Free Comic Book Day 2014 - as the dust settles...

I think it's fair to say we're all still buzzing despite being very tired!

Over the last few years Proud Lion has begun to morph from a solo venture by yours truly, into very much a family affair. No more so than these past few weeks, with us all working long hours to move the shop into the new premises. Rae, Kiddo, my Dad and some of our wonderful friends were all striving towards one goal - to be trading from the new premises in time for Free Comic Book Day. And we did it!

This Saturday was what it was all about. Free Comic Book Day is always a wonderful, vibrant event for Proud Lion, but this year you all helped us to completely outdo the previous outings. The perfect first extravaganza in the new shop.

Some of you will remember that back in January, I decided to make Free Comic Book Day a little more modest this year. I revealed that we ordered over 2000 free comics last year, at an average cost of 23.5p per comic, which was a harder bill to foot than I'd anticipated. This year, I decided to focus on just 20 of the 57 titles available, picking ten titles for the line-up myself and asking the Proud Lion customers to vote for the other ten.

From those 20 titles, we then ordered over 1500 free comics, so I think it's fair to say we didn't skimp out on our FCBD offerings! If anything we had more of the titles you'd told us you wanted! In an effort to give more people a chance to get some free comics, especially people who have to start work on a Saturday before we open at 10am, I took the decision to split the stock 60:40s on each of the titles that we had. 60% went out ready for us to open, the remainder would be used to refresh the tables at 1pm.

Both times, we'd run out of free comics within an hour! 

Huge queue outside (with thanks to @OldManRupee)

The view from the queue! (with thanks to @DeadAllOverUK)

We had such a wonderful turnout that we had a huge queue down the road. It was quite a sight to behold on such a beautiful day! Thank you to everyone for the incredible patience and understanding we received on the day. Rest assured, wheels are in motion to ensure we have even more free comics next year, and we learned a lot about the best way to serve people in the new premises on a busy day, so we'll definitely look to make some refinements for our next big event.

Incredibly busy inside! (with thanks to @jonlockcomics)

Speaking of which, we hope to see you all again later this year for our Grand Re-Opening. Full details TBC.

A huge thank you from all of us here at Proud Lion, to everyone who helped make this year's Free Comic Book Day a roaring success. Pun, fully intended. Thanks to Jon Lock for coming down and being such a huge part of the event, and thanks to True Believers Comic Festival for the lovely print we had on offer at the start of the day. The original art work for that print will be proudly display in store at some point in the future, as Stuart was kind enough to gift it to us as a shop-warming present!

Have a lovely Bank Holiday. We'll be re-open on Tuesday from 10am.

Ben Fardon is trying to find out what's happened to the Comixology affiliate site. More news as soon as possible.