On July 19, 1997, after a long day spent at San Diego’s Comic-Con International, author George Clayton Johnson (Twilight Zone, Star Trek, Logan’s Run, Ocean’s 11, Kung Fu) and his wife, Lola Johnson, sat for a videotaped interview at the San Diego, CA home of Roy L. Dobbs, Jr. The interview features the off-camera voices of Comic-Con’s Founder, Shel Dorf, and the Chairman of Comic-Con #1, Ken Krueger. The video is presented here courtesy of George Clayton Johnson and Greg Koudoulian.
Convention Staff/Producers
I’ve scanned another batch of some of San Diego Comic-Con Founder Shel Dorf’s old film negatives. (I received the negatives from Shel’s friend and cartooning partner Charlie Roberts and I’ve got another 200 to 300 still left to scan from the 1973 and 1974 Comic-Cons.) Below you will find a batch of his black-and-white pictures from the 1973 Comic-Con. I’ve identified people in photos where I was reasonably certain of their identities.
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 San Diego West Coast Comic-Con held August 18-20, 1972 at the El Cortez Hotel. Here is that cover for your viewing pleasure.
Artist Alan White has begun posting to his smellthefandom.com web site a personal history of his fifty-years with science-fiction and comics fandom and conventions titled “Boomer’s Lament.” As with so many others, his fan history more or less begins with Famous Monsters of Filmland, Forry Ackerman, and the Ackermansion. Since it was being supported by Forry, Alan began attending the San Diego Comic-Con in 1970, its very first year. So far he’s told his story and posted his pictures through 1977, with much more to come. It’s all very cool and very much worth reading.
In 1997, Charlie heard that Shel Dorf was planning an article about comics fan extraordinaire David Siegel to be published in the Comic Buyer’s Guide. To provide information for the article, Charlie wrote the following letter to Shel. The letter details Charlie’s adventures with David while Charlie and his wife, Joan, were living in York, Pennsylvania. Unfortunately, Shel’s article was never published and so, with Charlie’s permission and encouragement, we present it here.
This article is about the July 30th through August 3rd, 1975 San Diego Comic-Con and first appeared on August 22, 1975 in the Los Angeles Free Press (where the author was Book Editor). It is presented here by permission of the author, David Laurence Wilson.
