CAPE Crusader: Free Comic Book Day report from Dallas

I ventured out this morning to Zeus Comics' second annual CAPE event -- Comics and Pop Culture Expo. Even though it was overcast this morning after a night of rain, the crowd still turned out for the outdoor event to pick up free comics, chat with all the comic pros and go through the dozens of boxes of 25-cent comics Zeus was selling.



Based on the fact that I had to park a lot further away than I did for last year's event, I'm guessing they had a pretty good increase in attendance this year. They also had a lot more staff out for the event, helping people find parking and pointing out where to find the pros. Like last year, Fanboy Radio was there MCing the event, and several comic-related organizations, like Friends of Lulu, The Hero Foundry and Prism Comics, gave out information, accepted donations, sold their products and, in the case of FOL, signed people up for their empowerment fund raffle.



And then there were the pros. No question, one of the biggest draws was Ultimates artist Bryan Hitch:

who had the second-longest line of the day:



The first longest line was actually the one to buy anything inside of Zeus Comics. In fact, between the Free Comic Book Day bookshelf, where I patiently stood in line behind several kids waiting to get my hands on the Free Scott Pilgrim book, to the check-out line that snaked through the entire store, it made it really difficult to shop at Zeus. Which begs the question: so why was the line to buy stuff so long? That would be because of the 25-cent comic boxes out front:



I didn't really have time to go through them as thoroughly as I would have liked, but hey -- they kept people busy while I looked for autographs and chatted with some of the pros:

• Gail Simone signed my copy of Villains United and commented on how much fun she has writing villains. She said the new Atom book would be less superheroics and more "drive-in movie" science fiction. Sounds like fun.
  
• I asked Exiles' Tony Bedard about the ending of the latest Exiles and if I'd be mourning the loss of another favorite character from the series, a la Mimic. He said he didn't want to give anything away, but he said things would probably go a little differently this time around. He also said if he could go back and do it all over again, he probably would have cut World Tour down by a few issues, as he felt it went a little long. He also said his run on Exiles had been extended due to Chris Claremont's health issues.
  
• It was a pleasure to meet former The Great Curve contributor Lea Hernandez face-to-face; she was working on "I'm Hurting Comics" buttons while we talked, and I mentioned that post still brings in a lot of hits for the site. We also talked about my T-shirt.
  
• Local publisher Viper Comics was on hand giving away not only copies of their Free Comic Book Day book, but also issues of Middleman and Random Encounter. They also had copies of the first two issues of Villains, which hasn't even been released yet -- they literally arrived at their offices the day before. They were giving them away to people who bought the Dead@17 box set, but were nice enough to sell them to me at a discount. Josh Howard was also on hand, signing autographs and doing sketches. He'll be doing two ongoing series for them later this year, Dead@17 and Eve.
  
• Steve Galgas, creator of The Fantastic Mr. Grant, was giving away magnets that are already on my refrigerator.
  
• I asked James Kochalka when the next issue of SuperF*ckers was due, and he said sometime in the next month. He added that it was pushed back a little because Top Shelf has been really focused on the upcoming Lost Girls collection, due in August. He joked (or maybe he wasn't joking) that because Lost Girls was such an expensive project to put together, if it didn't do well, Top Shelf would probably go out of business. So buy it if you want to see more SuperF*ckers!
  
• And finally, to promote the summer film Nacho Libre, (which combines two of my favorite things, Jack Black and Luche Libre wrestling), this guy was running around:

He tried to take my Free Scott Pilgrim comic, so I gave him a headbutt and a spinbuster, following by a moonsault off the top of the CAPE tent. Then I went home and read some free comics, because hey, that's what the day is all about!

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