For the August 18-20, 1972 San Diego’s West Coast Comic-Con (as Comic-Con International was known in its third year), Scott Shaw!, David Clark, and Roger Freedman produced a daily convention newsletter named YUBBA. There were three daily issues and a special post-con report, which was YUBBA #4. Here’s Scott Shaw!’s account of these matters from the YUBBA #4 prologue:
This is the fourth issue of a publication first conceived of only two weeks ago. It was at that time, on the eve of the third annual San Diego West Coast Comic-Con, that con chairman Mike Towry asked three of his committee members to undertake the production of a daily con bulletin , a bulletin that was shortly thereafter endowed with the name YUBBA by co-editor Scot Shaw (YUBBA, according to some reports, is the cry made by a monkey falling into a pit filled with snakes.) Well, produce it they did – three one-page issues were printed during the three days of the Comic-Con, and there the story would seemingly be forced to come to an end. Two factors prevented the curtain from falling on YUBBA, however; one, we had already rented our mimeograph for an entire month, and two, we still had a ream of paper left… So the same foolhardy trio found themselves saddled with the task of producing a con report as well – a con report that is at this very moment smearing your fingers with only partially dried ink.
The cover of YUBBA #4 featured Scott Shaw!’s comic version of the goings on at “the comic convention held in San Diego of Earth-Two,” which were a more extreme version of actual events from the Earth-One convention. Here is that cover for your viewing pleasure:
YUBBA #4 Cover by Scott Shaw! (Click for full-size image.)
While the Earth-One Comic-Con was a little less extreme than the Earth-Two version that year, it did break new ground in Comic-Con craziness, as one would expect for the first of the El Cortez-sited conventions. YUBBA #4’s inside cover by Dennis Neal Smith, which follows, gives a hint of that convention’s free spirit:
YUBBA #4 Inside Cover by Dennis Neal Smith (Click for full-size image.)
