Forty-five years ago this morning, my friend-partner Steve Sherman picked me up outside the house where I lived with my parents. In the car also were Steve's brother Gary and our brother Bruce Simon, and we freewayed down to the U.S. Grant Hotel in San Diego. There, we attended Day One of the Golden State Comic Con which has since morphed into Comic-Con International.
It was in the basement of the Grant which was then undergoing serious reconstruction. The attendees had to navigate around workers and temporary walls but we didn't care. We had a great time.
The number of attendees has since been estimated at 300. It felt like more to me but I'm not saying that number is wrong. Even 300 felt like a lot even though at today's con, 300 is about the number of people on the premises dressed as Harley Quinn. I remember everyone being very excited that the event had happened at all and that it attracted as many people as it attracted.
The big Guest of Honor that day was Jack Kirby. I wrote the tale back here of how I was supposed to introduce his speech and didn't. At the time, Jack had left Marvel but his new work from DC had not yet begun appearing…so some of the fans who showed up to get his autograph on Marvels were a little puzzled. One even asked me if he was allowed to sign issues of Fantastic Four now that he was no longer the book's artist.
I just started to write that no one who was there that day imagined what the convention would become…but I realized that is not a true statement. Jack knew. I don't know how he knew but he knew.
In any case, it was quite a day. The high point was probably Jack's talk. The low point was…well, there were two. On the way back, we stopped off in San Clemente because none of us had had anything to eat all day. You'd think a lot of restaurants would be open on a Saturday night in a city that was then the second home of the President of the United States but somehow, we wound up at a Jack-in-the-Box. And then when I got home, I found out that my father's car had been stolen out of our driveway and somehow, rushing out that morning to climb into Steve's, I hadn't noticed it.
But there were no low points at the con itself. The con itself was a wonderful thing and I can't believe it was 45 years ago.