So I'm working my way through the six-episode podcast on the Secret Origins of Comic-Con International on Sirius XM. It's titled Comic-Con Begins. As I listened to the first two parts, I was thinking a better title would be something about the history of all science-fiction and comic-related fandom. I heard an awful lot of stories being told that I don't think most listeners will understand happened at other conventions, often before there even was a Comic-Con.
I'm also hearing an awful lot of anecdotes and comments from voices I recognize but I'm not certain who they are. Most of you will probably recognize almost no one. And yes, I understand it's audio-only. I understand that if you build a montage of testimony from 100+ people, you can't identify more than a few by name. I'm just saying I wish I knew for sure who'd said some of those things if only so I can say, "Well, if that person said it, it must be true."
I hope people who listen to this series will understand what is to me a key point about Comic-Con: It's huge. And it's huge because it embraces all different interests. If you're interested in adventure-themed videogames, you can wallow for four days in programming and a section of the exhibit hall devoted wholly to adventure-themed videogames. If you're into cosplay, you can have an all-cosplay convention experience. Or it's all about Marvel-themed movies or all about The Walking Dead.
In one part of the podcast, someone — and I have no idea who — was talking about how when the original Star Trek TV show was on, everybody watched it and everybody loved it. I was in high school at the time and there were kids I knew who said that…to which I'd say, "If that were true, it wouldn't be forty-ninth in the Nielsen Ratings and NBC wouldn't keep trying to cancel it."
I'm not knocking anyone's passions; merely the belief that if my friends and I love something, that means everyone else must love it. Well, maybe not. It's like those people who said, "I can't understand how Donald Trump won the presidency. I don't know anyone who voted for him!"
More than a few times, people have said to me something like, "Mark, everyone at Comic-Con goes to that Quick Draw! panel you do each year!" And I thank them but point out that Comic-Con, when they actually have Comic-Con, attracts 150,000 people a year and we do Quick Draw! once during it in a room that seats a little over 3000. You don't have to be Buckminster Fuller to figure out that not everyone who goes to Comic-Con goes to Quick Draw! 120,000+ of 'em probably have never heard of it.
So though I've been to as many Comic-Cons in San Diego as anyone, I've never experienced a lot of things that some folks in this series experienced. Never saw as much drug use as some said was prevalent. Never saw much political activism there, even during the height of the Vietnam protests. (I saw plenty of it elsewhere and even participated in some of it…but Comic-Con seemed to me a place where people went to escape from that for a few days.)
I've made it as far into the six-part series as the chapter on Shel Dorf. In it, someone says…
I don't think there's any wrong way to portray Shel because everybody's view of him is probably valid in some way. But I hope at some point, whether it's me or somebody else, someone just says "I felt sorry for the guy." Because he did start this convention by many definitions and yeah, he got a lot of credit he didn't deserve. But I kept finding myself feeling sad about what happened to him.
That was my voice saying that. I should have added — or maybe I did and they didn't include it — that he was the root cause of just about all the bad stuff that happened to him; that he had a wonderful sweet side at times but an occasional hateful/bitter side that caused him to do some very self-destructive things. There was no one involved with running that convention that tried to harm him or ostracize him. He did it all to himself. On this planet, as you may have observed, there are people who do that. And when you try to help them, they just plain refuse to be helped.
And the only other two things I have to say about the series so far are (a) Brinke Stevens is an enchanting narrator and (b) I still wince when someone, purporting to speak for a group of which I feel a part, announces that we're all geeks or dweebs or nerds or misfits. I've never felt that way and I don't see why anyone wants to self-describe that way.
My longtime pal Scott Shaw! and I have had a friendly discussion that has resulted in a long Facebook thread. Scott and others say that it was the norm, back in the sixties or maybe even seventies to get bullied or beaten-up for reading comics. Again, I'm not questioning that that was what happened to them. I just have this to say: I'm 69 years old. All my life, it has been no secret at all that I loved comic books. And all my life, I have never been bullied or beaten-up for reading comics. (Actually, I've never been beaten-up at all, though I can certainly recall times I probably deserved it.)
Again, we're talking about believing that the common experiences of you and your friends are indicative of everyone's experiences. I had other kids pick on me for being younger than they were, more of a smartass than they were, allegedly brainier than they were, a worse athlete than they were and a few other reasons. Being into comics was never one of them. No one ever made me feel weird about it.
In my school, if someone said, "Hey, you know Evanier reads comic books," the almost-certain reply would have been, "Who gives a shit?" Those who worry too much about what others think of them are probably making the mistake of presuming that others think of them. That's an old saying that I just made up.
I will write more about Comic-Con Begins when I finish it in a day or three. For now, you can hear it on Sirius XM radio (this link might get you to it) or Apple Podcasts (this link might get you to it) or Pandora (this link might get you to it) and I saw it on Spotify as well. Find it and give a listen.