By Duran Rivera
Section8comics.com

The earliest history of the Comic Convention is an epic tale shrouded in mystery, allure and enchantment. It is an ancient story coated with controversy, sacrifice and forged in the molten lava of steel swords, phasers and unsharpened pencils. It goes back to the darkest annals of geekdom, where the first geek picked up a comic and salivated uncontrollably over it. But to truly know the history of the comic convention one must go back to the pre-comic con age.

 Before Comic Cons there were secret societies, clubs and leagues of geeks (well, not so secret), but they didn’t let just ANYONE in. There were requirements, like for example in the Philadelphia Science Fiction Society a person must have attended three meetings before being voted into becoming a member of this exclusive club. The traditional club greeting for a person voted in is, "Pay your dues!" shouted in unison. The names for these groups sounded more like super hero groups then anything: The Futurians, The Boys' Science Fiction Club, The Science Fiction League, etc. These dedicated societies, clubs and leagues paved the way for a future Sci-fi convention.

 It has been said the first fan convention occurred way back on January 3rd, 1936 when science fiction writer Frederich Pohl and seven other New York-area fans took a trip to the brotherly city of Philadelphia to meet other fellow minded sci-fi aficionados in the living room of American nuclear physicist/Professor Milton A. Rothman (you can’t make this up) who wrote stories under the alter ego Lee Gregor.  Milton Rothman ended up founding what some refer to as the first sci-fi convention the “Philcon” which stands for the Philadelphia Science Fiction Conference. Through the Philcon, the first ever "convention report" was published in a New York fanzine.

The sci-fi-conies were the predecessors for the comic-elementals, the priests to the old Gods. These creatures the most modern geeks must revere, for these Newsstand locals witnessed the first comic book’s ascent from the primordial darkness.

 A year later, on January 3, 1937, some of British science fiction fans had a more polished/ dressed up public event. The first World Science Fiction Convention or as it was called “Worldcon” was held over the July 4, 1939 weekend in New York City. Aside from a small break due to a little dispute called World War 2, it has been a sci-fi benchmark distributing Hugo Awards ever since.

Now, we fast forward to 1961. Comic culturalists Jerry Bails (who is considered the father of comic fandom), Shel Dorf (letterer and freelance artist who founded the San Diego Comic Con in 1970), writer Bernie Bubnis, and future Marvel Comics editor-in-chief Roy Thomas took notes from the sci-fi culture was doing and began touching base back and forth with each other and with comic-book editors (mainly DC Comics' Julius Schwartz), eventually putting together the flagship comic conventions. Among the first were the 1964 New York Comicon and that same year's Detroit Triple Fan Fair.

 

Philip Nicholas Seuling founder of the New York Comic Art Conventions and orchestrator of the direct market distribution method says "In 1964, about a hundred people found themselves in a New York City union meeting hall, a large open room with wooden folding chairs, looking around at each other oddly, surprised, not really know what they were there for, a bit sheepish, waiting for whatever was going to take place to begin. ... It was the first comic convention ever and that one-day assembly grew step by step into an annual tradition in New York and then elsewhere. In 1968, I became involved in staging my first convention. The following year began the current series called the Comic Art Convention".

His New York Comic Art Convention was one of the largest of all the comic conventions with five to seven fans attending. It fed heavily into the comic collector culture due to the growing media attention. The raising age brackets of an older and older fan base opened the doorway for comics to be studied in a more critical and mature fashion.

The 69’ convention held Independence Day weekend at the Statler Hilton Hotel in New York City cost $3.50 for a three-day ticket, with daily passes at $1.50. Admittance was free with a hotel room rental, which cost $15-and-up per day.

Will Eisner, the creator of the Spirit in 1940s says that the 1971 Comic Art Con inspired his return to comics. He says in an interview with Seuling, "I came back into the field because of you. I remember you calling me in New London, [Connecticut], where I was sitting there as chairman of the board of Croft Publishing Co. My secretary said, 'There's a Mr. Seuling on the phone and he's talking about a comics convention. What is that?' She said, 'I didn't know you were a cartoonist, Mr. Eisner.' 'Oh, yes,' I said, 'secretly; I'm a closet cartoonist.' I came down and was stunned at the existence of the whole world. ... That was a world that I had left, and I found it very exciting, very stimulating".

 

Eisner later elaborated about meeting underground comics creators and publishers, including Denis Kitchen: "I went down to the convention, which was being held in one of the hotels in New York, and there was a group of guys with long hair and scraggly beards, who had been turning out what spun as literature. Really popular 'gutter' literature if you will, but pure literature. And they were taking on illegal [sic] subject matter that no comics had ever dealt with before. ... I came away from that recognizing that a revolution had occurred then, a turning point in the history of this medium. ... I reasoned that the 13-year-old kids that I'd been writing to back in the 1940s were no longer 13-year-old kids; they were now 30, 40 years old. They would want something more than two heroes, two supermen, crashing against each other. I began working on a book that dealt with a subject that I felt had never been tried by comics before. That was man's relationship with God. That was the book A Contract with God.”

 

The history of comic book conventions coincides with the history of its host. Be it, San Diego, Chicago or New York City. The stories that surround the different eras of the comic conventions are lengthy and very telling. Comic book historian Peter Sanderson sheds some of his thoughts on the New York Comic Con:

 

 “I think the fact that the Comic-Con is in San Diego is one of the foremost reasons for its success. Considering that the two major comics companies, Marvel and DC, are based in New York City, it has long been a puzzle why New York is no longer able to sustain a first-class comics convention. It used to: there was another Golden Age of comics cons, and in this case I was around for the tail end of it. These were the annual Fourth of July comics cons in New York City run by the late Phil Seuling, the pioneer of the direct sales comics market. Again, I suspect that the smallness, intimacy, and newness of these Cons are what have made them nostalgic legends, but they were already in decline when I started attending in the late '70s. The Seuling cons were supplanted by Creation Cons, back before Creation abandoned comic cons for sci-fi, and though large, there were probably too many of them per year, and they lost the cachet of being special events. For years now, there are comics conventions, some large, and others merely a Sunday gathering of back issue dealers, in New York City, but they all seem cheesy, crowded and undignified. (I went to one year ago that was held in the Madison Square Garden complex when the circus was in town, and people remarked on the strong scent of elephant urine.)

 

The revolving golden eras and slumps continue to this day. One doesn’t help but wonder even in the height of heights of the modern NYC comic cons today how it would one day hit a funk, returning to the bygone eras but as all things it would. Hopefully though, it won’t for a long time. 

Till then, in the night, a gigantic huffing puffing beast approaches and it is hungry. It is made of Jedi’s and Trekkies, it is made of Bat-Fiends and Spider-Dweebs. It is called the Comic Con!!!!! It’s skin cells are made of geeks. This monster bleeds India ink and CMYK. It will turn back for no mere mortal. Annually it stomps through the legendary lands of San Francisco, New York, Japan, Italy and France etc. The motion picture industry feeds uncontrollably over whatever it drops, the greatest video game companies cower in its presence. It is a growing perfect storm not subsiding anytime soon.

Today there are numerous Comic Conventions through out the nation:

• Alternative Press Expo (San Francisco, CA
• Baltimore Comic-Con (Baltimore, MD)
• Big Apple Convention (New York City, NY)
• Central Canada Comic Con (Winnipeg, Manitoba)
  
• Comic-Con International (San Diego, CA)
• Comicpalooza (Houston, TX)
• Emerald City ComiCon (Seattle, WA)
• Heroes Convention (Charlotte, NC)
• MegaCon (Orlando, FL)
• MoCCA Art Festival (New York City)
• New York Comic-Con (New York City, NY)
• Phoenix ComiCon (Phoenix, AZ)
• Small Press Expo (Bethesda, MD)
• Toronto Comicon (Toronto, ON)
• WonderCon (San Francisco, CA)

 And for that we must thank those who started this annual custom. It is because of the ancient geeks that we savor and anticipate the newest comic con. Because of them that we shake hands with the legends that forget we exist a moment later. It is partly because of the archai-geeks that our lives are self-indulgently shaped by such phantasmagoria.  

By rod and lash those vanguards have bequeathed to us a world of amazement and wonder. We owe these fine souls our finest tribute!.

For more on Comic Conventions Go to:

http://movies.ign.com/articles/432/432946p1.html

http://www.fanhistory.com/wiki/Conventions

http://www.psfs.org/about/founders.php

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MoCCA_Art_Festival

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Apple_Convention

http://www.newyorkcomiccon.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phil_Seuling

by Duran R.