San Diego’s Comic-Con International

The following audio recordings were made at the first, full San Diego’s Golden State Comic-Con (as it was known in those heroic days of yore). The convention dates were August 1st through 3rd, 1970. The site was the basement of the U.S. Grant Hotel in downtown San Diego. The audio segments are presented in the order they were recorded.

….Entered organized comics fandom age 13 responding to GB Love’s first display advert in Marvel Comics, which caused me to send a dollar in thereby receiving RBCC #45 plus the second Comics Collector Handbook and Alter Ego #7 in the mail soon thereafter. I was hooked from the get-go with Rocket’s Blast*ComiCollector, placing my first mail order advert by #47 Oct 1966. I was now 14 years old….The same year as we made our first Seulingcon, we also made the 1700 mile car trek from outside Omaha out to the first San Diego Comic-Con in 1970, and now over 40 years later, am one of a very small club of only four persons who have sold comic books out of a booth at every single SD Comic-Con since.

The new online, Fall 2009 edition of the Comic-Con Magazine is available from http://www.comic-con.org/common/cc_magazine.shtml. It features very nice articles on San Diego Comic-Con International Founder Shel Dorf (pages 4-5) and Chairman of Comic-Con #1 Ken Krueger (page 6). There is also a great picture of Ken with some of the original Comic-Con crew at the 2009 Comic-Con on page 36.

Streamable audio from Alan Light’s 1975 San Diego Comic-Con LP record. Contains recordings of Ray Bradbury, Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Jim Steranko, Jerry Siegel and Joanne Siegel, Chuck Norris, June Foray, Daws Butler, Robert Bloch, and Will Eisner. Listen to it here!

Coming Attractions

December 10, 2009

In the weeks ahead, Barry Alfonso, a founding member of the San Diego Comic-Con committee and a Grammy-nominated music journalist, will be sharing his remembrances of the famous (and/or infamous, depending upon point of view) Dr. Timothy Leary’s appearance as a guest at the 1976 San Diego convention.

Welcome to Comic-Convention Memories, a venue for all your comic-convention memories. With your help, we’d like to have pages for every comic convention, a page for everyone who’s worked on a con or been a guest or dealer at one, for anyone who has a good story to tell, as long as someone is willing to contribute the words and pictures. Data storage is cheap and no trees need be injured in the making of this site. Just click on the “Contact” tab at the top of the page and let us know what tales you have to tell.