Mine was pretty good. If you want to hear about it (and a heart warming anecdote about future generations of nerds), it's after the jump.

Instead of my usual shop crawl in what passes for the metropolitan areas of my geographic region, I stuck to my LCS. It was a combination of not wanting to support them and not drive an hour and a half. I say support because I always make sure to drop money when I go in any shop on FCBD; I figure they're giving me free stuff, and I should make sure and pick something up to pay them back. Well, that and I like to defeat purposes as much as possible.

Oh, and there are usually sales to take advantage of. This year, I picked up the Wolverine Omnibus for 25% off. I'm already feeling buyer's remorse over spending that much money, even with the discount, on a big fat book of Wolverine comics, especially since quite a few of them in some form or another. But hey, I convinced myself I wanted it and stuck to making it my big FCBD purchase. I still haven't seen the movie, by the way, but that's generally how I roll.

If nothing else, it will nice to have Weapon X and the Claremont/Miller mini in the oversized format, and I can finally read his initial appearances in Incredible Hulk. One of the weird charms of it to me is the fact that it's such a gallimaufry of comics. With most of these Omnibus editions, it's a series in sequential order, but this one jumps around different series and years, with only the first ten issues of the original Wolverine solo title (it kind of amazes me he has more than one now, but then again, I do pretty much Wolverine: Origins whenever possible). It's going to be interesting trying to read that as a whole. Well, at least that's how I'm justifiying it.

I also picked up some back issues. I finally have a complete run of Incredible Hercules! Oh, and I bought some Jeph Loeb Hulk issues, becuase Art Adams drew some of them. Yes, I know, but Arthur Adams. That trumps whatever objective proof you have that Loeb writes brain poison, especially at 25% off. I was an issue away from picking up the Dead Space prequel mini-series, because I liked the game and it's by Antony Johnston and Ben Templesmith, but wound up not finding the first issue, so I'll have to wait on that. Or just watch the flash versions.

Of the Free Stuff, I made picking up Love and Rockets and the TMNT issue a priority, and wound up walking out with them, both Marvel books, Blackest Night, Atomic Robo, a Barks' Scrooge reprint, Love and Capes, and the Ressurection/Colbert double shot. So, it was probably more than I needed, especially since Umbrella Academy is pretty much the only comic I've ever followed because of a Free Comic Book Day giveaway. That said, it was much less than my usual compulsive hoarding of whatever the shops were giving away, so hey, personal progress. Of course, it helps that this shop doesn't have a huge backlog of back issues (they opened up in 2006 and haven't been swamped by longboxes yet). Or an owner so burnt out that he openly encourages people to walk off with as many long boxes and trades as they can carry, for that matter, which the biggest out of town shop I got to does. I still have unread free comics from my visit last year, so I figured it was okay to skip my trip this year. Well, that and swine flu paranoia made going to the LCS harrowing enough.

As far as foot traffic goes, it was easily the busiest I've ever seen the place (from 9 'til 11:30 in the morning). They didn't do a lot to promote it from what I could tell (doesn't help that the brother of a local DJ isn't involved in running the shop anymore), but they still had a good crowd, especially for the area. A lot of young kids and even some junior high and high school age kids came in, which is always nice to see. One of the cooler things they did was give anyone who made a purchase a raffle ticket and held drawings every half hour. My number never came up while I was around, but it was a nice idea and someone walked away with a Beta Ray Bill hammer.

My favorite part of the day was listening to a tween girl debate who was better, Batman or Black Panther, with one of her friends. Brings a tear to your eye, doesn't it? Me, I think T'challa running a country tips things in his favor (and a DC partisan I was hanging out with in the store agreed), but I didn't want to interfere. I was worried I'd ruin the moment. And creep them out.