Comic Heaven on FCBD 2007 !
 

 

Saturday 5 May was the 6th annual Free Comic Book Day and celebrated in Cape Town at Readers Den Comic Shop. The day can only be described as PHENOMENAL !!! Before the official opening time of 9am quite a crowd of fans had already gathered. At 9am an excited crowd started the frenzy, grabbing bargains galore ! The word stampede was mentioned more than once :) The lucky draw as usual was the biggest attraction. With crossed fingers, many customers scored with loads of cool prizes - graphic novels, limited edition comics & action figures!

Our costumed super-heroes were once again out in force : Spider-Man (taking time off from making block-buster movies :) and Captain America ( a suprise comeback from the dead :P also here was Batgirl and a Jedi Knight !!

Of course the free comics were flowing out the door at a steady pace with still some surprised looks from people not expecting the comics to be free with no obligation to buy ! Spiderman and  the Transformers comic were gone by early afternoon, and the offerings from Dark Horse, Bongo, Aspen and Virgin proved very popular. All the How-To-Draw issues were gone by the end of the day.  

Our outside sale area was packed for the entire day and by closing time the tables were very much empty. This years extra pay-point helped a great deal although still fairly long lines were evident . Yet everyone was patient waiting to be helped.

Unlike previous years, we had no media coverage prior to the day, although a reporter and photographer from a major regional newspaper did cover the event. The article appeared in the paper the next day.

The day in numbers :

4 costumed characters
10 FCBD "300 " t-shirts given away
11 Readers Den staff helping on the day 
15 Spider-Man 2 movie adaptations given away
50 muffins given away before 9 am
50 copies of local comic Mzanzi given away
200 Hong Restuarant 20% off vouchers handed out
300 packets of Pretzels handed out
450 discount vouchers given out
800 free comics given away
5000 rands ( $700 ) worth of prizes given away

An all round fun & festive day which can only be compared to a mini comic convention !!!

We look forward to FCBD 2008 :)