Free Comic Book Day 2014

It's Free Comic Book Day again! At least it was yesterday. So, once again I travelled up to Sydney with my wife and daughter to see what loot we could acquire and to generally have a nerdy day out. Unlike last year I went in my default bloke-mode. Once again my son stayed behind - he had a date, in the cold and wind, to watch his girlfriend play hockey.

Anyway, here's my two lovely ladies in the queue at Kings Comics in Sydney.

Oh yes - there was a queue. Unfortunately it has just started to turn cold (we're coming into winter here, don't forget) and despite the forecasted temperature of over 15C it felt much colder - shading from buildings and a bit of a wind. We queued for an hour and a half or more. We should have wrapped up warmer.

There was plenty of cosplay. There always is.

The shop staff had all dressed as Spiderman villains.

This was our favourite costume of the day - Dark Phoenix.

Did I say there was a queue? There was. Marvel and DC always do a comic each for this event that everyone gets (you get to choose two others as well). The staff dish those out to the queue, so that you have something to read. An energy drink company was doling out freebies as well, so we were all nicely hyped up on caffeine.

As we neared the shop, some of the cast of a Star Wars themed burlesque show turned up to promote it.

Star Wars burlesque is, as my daughter would put it, A Thing.

We finally hit the shop and spent about an hour inside. For my freebies I picked up a Rocket Raccoon comic, and this year's free Heroclix (see below). I also bought some more Heroclix figures (because you can never have too many) and something for my birthday next week (you'll have to wait until next week to see that). Catherine and Maya picked up some things I haven't looked at yet, mostly so that Maya could drool over the artwork. A couple of the free comics this year were hard-back books, so some publishers seem to be upping their game.

After lunch at Max Brenner (don't do lunch at Max Brenner - a small amount of chocolate is nice; a full, chocolate-based lunch is hard work) we went to another participating store, the bookshop Kinokuniya. Our friend Marcelo was one of the artists in the artist's alley.

Maya chatted to another artist, and scored herself a free sketch for being patient and friendly. Catherine and I bought another thing for our Sherlock Holmes collection.

A final bit of shopping rounded off the day, before we had to head home so that Catherine could put the chickens to bed before it got too dark.

And here's the free Heroclix figures, which you could pick up in lieu of one of your comic choices. They're very nice - I especially like the Joker, and can see myself using him in games in preference to the other figure I have. The pair came with data cards, a map and some cut-down Heroclix rules. This was a nice piece of marketing really, as in previous years the freebie has just been a single figure, which is great if you play the game, or have another use for it, but otherwise just a pretty statuette. Doing the freebie as a self-contained game is much better for business.

I think GW were involved in FCBD this year as well, giving away sprues of Space Marines, but I didn't see any sign of those here; I don't know if any shops in this part of Australia were participating in that giveaway.

In a couple of weeks we have ComicGong, a local comics event, so I should be picking up more goodies (and great pictures) then.