I would have liked to have written this up just after Saturday, but due to the quick onset of a bad cold, I'm doing what I can now. So, here's the wrap:
Free Comic Book Day at Captain Blue Hen Comics was a booming success! Joe Murray, the owner of the store, reported that attendance was up by 500 people, for a total of about 1500 people walking through the door between noon and 5pm on Saturday! As far as I could tell, it was mostly families, and especially kids! As an all ages creator, nothing could be better, as far as I'm concerned. I walked into CBH at exactly noon, sat down at my table, and began sketching, along with my cohorts, Jamar Nicholas, Mike Manley, Scott Neely, and Neil Vokes. The next time I looked up, or rather stood up, it was 5pm, and I had drawn approximately 75 to 100 head shots of various characters! I can't believe how quickly the time went, and I never took a break! Frankly, I was completely unaware of the passage of so much time. As a result, I never had a chance to take any pictures of the crowds, but for a good glimpse of that madness, check out the pictures on the CBH MySpace page:
http://www.myspace.com/captainbluehen
Of all of the sketches, I believe every one except one was for a little kid. I actually had a line that stretched from the front of the store, where I was seated, to the very back... I looked up at one point, and estimated that there were 30 kids on my line! Of course, I gathered that there were so many people on my line because I was drawing so slowly... ;-) My fellow artists all reported similar amounts of people lining up for them, so obviously a lot of kids were walking away happy.
Here are some shots of a small sampling of the free sketches I did:
Of course, Buzzboy was my most-requested (closely followed by Roboy Red, although I have no pics of the Roboy sketches). This was only appropriate, as our Buzzboy/Roboy - The Buzz and the 'Bot #0 was (thankfully) a pretty popular book at the counter. I signed quite a large number of these.
Above is one of my favorite sketches of the day, Zoomer, Buzzboy's super-fast buddy.
Speaking of super-fast, above is one of the first sketches requested of the day, and also, one of my all-time favorite characters, the Golden Age Flash.
Of course, Bone is always popular with the kids, and although I had never drawn the characters before, I did this one of Smiley, liberally swiping from the Jeff Smith reference provided.
I received a lot of requests for Star Wars characters. I drew this Scout Trooper in about 5- 10 minutes... actually, when looking at all of these, please bear in mind that I took no more than that for any of the sketches. It was a terrific exercise, from an artist's perspective. I kept telling people what a great challenge it was!
Appropriately, for the day, above is Captain Blue Hen, a character we created to use in Buzzboy, and obviously named for one of our favorite comic book stores!
Here's my buddy, Mike Manley, towards the end of the day... still sketching! For Mike's take on the day, along with a lot of great photos, check out the report on his blog:
http://drawman.blogspot.com/2007/05/free-comic-book-day.html
And this is my good friend, Jamar, who is obviously delirious after completing a sketch for another happy young fan.
This one is my favorite picture of the day. These are my pals Ben and Chris, dressed as their "favorite characters, Buzzboy and Roboy Red" (their words, not mine), respectively! What a thrill it was to see characters I helped create come to life, particularly with such enthusiasm. This, my friends is why I do what I do!
All in all, it was a great day. Joe and Danielle Murray, and their crew at Captain Blue Hen, couldn't be nicer or more supportive. They really made this event an incredible experience (as always!), and I want to publicly thank them for their friendship and support! I'll be back next year!
Thanks for reading, and I'll post again soon(-ish).
Best,
Rich
Originally, I created this piece for the charity book Drawing Strength, which John Gallagher and I produced to help in the relief effort after Hurricane Katrina (incidentally, that book is still available here). As noted in the posts previous to this one, John and I recently published the first chapter of our Roboy Red graphic novel for Free Comic Book Day in Buzzboy/Roboy: The Buzz And The 'Bot, and I wanted to rework the illustration in color, to use in that book. For a larger version, please click the picture.
