Bookmark Collector

Well, it’s been a little over six months since my last entry. I don’t want to go into a long set of excuses and explanations, so I’ll keep it short and say that my work and personal life took over for a bit. Then, overcoming the inertia (and a bit of guilt) around not having written in so long seemed to require an ever more impressive reappearance. Luckily, several happy events and circumstances coincided in such a way that I feel my return is satisfying (to me, at least) and impressive, if only in its sheer volume.

This year, I attended the annual San Diego Comic-Con. At its core, the SDCC is the largest comic book convention in the US. However, it has grown into a pop-culture phenomenon, and is as much about movies,TV, toys, books, and fandom as it is about comics. For five days (this year from, July 25 through 29) a crowd of somewhere between 150,000 and 200,000 people descend upon San Diego for this extravaganza.

I was there for every moment, and I was still only able to see a small fraction of all the events and activities which occurred. I did however, return with a huge collection of bookmarks. There are 64 unique bookmarks (plus a lot more duplicates), and it took some effort to group them into categories. All of them are made of paper, and all of them were either free or came with the purchase of some other item (the later are gathered together in the last photo).

These first four photos are all promoting specific comic book series. The leading photo in this set shows the seven bookmarks from DC Comics and a couple of their imprints (Vertigo and Minx). The second photo shows the five bookmarks promoting series from Image Comics. The third photo collects a set of seven bookmarks from a variety of smaller publishers. And this photo shows bookmarks from five Japanese manga series.

These four bookmarks are from comic strips and some miscellaneous comic related publishing.

The six bookmarks in this set are all representing organizations. They’re a diverse group, ranging from fan organizations (the Browncoats), to unions of comic artists and createors (the Comic Art Guild), to the local symphony (San Diego Symphony).

There were several companies selling comics in various forms, and these are the five bookmarks I got from them. Comic Relief (the two on the right) is a huge retailer in Berkley, and they had a separate bookmark that they placed in books which had been signed by the author.

The more traditional book publishers were there in force. The thirteen bookmarks in this photo are all promoting individual book. Quite a few authors were there signing their books and promoting the publishers and stores (and no, J.K. Rowling was not among them).

These five are all from one publisher to promote their fan based magazines. Each magazine is dedicated to a popular TV show or movie.

This last photo shows seven bookmarks that would normally be purchased. I was able to get all of them for “free” as they came with the purchase of the comic books they promoted.

Whew! Next, I’m going to sort these into the main collection. Based on volume alone I felt like this was a good re-emergence of the Bookmark-Collector blog.