purchase.”

• Juisarian tells us
  

  “I ended up spending $92 on Free Comic Book Day. Now that’s a promotion.”

  Amen to that, my friend. Like I said, purchases aren’t required to get your free comics, but brother, nowadays they sure as hell were appreciated.

Overall, it sounds like most people were pretty happy with Free Comic Book Day, and that they found some books to enjoy. I know our event was even more successful than last year, with more comics given away and more money spent at our sale. It’s a long tiring day, requiring lots of set-up and planning, but it’s always worth it.

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In other news:

• Well, gosh darn it, I was going to link to Matt Maxwell’s contest giveaway for his great graphic novel Murder Moon, but I didn’t realize the deadline was last midnight. So instead I shall link you to his site where you can learn more about his work, and to the Robot 6 archives where you can read his book Strangeways: The Thirsty for free, with new pages posted regularly!
• If you like the Diamond Previews overviews, like my own End of Civilization posts, then perhaps you may be interested in pal Dorian’s Previews for Gays, in which he rightfully admonishes the straight people, and in pal Dave’s own overview, where he praises what needs to be praised, and scorns what is deserving of scorn. What more can any man ask, I say.
• In case you missed it, I was interviewed for the Kirk-centric Star Trek podcast with the greatest name ever, “Look at His Butt.” You can listen to me babble incoherently to two very kind and patient women right here.

Okay, finally got together my links to my previous discussions of Free Comic Book Day…they’ll probably migrate into somewhere in the sidebar for easy access:

2004: 1

2005: 1 2

2006: 1 2 3 4

2007: 1 2

2008: 1 2 3 4 5

Not much to add this time beyond what I’ve said before. We gave away nearly every FCBD book we had for this year, and business appeared to have been up from last year. No major problems, everyone seemed happy, Dana (kid sister of former employee Nathan #2) brought us cupcakes and soda, pal Dorian brought us cheeseburgers and fries, and a couple of readers of my site (hi guys!) came out all the way from Bakersfield to enjoy FCBD at our shop.

So, all in all, another successful Free Comic Book Day. Again, like I said, I don’t have any new insights about the event this year, but if you have any questions or observations for me, please drop ’em in the comments section. (Just keep in mind I’ve already answered the “does it bring in new business” question.) Also, I did manage to get in some “live-Tweeting” of the day on my Twitter thingie. Includes a completely unnecessary Blackhawk battle-cry and gratuitous references to the rock band Foreigner. I’M DESTROYING INTERNET DISCOURSE.

Also, I’m curious as to what your favorite FCBD offering was this year. I’m a bit partial to the John Stanley Nancy/Melvin the Monster giveaway, myself, but you probably guessed that.

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I haven’t forgotten about Galactus Week, though we have had seven days in a row of Galactus posting here. I think I still have a thing or two to say about the fella, so I’ll try to do that Monday to wrap up.

Today’s the day! Mosey on over to your local funnybook store and get your free comics! And think good thoughts for folks like me, who’ll be on the other side of the counter surveying the mayhem.

Also, in case you missed it…my scheduled post for yesterday is finally up, after Blogger’s 24-hour-long publishing outage which affected a large number of its users…including, of course, yours truly. I apologize for the interruption in the regular delivery of your required daily doses of iron-fortified Progressive Ruin.

• Released at last! America’s finest comic book:
  
  TALES DESIGNED TO THRIZZLE #5
  This one’s heavy on the Twain and Einstein, but also contains many other features of interest and amusement. Download a four-page preview at the link, there.

  And for those of you who need a little convincing to try something that’s not from DC or Marvel: it’s a “Dark Reign” crossover. Also, Batman is in it. No, really, you should buy it and check it out. I wouldn’t lie to you.

• It’s both what you want and what you need! It’s the third and final chapter THE CHRONICLES OF SOLOMON STONE issue #1, as revealed by Solomon Stone’s secret helpers Chris Sims, Matthew Allen Smith, and Benjamin Birdie. Read it for free! Heck, read it naked! I mean, if you’re home alone, and not looking at this on your iPhone while riding the train or anything.
• We received the balance of our books for Free Comic Book Day, coming May 2nd to a shop near you, and hopefully that shop won’t screw it up by making the books only “free with purchase” or something stupid like that. Er, anyway…now that I’ve had a good look at all the books: this is a pretty nice, balanced selection this time around, I think.

  One of the better books to look out for is Drawn & Quarterly’s Nancy/Melvin the Monster flip-book, featuring John Stanley’s fine cartooning printed in color on faux-yellowed pages. It looks fantastic. Fantagraphics has a fine Love & Rockets sampler, and Bongo, as always, presents a great package of their Simpsons comics, and those are always a big hit. Boom Studios is putting out a freebie for their Cars series, based on the animated film, and I’m curious to see what reaction to that will be like from our younger customers.

  But overall, quality seems to be a bit higher across the board for the freebies this year. And every year we get increasingly larger crowds at the shop for the event, so I’m anticipating a day of slightly-controlled mayhem weekend after next. So drop by…see how much grayer Mike’s hair is at the end of the day!

  Also, I was interviewed over the phone for the local paper regarding FCBD a week or so ago, but I don’t think the article’s been printed yet. I wanted to tell the reporter all the stuff I’ve been telling you folks on my site for the past five years about FCBD, but I think all that came out was “DUH COMICS FREE COME GETTUM.” Hopefully a little friendly editing will make that into something coherent.

  EDIT: The article is now online.

So my initial response to the new Star Wars: Clone Wars cartoons may have been a bit hasty. When I first saw the trailers for the theatrical release, I thought it looked terrible, with ugly character designs. Well, the humans still look a bit awkward, as CGI humans tend to, but…the look of the series has since grown on me.

And it’s more than just the look. While the feature film (actually, three or four episodes edited together, I believe) was a bit much to take at once, the episodic adventures, at about 20 minutes per, are just the right length. It’s the strongest aspects of Star Wars (the exciting action, the bizarre worlds and aliens) without the worst aspects (the unconvincing love stories, the attempts at expanding characterizations beyond two dimensions…or even one). It’s probably the most successful attempt yet at emulating the old movie serials that partially served as inspiration for this franchise.

Additionally, there’s the aspect of just when this series is taking place…between Episodes II and III. We know what happens in III (and in case you don’t — here come some SPOILERS): the clone army is given the command to kill all the Jedi, and Anakin finally gives in to the Dark Side of the Force. The impending sense of doom and irony pervades this series, as the Jedis are allied with the clone army, giving them advice, saving their lives, complimenting their skill, and so on…basically, the Jedi are feeding their own defeat.

And then there’s Anakin young Padawan in the series, Ahsoka, who…well, most Jedi meet their makers in Episode III, aside from Ben and Yoda, who go into hiding. I suppose Ahsoka could make it out alive, too…but dramatically, it would make the most sense for her to be killed by Anakin. Of course, this’ll never be shown, otherwise you’d have the parents of many a traumatized child writing in to Lucasfilm, but that’s my guess for the character’s eventual fate.

Anyway, I’ve been enjoying Clone Wars, mostly for the action and visuals, but at least partially for the feeling of dread. Oh, and for that one scene where R2D2 fights to the death with an evil astromech unit. That was pretty awesome.

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A couple of things about Free Comic Book Day:

EDIT: 0. Apparently the Free Comic Book Day site is coming up as a “reported attack site,” and even a Google search has the “this site may harm your computer” caveat attached to the results. No idea what’s going on, there, but I’m changing the link to the Wikipedia article for now.

1. Had a mom and her kid tell me they’re going to make a two hour drive to come to our shop for FCBD because 1) they weren’t happy with the event at their local stores, and 2) they’d heard and read good reviews about how we handled things. That’s pretty gratifying, though I suspect (judging by some of the things she mentioned — specifically, detailing how we distributed the books — and that she identified blogs as one of her sources) one of the “reviews” may have been my account of the event, so tooting my own horn has paid off, perhaps. But anyway, it’s a bit amusingly sad that an event designed for customer outreach can have the result of driving said customers away to other shops. That’s colloquially known as “Doing It Wrong.”

I suppose, technically, it is having the intended effect of getting people into shops, but still.

2. A few people still seem to think that FCBD is something that our store created and just our store is doing. I emphasize that it’s an industry-wide thing (theoretically) and that we’ll be giving away newly-publishd comics specifically provided by multiple publishers…and not just handing out books pulled from our bargain boxes (which some folks appear to think).

It’s not as many as in previous years, so word about the event is still spreading.

3. Still hearing too many people read the advertising tagline “1ST SATURDAY IN MAY” as “oh, it’ll be on May 1st.” I’m doing my darned best to correct everyone I hear saying that.

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This week’s logo banner is brought to you by reader Matthew Allison, who also provided this terrifying callback to that Sgt. Shark ad I posted a couple of months ago:

Yes, the parrot does have an eyepatch.

I am not terribly happy about what I’ve been hearing about how some stores treated their Free Comic Book Days. Way to make a sow’s ear out of a silk purse, guys.

Really, people, it isn’t all that difficult. Free Comic Book Day attracts a lot of media attention This is the day that people…people aside from your regulars…might actually seek out a comic book store. This is your chance to make an impression, to expose these newcomers to what comics have to offer, to demonstrate that a comic book store can be a friendly, fun place, that we’re just normal people trying to make a living.

A lot of stores did it right. We did. Chris Sims’ store did. I’m sure The Isotope did, since James Sime is a smart, happenin’ guy (not to mention a snappy dresser). Carla did the right thing, too. Brett‘s local store had it goin’ on as well.

Unfortunately, however, too many comic book stores suck. This post of mine didn’t come out of nowhere, after all.

A lot of people going to comic shops for the first time on Free Comic Book Day saw dirty, disorganized stores with indifferent, if not outright hostile, employees, only the barest acknowledgment that FCBD even was happening, and a pathetic selection and distribution of free books. (EDIT: A friend just reminded me of his local shop, which SHUT DOWN in the middle of FCBD so the employees could go see Iron Man. LAME.) The person who described his shop’s method of display as basically being just piling a couple of random stacks on a counter, and making you search through them for the ones you want…that just blew my mind. It really doesn’t take much to make the day a special event. Retailers were even offered preprinted BALLOONS for use in the shops, for God’s sake. Nothing says “festive” like balloons!

Okay, I didn’t remember to put the balloons up in our store. I was busy, and totally forgot. But by God, we were festive anyway.

I was going to go through and list, point by point, all the crap things I’ve been hearing about how some stores treated their FCBD event. In particular, if your treatment of customers on FCBD, a day specifically designed as customer outreach, causes you to lose those people as customers, you’re doing it wrong.

But, instead, let me, yet again, go through and tell you what we did. Maybe we can lead by example:

• Divided up the FCBD comics into three age-appropriate bags: one for kids, one for teens, one for adults. If you got all three bags, you got one of each FCBD book, while supplies lasted.
• Cleaned and vacuumed.
• Set up large tables at the front of the shop, where we laid out the prepackaged bags of comics, as well as stacks of extra books in case people just wanted a few, and not the whole enchilada.

  We also set up a small shelf with selections of FCBD books from previous years.

• Made sure the table was monitored at all times, so that we could maintain the only limitations we put on the distribution of the comics: one of each per customer, and no age-inappropriate books for younger readers. (We would occasionally let some people slide if they wanted an extra copy or two of something for somebody who couldn’t make it…hey, so long as they weren’t grabbing 25 copies of say, Hellboy, it was fine.)
• In response to Rocco‘s question: we just put a few of the Heroclix and Star Wars figures out at a time, and made sure that each customer got only one of each. (They went over well enough…I didn’t think the Iron Man Heroclix were as appealing as previous years’ offerings…the sculpt seemed a bit rough…but hey, people wanted the Iron Man stuff.)
• Had in-store sales: 10% off graphic novels, four for the price of three on manga. 10% doesn’t sound like much, but even a little break like that encouraged sales. And during special events, I’ve noticed, particularly at ones where folks are having a good time, people feel a little more free to open up the pocketbooks. Not that that was my ulterior motive for making sure people were enjoying themselves…I want people to like coming to our store, especially if it’s their first visit. I can always shake them down when they come back.

  But encouraging extra sales on a day when you’re giving away hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars’ worth of product is a good idea, and not that hard to do. Even a small discount, like I noted, can help. In our case, the sales on graphic novels alone that day more than paid for what we spent on the FCBD books. And we had a lot of the FCBD books.

  By the way, pal Sean came in, swearing up and down he was only at the shop to get the free books, and had in fact promised the wife he wouldn’t spend any money.

  He ended up buying fifty dollars’ worth of books. SUCH IS THE POWER OF FREE COMIC BOOK DAY. (Sorry, Yvonne…it wasn’t my fault, I swear!)

• We were attentive to customers…answered questions, showed folks around the shop, were very, very patient with one or two people, and just generally tried to be friendly with everyone. Well, we try that every day, with varying degrees of success, but with new people coming in, you want to impress, right? Once they get used to us, then the abuse can begin.

  Anyway, there was a great deal of laughter and happy chatter going around, particularly with the Iron Man high most people were on, having either seen the film prior to coming to the shop, or they were on their way to the film, or perhaps between multiple viewings. The excitement over the Iron Man film really did help.

• And there are some things that we didn’t do this year, but have done in the past, like having in-store signings or distributing coupons in the FCBD baggies.

Ultimately, the success of a store’s Free Comic Book Day is in treating the day like a special event to be enjoyed, and not just a burden to be endured, like I’ve heard about too many stores this year. Yeah, I know I grumble a bit about preparing for it here on my site, but it really is a fun, if enormously busy, day. And while the long-term effects of FCBD are still being debated, whether it really does increase readership and attract new customers, it’s not as if there’s too much of a downside to having a bunch of people come away from your store happy, with an armload of free comic books that you’ve given them.

Some notes and comments from our Free Comic Book Day boondoggle:

• The store remained solidly busy through the majority of the day, up until about the last hour or so. Lots of kids, lots of unfamiliar faces. No “are these free?” questions regarding our new arrival racks, and thus tragic deaths were avoided.

  We were much busier than we were planning for, and our 2008 FCBD supply was getting a little sparse about halfway through the workday. Luckily we had leftovers from previous FCBDs to supplement our giveaways…and we gave away plenty of those older books. We even gave away the few copies of last year’s Spider-Man book we had left. Why, we could have sold those for $20 a pop!

• The topic of conversation of the day was, of course, the new Iron Man movie (which I haven’t seen yet — shooting for Monday — but I now know the last line of the film and the post-credits surprise). Reaction appeared to be overwhelmingly positive…even pal Dorian thought it was excellent. And, as I was thinking might happen, we had a large number of film-fueled requests for Iron Man comics, new and old. The FCBD Iron Man/Hulk/Spider-Man book was a popular item, and we even sold out of our copies of Marvel Adventures: Iron Man comics. We never sell out of Marvel Adventures: Iron Man.

  Whether this unusual post-movie demand will last long enough to help along sales on next week’s Invincible Iron Man debut…well, we’ll see.

• Speaking of pal Dorian…he brought us cookies. Thanks, Dorian!
• Aside from anything involving Iron Man, it seemed like there was a lot of demand for the Simpsons comics. The previous years’ Bongo Comics offerings were extremely popular, and I had to restock them a few times. Which reminds me…when I was looking at FCBD news stories for yesterday’s post, I ran across a story or two listing the types of comics available, and the Simpsons comic was referred to only as “Bongo Comics,” with no mention of the Simpsons at all. Given that the general public doesn’t know that “Bongo Comics” = “Simpsons,” that just felt like a lost opportunity for free advertising of a commodity known to a non-comic reading audience.
• I had what I thought was a pretty good story about a customer who wanted comics that featured the art of Roy Lichtenstein. As in “story by Gardner Fox, art by Roy Lichtenstein and Sid Greene.” But it turns out I misunderstood, and she was actually looking for comics that Lichtenstein…borrowed from. Ah, well.
• We had a couple of minor special deals during our event. We offered a small discount on trade paperbacks for the day, and had a “buy 3, get a 4th free” deal on manga. Had a few takers on the manga, but we sold a boatload of trades…it doesn’t take much of a break on prices to get people to give the shelves a second glance.

  Ultimately, we not only took in enough scratch to pay for all the FCBD books, but, if we were to subtract the subtract the FCBD day costs from our end-of-day total, that still amounts to an excellent Saturday take. Finally, those solid-gold pants will be mine, mine!

• During one of our busy times of the day, Customer Rob (hi, Rob!) was trying to convince a friend of his to give the Spirit a try, and asked me for a quick description of the character. I was sorta pressed for time, and had multiple demands on my attention, so the best I could do was “More Cheery Batman.”

  I don’t know…for a spur-of-the-moment thing, I thought that was pretty good.

• Pal Nat dropped by, resplendent in his Licensable Bear™ t-shirt…and you can get one too! A shirt, I mean, not Nat. I think. That’d be between you and him, frankly.
• As I’ve explained many times before, we pack the free comics into bags for ease of distribution to customers. Employee Aaron reported that one customer took a bag, looked inside, flipped through the comics, and handed the bag back without taking a single book. Geez, not even for free, huh?
• Internet buddy Lankyguy asks
  

  “I’m curious, does it really bring in any new readers? Does it accomplish anything besides some P.R.?”

  That’s something I covered in lengthy detail in this FCBD aftermath post from last year, when I was asked a similar question. In fact, I’ll just reprint it here, in this post, as my answer hasn’t changed much, and I’ll save you the clicky-clicky:

  “Well, on the actual day of Free Comic Book Day…yes, lots of new faces show up, because not a person around doesn’t like something that’s free (unless it’s, like, ‘free measles,’ or ‘free punch in the nose,’ or ‘free Team Youngblood’).

  But by ‘new customer’ you probably mean ‘new regular visitors to the funnybook store,’ the answer to which is a qualified ‘no.’ We did get some new regular customers out of past FCBDs, but they represented only a small fraction of the new folks who actually came in for free books.

  But that’s okay…we don’t have to turn every new person who walked in the door that day into a New Comics Day zombie. The results of FCBD are more longterm than immediate, anyway…it gets the word out that, hey, comic books are still being published, and that they can be a viable source of entertainment. Okay, mileage may vary with some of the offerings this year, but with the sheer number of books being given away, surely most people found at least one comic they kinda liked. And our already-existing clientele invariably will find something new to try out.

  Plus, it’s great advertising…if some of those folks find themselves with some kind of comic-related need, perhaps they’ll think of that swell comic shop that was giving out the free funnybooks, and they’ll come back to us. And it’s good public relations…we had a lot of happy customers that day, most of whom thanked us profusely for the books we were giving away.

  And it’s the gift that keeps on giving, as I’m preparing packages of some of the leftover books for some local teachers and at least one doctor…and, as always, a big bunch of comics for my girlfriend to give away to the Sunday school class she teaches.

  So, um…to answer your question, perhaps it doesn’t immediately create new regular customers, but FCBD perhaps helps to create an environment from which new customers may arise, by increasing in some small way a general awareness of comics. My, that’s high-falutin’ of me, ain’t it? Not to mention optimistic.”

  The only real update is that I don’t have too many leftovers this time around.

• Pal Tom notes his troubles trying to get his FCBD funnybooks, and has (as does the aforementioned customer Rob) a newfound appreciation for our store’s kindness and generosity. At least on Free Comic Book Day…the rest of the year, we’re jerks.

  Seriously, though…we certainly have room for improvement at our shop, but I think, at least when it comes to Free Comic Book Day, we manage to get things mostly right. If I could have changed anything this time around, it would have been having more of this year’s selections to give away. But we managed to make a lot of people happy, so it all worked out in the end.

I’m sure I’m missing something…if I come up with anything else once the traumatic amnesia passes, I’ll let you folks know.

However, if you have your own comments and questions about FCBD, please feel free to leave them in the comments, and I’ll reply with a rambling, barely-informative post in the near future.

Your local funnybook store is hopefully giving away free comic books today, so drop on by and grab a few. With any luck your store will be one that’s making an event out of it and handing out tons of comics to everyone who walks into the shop, and not simply dumping a bunch in a disused short box by the front door with a little “FREE” sign on it (like someone told me about one of his local stores a couple of years back).

And, as noted here yesterday, you don’t even have to go to your shop in costume. But if you do, you know I want to hear about it.

Other related news stories of the day:

• Teaching the wrong lesson: “Free comics, good investment; Both collectors and store owners benefiting from comic book giveaway”
  

  “Several publishing companies offer free titles, ranging from reprints of popular books to all-new issues only available on Free Comic Book Day.

  “A Spider-Man title from last year ended up playing an important part of the ongoing storyline, and is now worth about $20.

  “Another hot item was Dark Horse’s ‘Umbrella Academy,’ also in the $20 range now.”

• I see that word’s been going around that there are comic books for everybody:
  

  “Tallahassee comic-book shops are giving away free comics Saturday. Superhero fans can pick up the free books as part of the annual Free Comic Book Day, a national event.”

• This article (“No ka-boom! for comics retailers”) discusses the fact that blockbuster superhero movies don’t translate to comic sales….something I may have discussed once or twice in the past.
  

  “Over the next three days, a few hundred thousand Americans are expected to show up at theaters for the premiere weekend of Iron Man, based on the Marvel Comics character. If only the country’s 3,000 comics stores could entice even a small percentage of them into their shops.”

• Aspen Comics to debut new series on FCBD, will lead to about a half dozen different #0s and #1s, plus many multiple covers; only about a 10% chance said series will ever reach an issue number in the double-digits.
• Chris Sims warned me about this article: “POW! Stores giving away free comic books Saturday”
  

  “That’s right — FREE! BIFF! BOOM! POW! All you have to do is stroll into a participating store and ask for one.”

  Oh, man.

• And now, the single greatest headline relating to Free Comic Book Day that you’re going to see:

  “This Weekend: Marijuana, Free Comic Book Day and Midget Kiss”

  Dude…that’d be the best Free Comic Book Day event at a comic shop ever.