Gail Burt of Metropolis Comics in Bellflower, California was concerned about the holiday weekend, and had the event surpass expectations:

The day was not a total bust for us, as I really feared it would be, but despite a grand new location, heavy advertising, serious personal promotion, (talking with people, handing out flyers, offering coupons, etc.) making a festive party atmosphere at the store, plus giving away more copies than we ever have per person, still our FCBD totals for the day were only like a strong Saturday - which is way better than the tomb I expected my store would be the day before July 4th.  We did notice that most of our traffic came early in the day, and by 5pm, all had cleared out, most saying they were hitting the road that afternoon for the getaway weekend. 

Well, the day wasn't a disaster, at least, I just feel it could have been better.  I sincerely hope we can go back to the earlier date next year, because a May date seemed to give us a nice bump that lasted all summer - this is halfway through summer, and didn't give us much of a bump.  I suspect that even stores that had spectacular days will find that the bump from FCBD might be worth having a few weeks earlier. 

And once more, please may I encourage all of us to remember how the movie sort of bent us over this year?  Big success, great movie, no argument there - but did we not choose the date because it coincided with Spider-Man 2, and did they not move up the day by two days, thereby separating us from it?  Please, people, let's promote COMICS next year, not tie ourselves to movies.  Let's try to grow up and stand on our own two feet and make the event totally about comics, and just see what happens.  That's what I'd like to see.