Go Hear It!

sdconrecord01

Back in 1975, fandom entrepreneur Alan Light, who founded what we now call the Comics Buyer's Guide, had an idea. He recorded most of the panels at that year's San Diego Comic Con and issued excerpts as a long-playing, 33 and a third RPM record. I bought one and still have mine, though I don't think I ever got around to listening to it. Apparently, not enough of us flocked to purchase the thing because Alan never did another.

With his permission, a new website called Comic-Convention Memories (run by the same folks who gave us the Shel Dorf and Ken Krueger tribute sites) has digitized the record and you can listen to tracks online. There's some neat stuff there with Jack Kirby, Jerry Siegel, Ray Bradbury, Daws Butler and June Foray and many more. Here's a direct link.

Also on the site is an article I wrote in 1974 about the local (i.e., Los Angeles) comic book convention scene, particularly about a series of monthly one-day cons that a friend of named Greg Koudoulian was operating. Not long after this article ran, Greg got too busy with other matters to continue them so I conned another friend, a fellow named Mark Shimmerman, into taking up the cause. If I get a moment later today, I may reminisce about them because they were a lot of fun. When you have a con with cheap admission and cheap dealer tables, it leads to dealers selling comics real cheap.