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| Sarge's Comics |
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Free Comic Book Day at Sarge’s Comics
New London, CT was a rollicking success!
This is our sixth year of participation and the turnout was incredible. It was difficult to get an accurate count but estimates of between fifteen hundred and two thousand people came for the festivities! Here is a link to our photo gallery. Lots
of fun characters there including Shrek and
She-Ra:
Small versions of all the photos are
available on the site. Simply click on the
photo and you will have sizing choices below
each. Thanks for looking. feel free to use
any images if you like.
We had a nice array of Indy creators
including: Steve Ahlquist & Chris
Reilly, co creators of Strange eggs &
four time Harvey award nominees for
Puphedz,
Randall Ensley, winners L.Ron Hubbard’s
Illustrator of the future contest.
http://www.pbase.com/harpozep/image/78442164
Walter Greatshell, Artist of Strange
eggs and author of Xombies
http://www.pbase.com/harpozep/image/78442159
Stefan Blitz , Editor-in-Chief of the
pop-culture website forcesofgood.com
http://www.pbase.com/harpozep/image/78421052
Professor William H Foster, author of
Looking for a Face Like Mine. A series
of
essays on changing image of Black people in American society as seen through American Comic books. http://www.pbase.com/harpozep/image/78439552
Elaine Mills a caricature artist on hand
doing free sketches. She had quite the
queue!
http://www.pbase.com/harpozep/image/78433638
Members of Earth detachment 501’st Conn
Squad Garrison were on hand for photos
and revelry.
http://www.pbase.com/harpozep/image/78421026 Olde Time Wrastler Ox Baker commanded the sidewalk: http://www.pbase.com/harpozep/image/78433679
Over fifty people showed and stayed in
costume, which was an incredible sight
to
behold! Though you could imagine, it was a challenge to photograph. Here is a try with around forty-two cosplayers: http://www.pbase.com/harpozep/image/78421024
Shrek and She-Ra made folks laugh, even
themselves:
http://mailcenter.comcast.net/wmc/v/wm/464545E9000972C7000003D522007358349F0A960
19F9D0E08?cmd=Compose&sid=c0&js=yes&popup=yes#
Save as draft
We gave out over fifteen thousand comic
books during the event and the preceding
weeks. Earlier give away /promotions included a stand with stickered comics and flyers at a local office superstore, as well as a nice display and FCBDAY bags with two stickered comics in each given to patrons at the local multiplex theater.
Many free comics were given out at
Blockbuster stores in two cities. Pizza
parlors were giving them out (with sticker and flyer ) to patrons. Speaking of Pizza, we ordered twenty party sized Pizzas for all participants and had a great feast of sorts!
We also ran our annual 50% off back
issue sale, and various discounts on
different product lines throughout the store. Our Warhammer section seemed particularly busy!
I have read success stories of other
retailers and their local school
systems/libraries. We keep trying with mixed results. My daughter’s elementary school will not give any comics out to their students since the Principal thinks it would be helping a business. In a neighboring city, I was able to give out fourteen hundred comics with stickers and flyers to their Junior High students. The Principal in that district loved the idea. So it goes….
I think the recent quote from
Congressman
Dutch
Ruppersberger may help in future
ice breaking intro meetings with
libraries and school officials. I know
our store could do better in this area.
As great as the event was, I do know
some shoplifting occurred with so many
folks reentering the store with free
Comic Bags filled with free loot, etc.
This year we had a large sign directing
folks to the area which had specific
free comics and we let them take their
share and sometimes more.
I’m reticent to make folks buy something
to qualify for free comics, but perhaps
we should
tie in, say any more than fifteen free
ones with a purchase of five dollars or
more. Dunno, that seems like more work
than it is worth and ads a bit of dour
policing to the mix.
We ordered one thousand Unseen Peanuts.
They went over well, but I have not seen
even one of the Fantagraphics Peanuts
Libraries move from our store. I wonder
how many people I sent to Borders for
that series?
We did have our work cut out for us in
the week preceding the event as we had
to sticker all the books and flyer many
thousands of them. Then we had to get
the early flyered ones into their
destinations early enough to have an
impact on folks so they could learn of
the event and plan accordingly.
We also canvassed
through radio ads and newspaper print
ads. This is about half our advertising
budget for the year. Our cost was around
ten thousand with cost of goods, ads,
flyers, extra help, etc.
We had many repeat attendees and
hundreds of new faces, some whom came
right back the next day for a more
relaxed look through our store.
I’d love it if the comics could come in
to our store just a week earlier.
Otherwise everything was on time this
year and in a reasonable sequence. We
received the correct quantity of most of
the comics and shirts /hats ordered.
One year we ordered a thousand
Spider-Man comics and received
only four hundred. This year we got the
full three thousand we ordered. Good job
Diamond!
All in all, a great event with lots of
smiling faces. Hopefully we spawned a
few more return readers for our efforts
and didn't
just send folks to the big box book
stores looking for our material. Our
type of pop culture mix stores needs
events like this to bring public
awareness to our existence. Left to
their own, a lot of people would just
play the
Spider-Man video games and go to
the movies. Comics, they still exist?
Why yes they do and here we are! Thanks
to all in the industry for Free Comic
Book Day !
Robert Miller,
Harried owner
Sarge’s Comics Etc 124 State Street New London, Ct 860-443-2004 sargescomics.com
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