Free Comic Day 2008 (part 2)

Phew, what a tiring weekend! Between going to SM Megamall for the 3-day Weekend Sale (went there 3 times on Fri, Sat and Sunday each), to Robinson's Galleria for the Free Comic Day event and Ironman movie, and then waking up early Sunday for the fun run at U.P. Campus, I wished that Labor Day was today so I can just lie on my bed and sleep all day long! Haha.

The Free Comic Day event was quite successful in that the line to the store was pretty long when I went there with Per at 11:45AM and that line just kept on going until the store's closing time. We actually waited in line for a good 3 hours before we finally got into the store to get the free stuffs. Erico, being an avid comic book fan, lined up as well when we saw him at the mall. Per was also quite patient in taking time to line up with us, as I know she had no interests in comic books (but think she was quite happy with her haul of Beavis & Butthead and Archie comics...too bad she lost her potential Simpsons loot when girl in front of her took the last copy).

Just so the people lining up won't get bored, we each got a raffle number from the store, and every 15 minutes or so, a girl would walk around the line announcing a winning number and the prize: a rare comic book. As luck would have it, Per has a winning raffle number and got a Justice Society issue worth about P600 (based on price tag stuck on comic book plastic by C.O.)!

The scheduled Filipino artists all came here for some sketching, book signing and to give away or sell some of their comic books. I was able to buy the hard to find "TRESE" from Budjette Tan and had him sign it. And because I bought it here, I also got a free poster for this, which of course I also had signed. Costs about Php 140 for the comic book. (For more info on comic book, check out http://babblingpoint.blogspot.com/)

Next, I met with Gerry Alanguilan to get his comic books Elmer and Graphics Classics, which he is giving out for free, and had them signed as well (his website: http://gerry.alanguilan.com/archives/470).

But the biggest highlight for me today was getting the Spawn original art from Edgar Tadeo. It measures about 11" by 17" and pencilled by Philip Tan. As a bonus, Ed gave me a sketch of Spider-Man and IronMan on a backing board.

On the Free Comic Books, the only thing I got from my wishlist was an issue of X-Men as everything else were already taken by the time we got there. It was still quite worthwhile lining up as aside from the 3 Free Comics for each person, I was able to choose 10 more from their boxes and got 7 from Per's allocation as well. So lots of fun reading for me for the weeks to come.

This event was very well organized but realized that the line took a long time to move as people go through the comic book boxes looking at each comic book in it and selecting their top 10 ones. There were about 8 boxes on the tables so you can imagine how long that would take! Hopefully C.O. could address this problem in the future (maybe have fan just look and choose comics from one/two boxes and that's it, or have a separate line for the Free Comic Book special giveaways as those were already arranged and took person about 10 seconds to choose titles vs the 5 minutes average time with all the other boxes).

Still, I applaud staffs for their hardwork and patience in dealing with all these people, and also for the artists who gave time to be with their fans (Leinil Yu dropped by as well for some comic book signings eventhough he wasn't scheduled to appear). Comic Odyssey did a good job for this event by giving away thousands of comics from its own stocks (including those rare ones) to the people who came to visit its store. I'm sure even they were surprised by this turn out as not much announcements other than the blog sites from the internet.

Erico with Per (and her prize winning)

Signed goodies I got from this event (care of Ed, Gerry and Budjette)

Our Free Comics at the end of day.

Interesting Tidbit: While many readers believe the comics for FCBD are given to the shops for free, retailers actually have to pay for them, although at a greatly reduced cost.For example, this year, the All-Star Superman #1 comic that is being offered for FCBD has a cost of $ .25. The FCBD edition of X-Men is $ .20, while Owly and Friends is $ .37. (For comparison purposes, the normal retailer cost of a regular comic book averages around $1.50.) Retailers also pay freight on their FCBD shipments, just as they do with all their comics shipments from Diamond, so the materials they hand out are not free. And when you consider many shops hand out thousands of comics on FCBD, even comics that only cost them a quarter can add up.

As for the Iron Man movie? It was awesome and up to par with the Spider-Man, X-Men franchise. Good thing too as with Marvel comics, it can go either way (with terrible Daredevil, Hulk, Punisher and so-so Fantastic Four). Be sure to stay after end credits for an added scene to the movie (crowd went wild when it was showed).