Saturday, May 1, 2010

Free Comic Book Day, The Holiday Made for Me

I believe that the Friday before FCBD should be a national holiday. I also think it is bad form for anyone to schedule non-FCBD events on FCBD. I should tell that to my 10 year old daughter I guess. She was hosting an event today for her Bronze Award for Girl Scouts. She was teaching a decent sized group of Girl Scouts and their Mothers to make knit hats so that by winter time they can donate them to a local shelter. It is hard for me to argue with that, but I did make sure my oldest and I got to slip out for an hour after it started so that we could hit up my LCS for the festivities. Unfortunately the festivities were just some free comics (three per person), and nothing else. Not even a sale to coincide with the day, or even, say some concerted effort to showcase comics for kids, or the wide variety of comics available, etc.

I think it's a shame to miss an opportunity like this. My LCS tends to be pretty conservative as I have said before in their ordering, etc., but as I have hopefully pointed out equally, it is owned and staffed by some pretty great guys. Regardless of what the shop was doing, everyone had their kids there as far as customers were concerned. As I was walking up to the shop, a dad was pushing a stroller with a toddler in it reading a comic. When I went in, there were two little girls with their dad (I would say both were 6 or under) and they were looking at heroclix naming and discussing all the heroes and villains. The dad was just as proud of his girls as I was of mine when they were little and did similar things. It was heartening to see so many kids excited and feeling welcome in a shop.

I asked to make sure it was ok, and my friends there let me pick up freebies for my youngest as well. I also tried to tell as many people at my daughters event about fcbd. Hopefully at least a few went and checked it out.

Here is what we picked up, although I don't have opinions about them yet:
Atomic Robo (they set this one aside for me)
Iron Man / Nova
Doctor Solar / Magnus
War of the Supermen
Looney Tunes (not labeled fcbd)
Mouse Guard / Fraggle Rock
Shrek / Penguins of Madagascar
Archie
Toy Story
Fractured Fables

So what did I miss out on that was awesome?

Hope everyone had a great day

2 comments:

Benito said...

You missed the John Stanley Grab Bag from Drawn and Quarterly and the Oni Free for All with three great stories in it.

Talkin Bout Comics said...

I would like to have picked up both of those. I think next year I will make a day of it and try to hit as many different shops as I can. Unfortunately there aren't a lot of shops much closer than an hour away from me. I will just need to plan and map things out and make sure both of my girls are available to help