Mood:

Topic: Comic Books - New
This is Part II of our blog post series on FCBD in San Diego metro area... As stated in Part I, I've been blogging about Free Comic Book Day Signings for several weeks that were happening nationwide... It was only on last Thursday that I realized there were none listed for the San Diego Metro Area! As Tina remarked to me when I told her of this... "How ironic considering that San Diego is home to the world renowned Comic Con International held yearly at the San Diego Convention Center". As mentioned in Part I, San Diego Metro area has 18 Local Comic Book Stores (LCBS). For those of you familiar with the area, I am including from North County out to East County down to the South Bay as being in the metro area. BTW, we used to have 20 but the only comic book store 'chain' in San Diego Metro closed their Carlsbad Mall and Escondido Mall stores just recently. I had called all the stores on last Thursday to find out if they were participating in Saturday's FCBD in some manner. I was surprised to learn that 5 of the 18 were not, and none had signings planned, although one had scheduled a signing which was now cancelled. I'm not going to 'rehash' the visits to the five LCBS we visited earlier. See Part I for that! So I am going to pick up where we were on our 'road trip' in search of FCBD in San Diego. We were attempting to hit all 13 stores that would be 'participating' in some manner for FCBD. Please note: There was no way that with 130 miles driven and 8 1/2 hrs spent at the LCBS and driving, that we would be at each store at their maximum 'peak' time to see everything. So the following is just our opinions based on what we saw for FCBD activities only. Neither Part I or Part II are 'critiques' of the LCBS, just our impressions of how the LCBS presented themselves on FCBD itself. Again, "hats off" to the 13 local stores that participated in whatever manner. At least you tried to make comics known in some fashion to non-comics readers. For the rest of you five stores that we didn't visit because you stated you weren't going to participate at all, well... no comment here in Part II either... After leaving Plaza Bonita Mall in Bonita / Chula Vista, Tina and I continued driving up to National City area again. While on the road I called the store owner @ Comic Odyssey on my cell phone asking if his UPS shipment of FCBD special comics had come in yet. On Friday he stated he had not received his shipment in yet. I know the owner of this store, have bought his backstock for resale before, so I have no reason not to believe him on the UPS story. He did state that if they hadn't come in by 4:00PM that he would put out some of his own back issues in lieu of the FCBD special editions. Tina and I elected not to get off the freeway to travel inland to his store in the East area of National City.
This ends Part II of my Blog post series of FCBD in San Diego 2009. Again, these two blog posts are our Opinions of the FCBD events held at each LCBS. Final tally, of the 13 'participating' LCBS, we physically saw 9, plus 1 that we couldn't find a parking space to enter the mall, and 2 others in the Chain we deemed not worth while driving to for 1 FCBD comic. Plus 1 that didn't get their FCBD comics shipment in. We leave it up to you, our Blog Readers to draw whatever conclusions you wish about what FCBD was all about in San Diego... As for us, we may possibly continue this series in a Part III of this Blog post series tentatively titled... "The State of the Comics Industry In San Diego"... For those of you that are new to our blog today, we also have an ongoing 'Comic Con and Pop Culture Convention' here at "Make It So Marketing Inc.", what with our daily blog posts, and new listings of items for sale in our online eBay Featured Store! Thanks again to all of YOU reading our current and archived blog posts!~ Michael (and Tina) |