FCBD 2013 fully booked/comic odyssey

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it's 4 am and my brain is refusing to let me go back to sleep because it wants free comic book day to last a few extra hours longer.

photo by chino andin

FCBD at fully booked today/yesterday had something of that first komikon experience feel, only with air conditioning: new venue, new audience/market, and things were laid back enough to allow some pleasant jibberjabber with seatmates (doc carlo san juan and the QBCCC/flipreads crew--noel pascual, aj bernardo, josel nicloas, and later in the afternoon, trizha ko and charles tan).


things i overheard:

  • the first person in line outside fully booked had arrived at 1 am that morning
  • the free comics ran out sometime past noon and they had to send some of the people waiting in line home empty-handed :(
photo by mel casipit
when i arrived at 11 am, things were already in full swing: the line outside snaked around the block, and inside, the building was jam-packed. i'd brought a laptop to play the ang maskot movie trailer on, but had forgotten to transfer the actual video file, so cherry had to walk to market! market! and sweet-talk the netopia folks into allowing her to download the trailer from youtube onto a USB stick (which was apparently against company policy). thank you, rogue netopia employees.



it was worth it in the end, though, because ramon baustista's face helped me sell a few more copies of the ang maskot comic than i would have otherwise. thank you, ramon bautista's face.


it was good seeing people browse my comics with curiosity again, the "feeling of being discovered" that i had missed so badly last komikon. it felt so satisfying to see one young lady in particular, who purchased and read through ang maskot right there at my table despite seeming to have forgotten her glasses at home. i was trying to gauge her reactions as she read, and her alternate squinting/grimacing and smiling gave me a mini emotional roller coaster ride. is that creepy?

manix's usual endless line of autograph seekers provided us with a more-or-less steady trickle of purchases (mental note: suggest further study of the abrera trickle-down effect and how it can be maximized to benefit indie creators). and the perks! even if i had not sold a single comic, the swag alone would have made the trip worth taking. things just do not get any better for an indie komikero.


when doc carlo and i left at around 6 pm (i originally wasn't expecting to stay past 1 pm), the place was by no means empty yet. it was then that i realized that what was once merely a free comics giveaway had now become in effect a mini comics convention. kudos to sir sandy sansolis of comic odyssey and the folks at fully booked!

photo by michael david


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