Free Comic Book Day 2014

A quick posting and some pictures from yesterday's Free Comic Book Day. Like last year I took Tom Waits' Downtown Train (well it was on my iPod anyway) to London and got in the queue for Orbital Comics. A bigger line this year but a cheerful crowd was kept amused by a comedy Deadpool cosplayer who sang Tom Jones songs. We were also kept Bat-safe by sixties Batman who clearly knows you should never go out without a vest until after May.

The advantage of queuing for Orbital is that they let you pick which free comic book day issues you want so I was able to pick up the 2000AD Prog, a Bleeding Cool issue, and the lovely looking hardback Mouseguard which will soon be on its way to Canada for my nephew Ruairi.

From there to Forbidden Planet who hand out lucky dip bags of free comics (nothing particularly of interest to me) where I was first in the queue for the 2000AD droids signing. This year we had Tharg himself Matt Smith (no, not that one), top Dredd artist Henry Flint and Tiernen Trevaillion who draws the fantastic Absalom.

I got two copies of the Prog signed as well as a couple of trades. I'm hoping to get some more signatures including John Wagner's at the Lawgiver event on Monday and then one of the Progs and a trade will be up on eBay as charity auctions for Cancer Research UK.

After that I went back to do some back issue browsing in a slightly quieter Orbital and picked up my usual handful of early 2000ADs some of which will show up as Retro Reviews here later. I also walked over to Gosh comics in Soho and picked up a couple of comics for my daughter. Most of the FCBD mayhem had died down there but they still had artists painting comic characters on the windows, and a big table full of pens and paper where kids were making their own comics. Brilliant stuff from Gosh.

Another grand day out and look at all these lovely comics.