Yesterday's Comics Adventures

Here's a quick rundown on my anecdotal activities on Free Comic Book Day. Well, there's really not that much to talk about. My main complaint is that I couldn't find Free Scott Pilgrim, which was my main target for the day. I got lots of other good comics (I guess--I haven't read them yet, so I don't really know), but not that one. I did check out the new store in my neighborhood (which wasn't quite as close by as I thought, so I drove instead of walked). They've got an attractive store, and it's well laid out. Assuming that they'd have some new people coming in for the occasion, they had some refreshments set up, and they offered a handful of specials themselves (pretty much consisting of the last two issues of selected titles bundled and offered for two dollars off). I took advantage of that to try the new Blue Beetle series that I'd chosen not to buy at full price last month. There was a table of gamers in the corner (and it's a small place, so that probably took up 20-25% of the floor space), but they were relatively unobtrusive. The proprietors were friendly enough, but I did find it odd that they--with their punky haircuts and dye jobs--didn't bother to order ANY SCOTT PILGRIM!! The store itself seemed relatively mainstream, but from the looks of them (I know, I'm a book editor, so I'm well aware of the books and covers dichotomy), I would've expected personal preferences to have included a handful of alternatives. They had some free titles behind the counter (just because they hadn't put them on display--I didn't get the impression that they were actively trying to hide them), so they could've had the Drawn & Quarterly and Fantagraphics offerings, but I forgot to ask specifically about those. Even so, they were very open to special ordering anything I might want, which I understand is a problem in some stores. (I can never understand why a retailer wouldn't want to sell you something, and although I haven't really run into that problem myself--probably because I rarely make special orders--I've heard enough stories to know it's an issue with some comics stores.) Still, I put myself on their mailing list, and although I don't know that I'll drop in terribly frequently, I wish them the best.

The second store I went to was farther away, and I lost a little bit of time driving around looking for it. Even with Mapquest directions, I took a couple of tries before I noticed it from the road and knew what parking lot to turn into. It's in a shopping center, but they've neglected to put their name on the shopping center sign. The store's name is on the wall above the front door, but it might be helpful to put it at the roadside, along with the names of every other store in the shopping center, for any drive-by traffic that might come along. As it doesn't seem to be a neighborhood terribly friendly to pedestrians, I'd guess most of their customers come by car. But as their Website advertised, they've got a fairly substantial stock of back issues. I didn't get into the store until about ten minutes before they were set to close, and it appeared that they were putting whatever Free Comic Book Day paraphernalia they'd had set up away. I was the only person in the store, and there were three staffers, who were in the midst of a conversation about why the cover of DC Comics Presents #16 (a twenty-seven-year-old book, by the way) is lame, so for obvious reasons I didn't want to interrupt them. (The first reason offered was that it was by Ross Andru. Hey, I like Ross Andru! I won't argue that this was his finest hour, but his mere presence doesn't make the cover lame.) I'm not a high-maintenance shopper, and I don't need a lot of attention (in fact, I mostly prefer to do without it), but it doesn't seem too much to ask for some acknowledgment that I've entered your store. But with supers in the windows and on the walls, this didn't seem a likely Scott Pilgrim venue. Earlier I mentioned that I went in about ten minutes before they were going to close, and now I left with about five minutes to go, with ne'er a word uttered by or to me. I'll admit, though, that their back-issue stock was impressive, so the next time I'm looking to fill in some holes, I'll probably be back on their doorstep (although only after I've exhausted all my other local options).

My last comics stop was my normal store, Chicago Comics. It was late in the day, so Scott Pilgrim had already taken his leave from there, too, but I was able to get the offerings from Drawn & Quarterly and Fantagraphics. Scott will turn up one day, I'm sure. The way Free Comic Book Day has gone in years past is that the companies print more than they can give away, so the extra copies show up as party favors at various events throughout the rest of the year. I'm not sure whether or not Oni will have a presence at BookExpo in a couple of weeks, but if they do, there will likely be plenty of Free Scott Pilgrim to be had.

Oh, and if you were interested in the offer from TwoMorrows Publishing that I mentioned here, it's still good through today. It must've been more successful than they'd expected and caused problems with their server yesterday, so they're extending it to give everybody a chance. These are good magazines about comics given away absolutely free, so if you're at all curious, it's worth a look.