Busy Weekend!

Not much rest this weekend! As you should all know, Saturday was Free Comic Book Day. We left the house around 7:30 am on Saturday and had to pick up the cake, get some breakfast and coffee, and head to the store where we had to rearrange all of the furniture in order to make room for the free comics and loads of people. Around 10 am the 501st gang started to arrive to change into their Star Wars attire and we began to cut the cake. A line became noticeable outside the store at 10:30 am, and they started getting restless by 10:50.

At 11 am the doors opened and eager shoppers poured in to get comics, both free and not free, and enjoy the cake and see the Star Wars characters. Unfortunately the weather was bleak - it rained on and off for most of the day, finally getting sunny around 7:30 pm (we closed at 5 pm). So the 501st folks had to stand under the awning by the store instead of being able to wander around, and those looking at the items we put outside were cold and even a bit wet when the rain really came down. The store was completely packed from 11 am - 12:45 pm and then you could finally walk from one end to the other in less than five minutes. That's not to say it was empty, it just was not as full. At about 4:45 we thought we'd had our last store visitor leave, but right before we closed at 5 another bunch came in for last minute purchases.

Free Comic Book Day is usually our busiest and best day of the year, and this year was no different. After counting the cash and totaling up the day's sales, we were happy to announce that this was our best Free Comic Book Day yet, in spite of the bad weather. Then we had dinner with some friends and finally went home to relax.

Early to bed meant early to rise on Sunday for the Oconocon. We got breakfast, went to the storage unit, and then drove out to Oconomowoc for the convention. Set up was fairly quick for us, since we didn't sell anything at the convention. Then we got to talk to all kinds of great comic book people. People like Jim Krueger of Justice and Project Superpowers - who should be coming in for an in-store signing this August. Craig got two new sketches for his sketch book - we'll have to upload those this week sometime. After the con wee had a quick dinner with Sean McKeever, Mike Norton, and Chris Burnham.

Then we had to head out to the Majestic Theater to see Iron Man. We enjoyed Iron Man quite a bit. Fun, action packed, clever movie that should be the standard for other superhero films. No Hulk cameo though - that was either cut or just a rumor, unless someone else was able to spot it, but I didn't see it at all. You have to stay through the long credits to the end of the film, of course, to see a little teaser about the future of Iron Man. By the time we got home it was 10 pm.

Now the weekend is over already and we haven't even done laundry or done the grocery shopping for the week. But it was a fun, comic book filled weekend.

Check out the weekend in photos on Flickr, here.