Cos Story Transcript - San Diego Comic Con
Picture a basement. A basement in 1969. A basement with a group of 6 young, and youngish, men discussing comics together. Some of the group are in communication with other comics fans, trading, selling and talking with them via the mail, making a business for themselves through their hobby. Others here are simply looking for somewhere and someone to hang out with, people like them.
But they have come together to achieve a common goal, driven by their passion for comic books, and despite barely knowing each other, it is a goal that they will achieve in a way that they of them can comprehend yet. They want to bring comics fans together in a bigger way than ever before.
This meeting is first step towards the world of comic books changing forever. It is 1969, and in a basement in San Diego, Comic Con is about to be born.
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Cos Pod; Stories of cosplay and pop culture.
Episode 3: San Diego Comic Con
Sheldon “Shel” Dorf was a 36 year old comic fan, living with his parents in San Diego. He was unemployed and had dedicated his life to comics; collecting massive amounts of books, strips and memorabilia. For the most part, seemed to be the quintessential stereotype nerd. He desperately wanted to find a place to work in the comics industry but, with no skill with art or writing, he struggled to find one.
However after several years attending conventions and fandom meets, Shel found a role in organising them, with his first major organizational role being on the committee for the Detroit Triple Fan Fair in 1965 and stayed involved with the running of the convention for several more years. Through this Shel began to build up contacts within the comics industry and fandom, giving him the in he’d always wanted.
In 1969 Shel’s parents had sold up their Detroit candy factory and retired to San Diego, and he decided to go with them, bringing his passion along for the ride.
Almost immediately Shel decided to set up a convention in San Diego, doing a “dry run” single day event with Forrest Ackermann (listeners may remember him from the previous episode on Morojo) as the main draw. From this his idea of a major convention and celebration of the comics medium in San Diego began to grow.
As part of this one day event he had gathered together local fans with the same passion and drive as himself, to help organise and run it; forming The Gold State Comic-Con Committee. The name would later change to San Diego Comic Con.
This group was made up of Richard Alf, who sold comic books through the mail, Mike Towry and Bob Sourk, also mail-order comics business runners, Barry Alfonso and Dan Stewart, customers of Richard’s. All five of them were in their teens, with Barry being only 12!
The 70s really was a very different time.
In fact the whole landscape of nerd culture in the late 60s and early 70s was a different place to what we know today. Being a comics fan was looked down on by other fandoms, with science fiction riding high at the top of nerd culture, but even sci-fi fans of the time were yet to know the heady heights of Star Wars’ popularity or the massive, multifilm franchise of The Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Comic books were seen as something for children, not taken seriously by the science fiction and literary conventions of the day, so comic fans, no matter their age, found each other to celebrate the art form at their own events and meets.
But this was all about to change.
The group gathered in Shel’s house knew what they wanted to achieve and Shel himself, who had no qualms about using the connections he had gained over the years, was going to get them there. He knew the legendary comics creator, Jack Kirby and Kirby was willing to talk with the newly formed comic con committee.
In an interview for NPC in 2019 Mike Towry said “I think we thought comics creators lived on some comic Mount Olympus…”
Towry was only 14 when he joined up with the committee.
“[That] they couldn’t be normal mortals like us. Then to find out that we could actually meet them, and talk to them one on one, and to have a convention where we would get to hang out with them was just mind blowing."
Upon visiting Kirby in late 1969, in search of advice, the committee got one straight answer. “Do all of it”. Kirby could see the way that fandom was going and that bringing all the strings together would not only insure a bigger audience, but a more interesting, varied and diverse one. He told them “comics fans have also been interested in the movie media, they’ve been interested in the pulp media, and all of that has some value to them.” He was ahead of his time in understanding the way that fandom was going to evolve, but even Kirby couldn’t know how right he was in telling them to open up the field.
After a few meetings with Kirby, at one of which he drew the committee into a Superman comic as minions of the villain Darkseid, he agreed to attend their first convention.
The first convention went ahead, in the old, rundown U.S. Grant Hotel that spoke of past grandeur that had now fallen on hard times. It had also been the location for Shel’s one day event, and was the only place willing to host the events, desperate for the money to keep the venue afloat.
It was a shock to the venue and the organisers when 300 people turned up in August 1970 to the first three day Golden State Comic Con. It might not sound like much by today’s standards but that was a good pull for a first time event in 1970. It helped that the group had, through various means, managed to get Ray Bradbury, as well as Jack Kirby, to attend as guests and fans flocked to meet their heroes.
The show was a success. Even as just a load of tables with boxes of comics on them and the two headline guests, the event made its mark on the fandom scene. Jack Kirby’s recommendation to reach outside of comics and integrate other fandoms from the get go paid off, and was one of the major factors in the conventions growth over the next few decades. As well as changing the name of the convention, the event moved venues several times before eventually moving to its permanent home at the San Diego Convention Centre in 1991 and becoming the comic con we know and love today.
In the last 50 years, San Diego Comic Con has become a name known world over, featured in films, TV, magazines, and newspapers. It is the pinnacle of western nerd culture, bringing in hundreds and thousands of visitors every year, and is only rivalled by Lucca Con in Italy and Comiket in Japan in fan mythos.
Though they had no way of knowing it, that group of outsiders and misfits looking to find their people gave pop culture one of its greatest assets, San Diego Comic Con.
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You have been listening to Cos Story, brought to you by The Cosplay Journal.
Scripted, read and produced by Holly Swinyard
Information for this episode came from NPC, Rolling Stone Magazine and Publishers Weekly
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