Robert Miller of Sarge's Comics Etc. in New London, Connecticut sent in this Free Comic Book Day report:
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!
We had a nice array of Indy creators including: Steve Ahlquist and Chris Reilly, co-creators of Strange eggs and four time Harvey award nominees for Puphedz; Randall Ensley, winners L.Ron Hubbard's Illustrator of the future contest; Steve Emond, creator of Emo Boy; Walter Greatshell, artist of Strange eggs and author of Xombies; Stefan Blitz, Editor-in-Chief of the pop-culture website forcesofgood.com; Keith Murphy from the Comic Artist's Guild of CT; Matt Ryan artist and creator of Bigger; Shawnti Therin creator of I Am Immortal; 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); Elaine Mills a caricature artist on hand doing free sketches.
Members of Earth detachment 501'st Conn Squad Garrison were on hand for photos and revelry. 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.
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 FCBD 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. I 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!
The opinions expressed in this Talk Back article are solely those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff of ICv2.com.
