Free Comic Book Day

Saturday was Free Comic Book Day at Fully Booked, and I couldn’t resist going. I meant to go last year but  it coincided with one of my book club meetings so I really wanted to make it this year, not so much for the free comic book but for the 20% discount on comics and graphic novels at the store.

I planned to go early but I woke up late and there was some commotion in the house because the results were in for the April 2010 Licensure Exam for Teachers and we learned my brother Enzo passed (way to go, bro!) and is now a professional teacher. Then I had to drop by the hospital on the other side of town to visit a friend.

It was 5:30 by the time I got to the store on Bonifacio High Street, and I figured they’d have run out of free comic books by then, but there were still some short stacks at the giveaway table and I quickly got in line for a free copy. Although I’ve gradually assimilated graphic novels as regular reading in recent time, I’m still not really into the whole spandex superhero thing and the only choices on the table were either Iron Man or Green Hornet, so after an eenie-meenie-miney-mo I settled on Iron Man and got my hand stamped at the booth.

I was meeting some book club friends at the store, but none of them were there yet so I decided to check out some graphic novels because I’m in dire need of one — I’m currently reading 2666 which is quite dense, and I wanted to break the monotony.  I browsed a bit in the graphic novels section in the basement but nothing really caught my eye. I was hunting around for the Asterios Polyp book Peter had shown us at the Art in Fiction discussion because I saw a copy there just a few days ago, but I guess someone had already picked it up. I was also planning on buying both volumes of Maus by Art Spiegelman, which I reviewed last year, thanks to Flipper friend Mike, but I couldn’t find any copies either. There were a lot of people browsing in the graphic novels section and my phone wasn’t getting any signal down at the basement so I decided to browse at the Children’s and YA section on the second floor while waiting for my friends.

I totally forgot there was a comic/graphic novel section there as well!

After much hemming and hawing, I finally decided to add to my Tintin collection to take me a step closer to completing the whole library:

Now that I have these three, I’m only missing eight. Woot! Woot!

Augggh, and I’ve been moaning and groaning for a local bookstore to carry the international editions of Miguel Syjuco’s Ilustrado for a while now, and suddenly there it was, in a large (C-format) trade paperback, with the cover I liked and crisp textured paper!!! It took all of my willpower not to get it then and there (at the next bookstore sale maybe?), so I ended up getting Flipper friend Marie a copy of Ilustrado (Philippine edition) for her birthday.

We capped Free Comic Book Day with Marie’s birthday celebration — we drank to her health (and more books) with mango margaritas at TGI Friday’s then iced lattes at Coffee Bean afterwards!

Free Comic Book Day was awesome!

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