I’ve become a Free Comic Book Day regular over the past three years. It takes place on the first Saturday of May at Reader’s Den at Stadium On Main and holy shit it’s amazing.
You get different levels of comic book geeks. It probably starts with guys like me who’ve read a bit of this and that, like the medium and go out of curiosity and you get the types you’re about to see in this post.
Free Comic Book Day happens at comic book stores all over the world and is a way to create awareness around comic books and most importantly get people reading them, which I think is a worthy cause.
Like I said, this year was my third FCBD here in Cape Town, so I was used to the odd person rocking up dressed as Wolverine or some obscure anime character only a handful of people could probably identify, but this year people lost they damn MINDS!
If I could hazard a guess, I’d say there were probably 50 – 60 people dressed up in cosplay gear, it was flippin INSANE.
In terms of size, this year’s FCBD was easily twice as big as last year, which was great to see. I might not be as into comic books as some of the other guys there, but I still fully support them and agree that more people should be reading them.
The craziest thing about this year’s FCBD though was the fact that instead of tables and tables of discounted comic books and graphic novels being set up in the circular courtyard outside Reader’s Den like they’ve had the past two years, they cleared the space and used it as a stage for groups of extreme cosplay geeks to do dance routines (?).
How flippin weird is this shit:
At first I thought it was pretty cool. I mean it’s impressive (and a little bit sad) to see effort these people put into their costumes and dance routines, even though most of them will probably end up…
But then when I realised they’d included this at the expense of the aforementioned tables stacked with discounted graphic novels I was a bit miffed.
Because of this, the only way to lay your hands on a comic book or graphic novel was to either cue for your free comic book (a matter of about 15 minutes) or cue to get into Reader’s Den itself (a matter of about an hour and a half).
I’m not saying do away with the cosplay dancers, but next year they need to figure out a way that we can have both the tables and the dancers. I mean fuck it, let’s just combine the two and have table dancers!
Anyway, all in all it was still an awesome day and I got some killer pics like this one with my buddies Spiderman, Rorschach and Iron Man.
And the holy grail of geeky pics – Wonder Woman and Super Woman AT THE SAME TIME.
So definitely check out next year’s FCBD at Reader’s Den and put some thought into your radass costume and dance routine ok?
Great. Glad we had this chat.
-ST
You did find the room they had with all the discounted stuff right? So technically there were 3 ways to get some comics. Actually 4 ways cos there was the section for all the local comic creators as well. 😀
Shit, I clean forgot to mention the tables with local comic creators – some seriously impressive, international-standard work was on display. One guy in particular (I think his comic was called “Wrath”) has some serious talent. Also Peter Woodbridge from http://www.studiowoo.co.za had some sick prints on sale.
As for the room with the discounted stuff – where was it? I missed it completely.
-ST