Added on May 8, 2011    Canada , DC Comics , Free Comic Book Day , Heroes? , rose hip rose

Free Comic Book Day: My New Treasures

First off, what a day I had yesterday. Some of you may or may not know that the first Saturday in May is Free Comic Book day, and it seems to be a pretty general North American event taking place nearly everywhere comic books are sold.

So I was up early yesterday, making plans with who I was going to meet up with because there were a total of 5 stores downtown London (Ontario) plus the Public Library that all kind of join together for the one day and it’s encouraged to go to all of them. I managed to get downtown by 9:30 am, hoping to get the good stuff, because that’s just the way it goes. If you show up at 4 pm there’s obviously just the total crap left. My first stop was Neo Tokyo, an awesome source for all things anime related. Walking through I got a pretty cool Soul Eater pin button, an issue of Yotsuba as well as the first issue of Rose Hip Rose. Their selection was pretty big (of course limited to two manga each) and covered 3 different age groups. I had trouble choosing just two.

Right beside Neo Tokyo was The Comic Book Collector, probably my favourite comic book store in town, but only because it’s where I was able to purchase all the individual issues of The Second Stage Turbine Blade. The line wasn’t too bad here, in and out within 10 minutes probably. There wasn’t anything too special going on inside, though. No special sales and they just kind of seemed rushed. But I mean that’s pretty understandable, they’re just working through the day. Their selection was pretty good for their free comics. There was a lot of Batman and Spider-Man and some other popular franchises, but I decided to go rogue and picked up Aliens vs Predator because I love that series (I don’t care what you say) and The Mighty Thor Saga (because he’s always been my favourite Marvel hero and I had just seen the movie the day before). The coolest thing I picked up from there was the first issue of Zombies vs Robots. The art style is so interesting and the story is great. I’ll try to review the series later this week.

After going to the Comic Book Collector, it was a quick trip to Worlds Away. They were going real slow because it seemed they didn’t have a very good system going. With just one of two doors open, the traffic was hard to control and they didn’t have it set up as a take your own free comics system. They seriously had the giveaways on a table behind the counter, which was pretty hard to see and you had to tell them which ones you wanted…Not the greatest system, but hey, they’re free, so I’m not going to complain too much. Also, their selection wasn’t the greatest, but I nabbed an issue of Sonic The Hedgehog, Captain America / Thor: The Mighty Fighting Avengers, and a classic known as The Tick.

After Worlds Away, I joined up with a group of people I knew and we starting walking down the street, bags in hand showing off the “FREE COMIC BOOK DAY” logo. Downtown London was simply flooded with them, every third person you saw had a bag. We thought we’d go to Heroes next as this was to be the biggest stop of the day. We knew this because the guys at Heroes is awesome every year.

The line was huge, but we knew it would be worth it so there we went and stood there…and stood…and stood. I’m very used to lines and never mind them, though this was different. We weren’t moving…even though they were open. It turns out they were seriously that busy inside. It all made sense why after I saw their flyer because EVERYTHING in the store was between 25-50% off, most things being 50% massive sale items. It doesn’t hurt that they were giving out free comic books AND doing contests inside, plus they had their employees cosplaying keeping the line alright, giving away water, freezies with a Power Ring of the same colour attached, and some other promo items.

After 2 very long hours in line, the amount of free things they gave away was amazing. I picked up an issue of Lenore, an issue of Daredevil, a Hulk graphic novel, issue #1 of The Flash and X-Men, all of it together would have cost nearly $30.

We were all pretty tired, and by this point wanted to get home more or less. We then hit up LA Mood, where the selection was smaller, there I grabbed Daredevil and Conan.

Finally we walked to the Library and there was simply nothing left (as we figured would be the case). The weirdest thing is I forget exactly where I grabbed this (what seems like older) issue of The Hulk…hmm…oh well. FREE COMICS!

So that was my entire day, I got so much free stuff, a had a nice day getting out.