Monday, August 10, 2009
Narramore Years Part 10
Comic Fandom 1982
At the 1982 San Diego Comic Convention I picked up
a flier from the freebie table about something called
the Comic Arts Society that met weekly at the HiDeHo
Comics shop in Santa Monica, California. This was a
group of comics fans who got together to discuss comics.
Soon after getting settled in my new job at NCF I drove
to Santa Monica and found the comics shop (one of the
comic major stores in Southern California) and became
involved on a regular basis for probably two years.
(First date attended meeting was August 11, 1982 and
attended meetings through 1983 and into 1984).
My impressions of comic fans were largely shaped my
by interactions with fans in the 1960s and the fanzines
they produced. People like Jerry Bails who was a PhD
college professor who produced Alter Ego, Comics
Collector, The Comics Reader and the Alpha CAPA Apa
set a high standard. Others like Robert Jennings who
produced The Comics World with its lengthy, analytical
and well-thought out articles on old comics heroes,
Roy Thomas, a school teacher, and co-editor with Bails
on Alter Ego and later writer and editor at Marvel Comics
and DC Comics. Rick Weingroff in his Slam Bang and
Tint analyzed comics with an intellectual depth that
was rare but refreshing. Experienced adult fans like
Ronn Foss, Biljo White (a fireman), Howard Keltner,
Larry Herndon and Buddy Saunders and many others
also made important contributors to the hobby
of comic collecting. These people produced publications
that I respected and were very gracious in their exchanges
with other fans and readers. Early comic fandom had
a good spirited nature about it that was very refreshing.
My limited interaction with older Washington State fans
like Mike Robertson (I contributed to his fanzine
Concussion) in the late 1960s) also were cordial.
There were certainly many, many fanzines produced
during that time that were of minimal quality—
"crudzines" and there was a certain amount of carping
about unpopular editorial decisions by the major
publishers but still a gracious spirit prevailed in
most fanzines. Producing a fanzine was too much
work for it not to be an enjoyable labor of love.
Even though I started attending the San Diego
Comic Con in 1974 and thoroughly enjoyed it—
it was a different and perhaps less personal
experience than the 1960s fanzine scene. While
it was deeply satisfying to see and hear from the
writers and artists whose work you had admired
and enjoyed the experience was also very temporal
and fleeing. With a fanzine (or correspondence)
you had something you could keep and document
those early years. There was a potential paper trail
that didn't relay on rapidly fleeing memories.
At the 1982 San Diego Comic Convention I picked up
a flier from the freebie table about something called
the Comic Arts Society that met weekly at the HiDeHo
Comics shop in Santa Monica, California. This was a
group of comics fans who got together to discuss comics.
Soon after getting settled in my new job at NCF I drove
to Santa Monica and found the comics shop (one of the
comic major stores in Southern California) and became
involved on a regular basis for probably two years.
(First date attended meeting was August 11, 1982 and
attended meetings through 1983 and into 1984).
My impressions of comic fans were largely shaped my
by interactions with fans in the 1960s and the fanzines
they produced. People like Jerry Bails who was a PhD
college professor who produced Alter Ego, Comics
Collector, The Comics Reader and the Alpha CAPA Apa
set a high standard. Others like Robert Jennings who
produced The Comics World with its lengthy, analytical
and well-thought out articles on old comics heroes,
Roy Thomas, a school teacher, and co-editor with Bails
on Alter Ego and later writer and editor at Marvel Comics
and DC Comics. Rick Weingroff in his Slam Bang and
Tint analyzed comics with an intellectual depth that
was rare but refreshing. Experienced adult fans like
Ronn Foss, Biljo White (a fireman), Howard Keltner,
Larry Herndon and Buddy Saunders and many others
also made important contributors to the hobby
of comic collecting. These people produced publications
that I respected and were very gracious in their exchanges
with other fans and readers. Early comic fandom had
a good spirited nature about it that was very refreshing.
My limited interaction with older Washington State fans
like Mike Robertson (I contributed to his fanzine
Concussion) in the late 1960s) also were cordial.
There were certainly many, many fanzines produced
during that time that were of minimal quality—
"crudzines" and there was a certain amount of carping
about unpopular editorial decisions by the major
publishers but still a gracious spirit prevailed in
most fanzines. Producing a fanzine was too much
work for it not to be an enjoyable labor of love.
Even though I started attending the San Diego
Comic Con in 1974 and thoroughly enjoyed it—
it was a different and perhaps less personal
experience than the 1960s fanzine scene. While
it was deeply satisfying to see and hear from the
writers and artists whose work you had admired
and enjoyed the experience was also very temporal
and fleeing. With a fanzine (or correspondence)
you had something you could keep and document
those early years. There was a potential paper trail
that didn't relay on rapidly fleeing memories.
Labels: Alter-Ego, Jerry Bails
# posted by Dino Don @ 10:17 AM 
