Where Were You in '72?
Do you remember where you were over the 1972 Memorial Day weekend? I do!
I spent every hour I could at Manhattan's McAlpin Hotel attending the 1972 EC Fan Addict convention. I paid my $7.50 entry fee and got to hang out with the madmen (and one crazy lady) behind one of the most amazing comic-book companies ever.
And I have the button to prove it!
Those of you who couldn't make it to New York back then are able to catch up with a report in the pages of the September 1972 issue of Graphic Story World magazine, one of the high-end fanzines of the day. (And if that cover boy below puts you in mind of Watchmen's Nite Owl, well, that's not him. It's just ... The Owl, a character created by Jerry De Fuccio and Mart Bailey for a potential newspaper strip in the mid-'60s.)
Inside, spread across pages 20 and 21, was a photo essay with pictures from Janet Fries and Fred von Bernewitz, and text transcribed by John Benson. (Click on any image twice to view at its largest size.) I don't think there ever was such a well-attended EC reunion ever again. Wally Wood, Jack Davis, Al Feldstein, Harvey Kurtzman, Marie Severin, and on and on and on ...
I was lucky enough to have already read every EC Comic, because a neighbor who'd owned a complete set was willing to entrust me with them a few at a time, so I knew who these creators were and what they had accomplished, and I had stars in my eyes. I sat in the front row at every panel, sketchpad tucked under one arm, which is how I got the caricature by Davis I'm using as my icon above.
But that was far from the only convention to happen that year! Also inside this issue of Graphic Story World were reports from the First American International Congress of Comics, the 5th Annual New York Comic Art Convention (I was there, too, though I no longer remember why Jim Steranko would have been called "the Adolph Menjou of comics"), and San Diego's West Coast Comic Art Convention (now the San Diego Comic-Con International).
I wish I could have attended them all!
I spent every hour I could at Manhattan's McAlpin Hotel attending the 1972 EC Fan Addict convention. I paid my $7.50 entry fee and got to hang out with the madmen (and one crazy lady) behind one of the most amazing comic-book companies ever.
And I have the button to prove it!
Those of you who couldn't make it to New York back then are able to catch up with a report in the pages of the September 1972 issue of Graphic Story World magazine, one of the high-end fanzines of the day. (And if that cover boy below puts you in mind of Watchmen's Nite Owl, well, that's not him. It's just ... The Owl, a character created by Jerry De Fuccio and Mart Bailey for a potential newspaper strip in the mid-'60s.)
Inside, spread across pages 20 and 21, was a photo essay with pictures from Janet Fries and Fred von Bernewitz, and text transcribed by John Benson. (Click on any image twice to view at its largest size.) I don't think there ever was such a well-attended EC reunion ever again. Wally Wood, Jack Davis, Al Feldstein, Harvey Kurtzman, Marie Severin, and on and on and on ...
I was lucky enough to have already read every EC Comic, because a neighbor who'd owned a complete set was willing to entrust me with them a few at a time, so I knew who these creators were and what they had accomplished, and I had stars in my eyes. I sat in the front row at every panel, sketchpad tucked under one arm, which is how I got the caricature by Davis I'm using as my icon above.
But that was far from the only convention to happen that year! Also inside this issue of Graphic Story World were reports from the First American International Congress of Comics, the 5th Annual New York Comic Art Convention (I was there, too, though I no longer remember why Jim Steranko would have been called "the Adolph Menjou of comics"), and San Diego's West Coast Comic Art Convention (now the San Diego Comic-Con International).
I wish I could have attended them all!