Some would call late Comic-Con founder Shel Dorf “controversial,” others “#$%!!,” still others their “greatest inspiration and friend.” The only thing everyone can agree on is that the Comic-Con would never have happened without Shel. And now his closest Con compadres open up about the reason why. As well as thoughtful reflections of Shel’s contentious departure in 1984 … right as the Con and geek culture took a giant leap forward.
Some would call late Comic-Con founder Shel Dorf “controversial,” others “#$%!!,” still others their “greatest inspiration and friend.” The only thing everyone can agree on is that the Comic-Con would never have happened without Shel. And now his closest Con compadres open up about the reason why. As well as thoughtful reflections of Shel’s contentious departure in 1984 … right as the Con and geek culture took a giant leap forward.
Narrated by Brinke Stevens
Created and Directed by Mathew Klickstein
Executive Produced by Rob Schulte
Written and Produced by Mathew Klickstein, Rob Schulte, and Christopher Tyler
Edited by Rob Shulte, and Christopher Tyler
Mixed by James Bilodeau
Original Music Composed by Max DeVincenzo and Produced by Fox Tracks Music
With help from Brannan Goetschius and Michael Fische
All interviews (unless otherwise noted) conducted by Mathew Klickstein.
Principal interviewees/contributors (in alphabetical order):
Al Jean, Anthony Russo, Barry Alfonso, Barry Short, Bill Lund, Bill Mumy (provided by contributor), Bill Schanes, Bjo Trimble, Bob Arendt, Brinke Stevens, Bruce Campbell, Caseen Gaines, Chuck Graham (provided by SDSU), Clayton Moore, Dave Clark, Dave Scroggy, Erin Hanna, Gene Henderson, Greg Bear, Gregory Benford, Gus Krueger, Felicia Day, Frank Miller, Ho Che Anderson, Igor Goldkind (provided by SDSU), Jackie Estrada, Jeanne Graham (provided by SDSU), Jim Cornelius, Jim Means, Jim Valentino, Joe Russo, John Pound, John Trimble, Kevin Eastman, Linda Yeh, Lloyd Kaufman, Kevin Smith (provided by contributor), Len Wein (provided by M. Klickstein archive), Maggie Thompson, Mark Evanier, Mike Towry, Mo Alzmann, Neil Gaiman (provided by contributor), Paul M. Sammon, Phil Yeh, Richard Alf (provided by KPBS), Richard Butner, Rick Geary, Roger Freedman, Scott Aukerman, Scott Shaw!, Sergio Aragonés (provided by contributor), Stan Sakai, Tim Seeley, Trina Robbins, Wendy All.
We are grateful to the family of Mary and Gene Henderson (who, sadly, passed away during the final stages of Comic-Con Begins' post-production). This production is dedicated in part to their memory, as well as the memory of the many Con contributors no longer with us but whose legacy will continue to live on for time immemorial.
Archival material and additional research provided by:
Mike Towry and his “Comic-Convention Memories” website.
Alan Light’s 1975 Comic-Con recordings
Jackie Estrada and Comic-Con’s 40th Anniversary Souvenir Book
Pamela Jackson and San Diego State University’s Comic-Con
Maureen Cavanaugh at San Diego’s KPBS
Erin Hanna and her book Only at Comic Con
Bjo Trimble and “The Star Trek Concordance”
Fantagraphics’ “We Told You So: Comics As Art”
Dave Clark:
In Timothy Leary's book, Psychedelic Prayers, there’s a line about finding the Tao, finding the way among the list of people. And the last one is Smiling Man with Bad Reputation. And that was Ken Krueger. And he was our mentor, truly. Once a week, we would meet in his bookstore in the evening. And in the summer of 1969, I guess, summer of ‘69, we had a science fiction club. At one of these meetings, he said, “Hi, this is a guy that I know from back in New York named Shel Dorf. And Shel has an idea to put on a convention, and he wants to talk to you guys.”
Brinke Stevens:
Hello, fangirls and fanboys. I'm your host of Comic-Con Begins, Brinke Stevens. We're now halfway through our audio adventure into the history of the largest pop culture event on the planet, the San Diego Comic-Con. As such, we highly recommend that you check out Episodes One, Two, and Three before proceeding. It's in those episodes you'll hear all about how a group of teenage nerds, geeks, stoners, artists, science buffs, and general weirdoes got together in the then small and unknown town of San Diego to celebrate their favorite pop culture heroes like Jack Kirby, Sergio Aragonés, Forrie Ackerman, and Ray Bradbury. Their annual meet-ups in various hotel basements eventually would expand into what we know today as Comic-Con. But those young kids, of which I was one, would never have been able to do it without the vision and passion of the old man of the group. One whose name usually comes with two qualifiers: founder and controversial.
Mark Evanier:
Would it be fair to assume that everyone listening to this by the time we get to me will know who Shel Dorf is?
Dave Clark:
Shel's kind of a strange guy, in a way. But he had tremendous enthusiasm and this never would have happened without Shel. The inspiration was his. He became the figure associated with it, the public face of the San Diego comic convention for many, many years. He is controversial today. Not for any ill deeds, really, but just to, uh, an attitude and approach that was awkward. As the convention grew in popularity, I think it went to his head a bit, it seemed to me.
Jim Means:
I would not consider him to be like, you know, this overly impressive person. You know, he's sort of a legend now, I think, because he helped create Comic-Con. But he didn't have, like, an overwhelming personality at all.
Shel Dorf:
Uh, at this time, I’d like to tell you how this whole thing got started. I moved to San Diego about a year ago and, being active in the Detroit comic convention, I found, uh, suddenly cut off from, uh, the life source of everything. So I sort of beat the bushes for some comic fans here. And I found an ad in the Pennywise Press for Marvel Comics. I called the number and then it turned out to be Barry Alfonso’s.
Scott Shaw!:
I mean, Shel at the time had to have been in his mid-thirties. I remember going home and telling my parents about it. And then Shel came out. We started having meetings at their house, at my parents' house too. And so it was like, I didn't know how to take this guy, but he kept telling him that he was gonna, he was gonna take me into New York. Well, that never happened, because Shel had a lot of people's phone numbers, but I don't think he had any clout in the business at all. But he, he liked acting like big shot.
Jim Means:
I mean, I feel like Shel was much more in tune with the industry, with the people and personalities. I mean, maybe because he was such a fan.
Scott Shaw!:
I remember him putting his feet up on our coffee table. Great way to go to stranger's house. My grandmother later said, “I wonder if he can afford those tickets to New York City, since he had a big hole on the bottom of his shoe.” So, you know, this kind of, I always got the sense that he was kind of a pretender.
Rick Geary:
He sent my work to a number of different publishers in LA, like the Los Angeles Times was one specifically, I remember. But, uh, not really a lot of work came out of that. But, uh, he was always very enthusiastic about promoting me, as well as, I think less than actually getting work for me. I just think it was the connections that he facilitated that helped me, especially in my connection with the Comic-Con.
Phil Yeh:
My newspaper always encouraged the Comic-Con. When we started the newspaper in 1973 Uncle Jam, we were among the few people in the mainstream that promoted comic books. So, Shel was respectful after that and very nice to me. And we became friends. But I know many people of my generation, uh, had their differences with Shel. And I understand. Exactly, you know. Comic books, the field itself, is based on personalities. You know, the comic book world is a small one. And so people had their opinions.
Jim Cornelius:
He ended up coming to my art parties and he started trying to take over like the host of the art party at the house. My ex-wife and I had just had a litter of kittens. And he told me to remove the cats because he was allergic to cats. Which I found, uh, a little … nyeh! And I asked him at the end of the party, if he'd like to take a kitty home with him. And I pretty much disliked the guy ever since I first met him.
Scott Shaw!:
One day, we were having our Comic-Con meeting. We were meeting in Balboa Park. We’d just sit on the grass. You know, it was like, we didn't want to pay for a boardroom or something anywhere. And Shel comes walking up and he's got a big stack of brochures, and it's advertising this new one-day Con. And he's happy to hand them out. Hey, you're going to hand these out at your local newsstand. Put them in your … there weren't any comic shops yet. And I look at the bottom and it says, “Founded by Shel Dorf.” And I wasn’t the oldest person there. I think Will Lund is a year older than me. But I was certainly one of the oldest ones that, you know, of the teenagers. And I said, “Shel!” I said, “Why … We never talked about having a founder. Aren't we all the founders?” And everybody else was kind of like, “Okay, that's fine.” And looking back, as an adult: Who tries to take credit on something that's never happened yet? I mean, it could have been the biggest disaster in the world. I mean, right there, you kind of get a sense of where this guy was at.
Mike Towry:
Shel Dorf’s role in Comic-Con isn't always really understood. And there's some controversy, because Shel himself was kind of … you know, not everybody really dug Shel.
Jim Cornelius:
I think everybody didn't want the liability of the Comic-Con in the early days and were okay with Shep being the target and, uh, allowed him to do that. And that didn't quite sit well with me. But, uh …
Mike Towry:
Richard Alf actually used to like to say with regard to Comic-Con, and especially Shel Dorf’s role in it, that, “Success has many fathers, while failure is an orphan.”
Roger Freedman:
I don't think, I would not call myself one of the founders, because I think that that's kind of a really, yeah, I was present at the creation is the way I like to think of it.
Dave Clark:
Well, I'm one of the founding members, what's called the “founding members.”
John Pound:
I was just invited to join this group of kids that were starting the Comic-Con. Um, it would be like a “co-founder” would be one role. Although, that sounds more highfalutin than, than what I experienced it, because other people seem like they were doing the heavy lifting and I got to work with graphics and the art shows
Phil Yeh:
It was basically a group of kids, a group of teenage boys who helped this old man in his thirties start the first convention.
Barry Alfonso:
Here’s what I would want to say about that. This goes to the origin of the San Diego Comic-Con. A group of us had an initial meeting about what became San Diego Comic-Con at Shel's parents' apartment in the fall of 1969. And at that time, the name “San Diego Golden State Comic-Con” was brooded about. A few months later, at the beginning of 1970, there was another meeting at Scott Shaw!'s house where he and his group of friends kind of merged with our group. And they were centered around Ken Krueger, who was their mentor. And so the two groups came together in that way, but there was still sort of a factional tension at times for the next few years.
Mike Towry:
Shel Dorf had done this thing where, when one of the guests were gonna speak, he would shut down the dealers room, and that really pissed off the dealers and the collectors.
Shel Dorf:
To make it more convenient for everyone, uh, we're going to have our program continue along the same vein without interrupting it with dealing and everything. And afterwards, the dealers tables will be open.
Ken Krueger:
A course of boos from the background! Shel, you’re nothing but a …
Mike Towry:
Okay. So, so Shel, he was from Detroit, and like I said, he was 36 when he came out in ‘69. And, um, you know, there were things about him that we thought were like, you know, square or uptight or whatever you want to say. Richard Alf and he were great friends, But, um, I didn't get along that well with Shel.
Barry Alfonso:
And I think that played out in how … the group that came in with Shel regarded him and the group that came in later regarded Shel. They were never as close to him. And in some ways they resented him, they felt he was too domineering. His personality was too much stamped on the Comic-Con. And there were various flare-ups about that. There was a, there was a real flare-up in 1971 where there was kind of a breakdown along real factional lines, but it came back together. So from my perspective, Shel could have an abrasive personality. He could, uh, be intolerant about some things. He could be rude, but his heart always seemed in the right place. He genuinely cared about fandom. He genuinely cared about giving comic book artists and cartoonists their due and bringing them in touch with fans. And that was the most important thing to me. And he always treated me personally and my mother with, with real kindness, but he could be a bit of a maladroit personality as far as how he handled people.
Brinke Stevens:
I do remember, in the 1980s, I had done a photo shoot for Penthouse Magazine. I also later did Playboy numerous times and various other magazines like Oui, and so on. Never pornographic, but pretty sexy stuff. And I was into it. At one of the meetings in the late eighties, Shel Dorf got up front and was waving a copy of my Penthouse Magazine. And he said, “Is this the kind of person we want in our organization?” And everyone said, “Shel, shut up and sit down! Yes, we do want her!”
Dave Scroggy:
But Shel would come along and he would just insert himself. Someone would have carefully planned out an event or a, or a facet of the Comic-Con, and Shel would come in at the last minute like a bull in a China shop and say, “No, it couldn't be this way.” ‘Cause he had told his friends so-and-so …
Scott Shaw!:
It wasn't long after my, our son Kirby had been born and you know, people are sending us gifts and cards and stuff, and I'm surprised to get a card from Shel. But it looked like something inside was trying to burst out. I mean, it was literally three inches thick. He'd taken a drawing I'd given to him years ago and folded it up seven times so it would fit in there. And wrote across it with a big marker, “WHO NEEDS YOU?” And this was completely out of the blue. He’d just steam about things. And you wouldn't hear from him for months or even years. And then suddenly you get this.
Jim Cornelius:
It was 1980. My daughter had just been born. Uh, two days I stayed at the hospital with my wife and then the other two days I went to the Comic-Con. And when I arrived at Comic-Con, Scott Shaw! asked how I had gotten out of jail so quickly. And I went, “What?!” And he said that Shel Dorf, or Shep Derf, uh, over the Intercom system had said that I was arrested out in front of the Comic-Con with explosives. And I just didn't understand that at all. And it turned out to be Steve Garris firing off firecrackers in front, and Shel was trying to keep people from smoking marijuana around the pool at the El Cortez. And he used my name because I wasn't there to insinuate that there was police activity, you know? And, uh, I pretty much was pissed off at about that.
Scott Shaw!:
I mean, when Shel died, the only person they could get to write something nice about him was Mark Evanier. No other professional that every knew him would write anything. So it's not just me.
Jim Valentino:
I mean, I can't say anything good about Shel. You know, I can tell you when my sons got to about 10, he called me up and said that he thought that they needed a strong male influence in their lives. And he was volunteering for the job.
Mark Evanier:
You know, the negative stories about Shel are more fun to tell, they’re more colorful and have gotten maybe less currency.
Richard Butner:
Well, let me say this, first of all. As a friend of Shel Dorf’s, I recognize his failings. He could be a very abrasive person. He was a very willful person and knew what he wanted and went for it. He wasn't a vicious person. He wasn't a mean person, but he didn't put up with a lot of nonsense or backbiting or fighting. And he was vocal about it.
John Pound:
And I find that there was an aspect of Shel that I think … I thought of it back at that time as annoying, but it was kind of threatening to me because I was young and I wanted to be an artist and I didn't have any idea how to make a living. And here was Shel, much older, living with his parents. God, could this happen to me if I was his age, you know, that I'd still be living with my parents? And so, I had no particular reason to be mad at him and maybe it was just, I was going through some rough stuff in my life. And I remember at one time after a couple of the conventions, for some reason, I just got annoyed with Shel and it was just really poor judgment on my, unkind on my part. And I just was saying, “Why don't you just quit?” And stuff like that, because it was a personality difference. It wasn't, it wasn't that he was any more or less competent than anybody,
Mo Alzmann:
You know, once something gets in your head, you know, it snowballs and, you know, they would have copies made of pieces of paper at the convention and say that Shel Dorf is a, an ex-convict. He was in prison for murder, just ridiculous things, just stupid things. And you know, it was just done to be hurtful. And there was no other reason except to be hurtful. And I don't know if he'd ever done anything to those people or said anything to those people or if he was ever rude to them. But you know, you know, the Comic-Con is, you know, stuff is going to be said and stuff is going to happen, get over it. But as far as I know, there was never any reason for anything. I never saw anything negative out of Shel Dorf. Ever.
Richard Butner:
If it wasn’t for Shel Dorf, there would not be a Comic-Con. Period. End of story. Now, those people who have a problem with Shel, okay, you got a problem with Shel. I had problems with people on the convention committee, too. I tried to minimize them and keep ‘em at arm’s length and professional because we had a job to do. He had an abrasive personality, but then again, he was a terrific guy and helped me out.
Mo Alzmann:
As time passed, talk about Shel Dorf became more and more favorable, but that's something that wouldn't have happened, you know, years ago.
Dave Scroggy:
I know that today there are a lot of Shel haters amongst the early Comic-Con people. I am not one of them. Shel drove me crazy sometimes, but I can honestly tell you that Shel Dorf launched my career. When John and I came to that first Comic-Con meeting, Shel was the most welcoming of anyone. It was Shel who introduced me to the Comics Buyer’s Guide and recommended that I get this column. It was Shel who encouraged me to apply to Pacific Comics and I used as a reference. It was shell who – and Richard Butner -- both who really recognized talent that maybe I didn't even know I had. And, uh, and gave me more responsible positions on Comic-Con. Told me I could do it when I didn't know that I, myself, that I could do it. So I really have a lot to thank Shel for. Although, I have many times where Shel literally drove me crazy.
Barry Alfonso:
I took Shel at face value. I appreciated his enthusiasm. I appreciated his knowledge and his connections. And he set a tone where everybody was accepted. He made everyone feel equal, including me, who was noticeably younger than the others.
Richard Butner:
Shel and I became fast friends. One of the best persons I've ever met in my life. He was generous. He was kind. He was encouraging. He was a good artist. He was a writer. He could interview people. I sat through his interview with Harrison Ford and it was a terrific interview. He knew everybody. We needed that because we didn't know anybody. We were just fans. He was a super-fan. But he knew that he wasn't the kind of person to get things done.
Mike Towry:
In addition to the comic convention committee, we had a comic club that kind of supported the convention. We would have meetings and we would pay dues. We were supposed to pay dues anyway, 50 cents a meeting, and sometimes we'd have little auctions. People would donate comics or something to sell, to raise money. And so Shel had told Richard that, you know, it was amazing to him that, that, you know, the money we got from the dues and from the auctions was enough to get the Comic-Con going. And Richard had to tell him, “No, Shel. You know, I paid for that. I put the money into it.” And, you know, which Richard had. But Shel just didn't know. He was just kind of on another plane. And he was just interested in the fandom.
Mark Evanier:
He worshiped Milton Caniff and Jack Kirby, especially, but anybody who ever drew a comic. A certain part of his frustration, and if you'd have mentioned it to Scott Shaw!, you would have heard this, is that Shel had to sit and watch as people he met as kids became professional cartoonists. And Scott was probably the one that bugged him the most, because Scott became a very established professional cartoonist, a very good professional cartoonist, but also a guy who really was a cartoonist. There's people who draw cartoons for a living, and there are people who are cartoonists. Scott was a cartoonist.
Scott Shaw!:
He was very jealous of me. He was jealous of Jim Valentino. Any San Diego cartoonists that had to deal with Shel has many, many, many, many, many stories.
Jim Valentino:
When I first hit town, everyone told me I should go see Shel. I showed Shel my drawings and, uh, Shel looked at them, kind of tossed them back at me and said, “You have no talent go home.” That was my first impression of Shel. It didn't get a lot better.
Scott Shaw!:
The more people around him got into the business that he so desperately wanted to be in, it stoked this kind of smoldering hatred within him, I think. Shel Dorf had this, uh, habit of doing favors for people that they never asked for. And then turning around and saying, “Well, since I did you that, you need to do me this much bigger favor.” It would go from showing up in the middle of the day to say, “I need to crash on your sofa tonight,” to people that he may have only met once or twice to, uh, you know, like with Dave Stevens. “Now you owe me 10% of your your, your income.”
Barry Short:
As the years went on, you always have a little bit of friction. And the problem was that in the early stages, Shel could basically do anything he wanted because he was the founder and the president, and he could do that. And he did that for many years. By the early eighties, we were in a position that we really needed to have budgets for these things. We couldn't just do it all on the fly anymore. And, you know, we tried to say, “Shel, please, if you have somebody that you think should be a guest, come to the board with it. There's a very good chance we’ll approve it. But we need to approve these things. We have a procedure for doing it. You know, we're, we're a big enough nonprofit that we actually have to keep track of these things.” And sometimes he would, and sometimes he wouldn't.
Mo Alzmann:
H knew everybody. He was generous. He was kind, He was helpful. Um, the only problems I ever had with Shel is when I was treasurer. You know, I had to, I had to fight him a lot because if we didn't have the money, we didn't have the money. You know, I wasn't going to use next year's money on that year. And, um, and he never really understood that. He never understood that, you know, there was an end to the, the money that he, that he could spend.
Barry Short:
Shel went to some event somewhere, and he met Joan Howard. Now, Joan Howard is the daughter of Moe Howard of the Three Stooges. Shel invited her to be a guest at Comic-Con. But he didn't talk to any of us about it before he issued the invitation. So we were kind of irritated with that. And there was a little bit of, um, uh, a few stern words back and forth about that. But, then it dawned on us. Joan Howard had married Norman Maurer. Norman was the guy who drew the Three Stooges comics for St. John back in the 1950s. And he was partnered with Joe Kubert in St. John Publishing. So, suddenly it became, “Oh, wait a minute. We're not just getting the daughter of one of the Three Stooges. We're getting a really important Golden Age comic book artist out of this deal.” So, once we figured that out, we were a little less unhappy with Shel.
Jim Means:
Uh, he didn't have a lot of income coming in. So I know he took some money from, uh, from the Comic-Con funds, from the Comic-Con account, I think in order to pay his rent, to pay for his food bills … And to show you what a different world it was then, and to show you how beloved he was, the idea was, “Well, he shouldn't have to do this. You know, he's doing all his work for Comic-Con, you know, let's give him a stipend. So that, you know, so that he doesn't have to worry about making his rent or paying for his food.”
Mike Towry:
So Fae Desmond, she's the executive director. She became, I think, Comic-Con’s first salaried employee. And that really bothered Shel, because he was really scraping by and just trying to make ends meet. But it had to be. I mean, Fae really knew what she was doing. And she got to a point where Comic-Con started to grow so large, that it wasn't, it wasn't something that she could do on the side anymore. It had to become her job. Shel, because, he had been the key person in creating Comic-Con, I think he kind of looked at it, he had kind of a proprietary view of it, but it was a nonprofit organization and had a board of directors. And when you make it a nonprofit, it's not a sole proprietor. You’ve basically ceded control to a group of people that make the decisions and you have to abide by their decisions. And, you know, they were young to the part of, they were very young and they kind of impatient. And for younger people, it was easy to become impatient with him. And I think that's what happened. I wasn't there when they finally had the break with the Con. And I know he was upset. I'm pretty sure that, looking back, they wish they, they might've handled it a little differently with Shel. And then maybe kind of, I don't know, like more cognizant of, um, how he felt and, you know, respect for what he had done maybe, but what they were doing was right, had to be done. And it was just an unfortunate in that they, you know, that they had that break.
Mark Evanier:
He was the guy who made the San Diego Con as benevolent organization, as it is. If the Con had been headed up, the exact same Con had been headed up by a guy who also sold comics, like a dealer, it would have been a very different entity. It might've succeeded, but a different convention. Shel was the guy who looked at it with a love of comics. He didn't do a lot of the heavy lifting. He let other people do that for him. If you want to have a role in something, you got to show up, you've got to work and he didn't work very much. And that kind of is why he ended up getting excluded for a lot of it.
Mike Towry:
So, what I'm saying is, I didn't get along that well with Shel. But I'm really grateful to him because he brought this whole thing to us.
Brinke Stevens:
Well, maybe now you understand why we've dedicated an entire episode of the Comic-Con story to Mr. Shel Dorf. In many ways, he was our very own Citizen Kane: beloved, despised, pitied, maligned, mocked, admired. But undoubtedly one of the truest fans that ever was. He was one of us. He may have been 15 years older. He may have had holes in his shoes, but he was one of us. He had flaws, but we needed him all the same. When we get back, the Shel hits the fan. When Comic-Con and tensions in the group continue to grow.
[INTERMISSION]
Brinke Stevens:
Welcome back to Comic-Con Begins. One of the stories that really encapsulates the type of person that Shel was, takes place at the beginning of Comic-Con’s evolution takes place at the house of our pal, Jack Kirby. Take it away Mark Evanier.
Mark Evanier:
The third time I met Shel Dorf was when I was working for Jack Kirby. My friend Steve Sherbourne and I were Jack’s assistants. On a Saturday when we chose not to go out there to work, usually not Saturdays, we got this panicked call from Jack's wife saying, “Guys, can you get out here? Shel Dorf just came by and he brought 16 people with him. I need help.” So, we jumped in a into Steve's car. We drove out there, we got out there outside Jack's home. There we're about four cars parked. We went in and Jack was being interviewed by some place between 15 and 20 guys from San Diego and Shel Dorf. And they were expecting to spend the whole day,
Scott Shaw!:
One of the guy's mother who came up ‘cause he was the youngest of us, she … Jack's wife Roz found her in the back of the house, looking through the cupboards.
Mark Evanier:
At one point, trying to wind down this little convention that had sprung up at her living room, Roz Kirby came in and told, uh, Shel, “Geez, Shel, it's almost time for lunch.” Meaning: you better leave, I want to feed Jack. And Shel said, “Oh really? What are we having?” And rather than kick them out, Roz gave us some money, sent us to McDonald's and said, “Buy the cheapest burgers and fries for these guys.” And we did. And it winded up going all day, with Jack talking to all these fans. That was the first day I met my longtime friend, Scott Shaw!. He was in that group. It was the first day I met a lot of guys who became lifelong friends through the convention. And, uh, it was the first time I saw Shel's amazing ability to impose on everybody else's hospitality beyond all reason.
Scott Shaw!:
But I remember very specifically that this was about two months after all the first issues of the Fourth World books came out, because this is how we finally were thrown out of Jack's house nicely. Jack thinks that we're all done. Roz is out there kind of like, you know, backup because Jack still got to crank out a half dozen pages that night. And, uh, Shel goes, “Just one more thing.” Jack goes, “Yeah, sure. What is it?” And Shel opens up a bag with a tape recorder, and the first issues of all those comics and is, “Jack, I'd like you to read each of these comics in the voices that you hear in your head for the dialogue. And if you could provide annotations of each thing,” and Jack just said, “No.” And, and Roz said, “Goodbye, everybody!” Because, by that time, even I was going, “We are really overstaying our, our, our time here.”
Brinke Stevens:
That’s Shel Dorf for you. Then again, it's worth noting that though Shel had been imposing on Jack and Roz Kirby, he still did get himself and a bunch of our people into the Kirbys’ house, to begin with. Shel was a known figure in the realm of national fandom. People took his calls. They let him into their houses and art studios and offices. Whatever his faults, he was “the” Shel Dorf. And perhaps it was that same big personality of his that led not only to his many successes, but also to his unfortunate failures. Particularly as Comic-Con expanded like a massive balloon throughout the early eighties. Eventually something was bound to pop.
Richard Alf:
My feeling is, is that when we first met Shel Dorf, Mike Towry and I never knew anything about comic book conventions. Within one year of meeting Shel, we had both built one and were getting ready to run them ourselves. And one thing that Shel said from the beginning is he said, “I want everybody in our group to be chairman at least once,” because, he says, “I want that experience in depth.” And he says that I also want to keep trying different locations every year until we find a location that we're really happy with. So I see Shel as having started a process. Not just an event, but a process.
Mike Towry:
He would have one of the boys, you know, he called us “the boys.” And he would have one of the boys each year would be chairman. And then another one of us would be co-chairman. And then the next year that chairman would step down, the co-chairman would become chairman, and then we would elect a new co-chairman. And so that was his idea, and he never tried to be the president or the, you know, the, the head guy. All he ever wanted to be known as was “founder” and “advisor.” If you listen to the recordings that I have on my Comic-Con Memories site of, of the introductory remarks for the first three-day con in August of 1970, Ken Krueger introduced him as our founder, our advisor, and all-around good guy.
Ken Krueger:
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to San Diego’s Golden Comic-Con. And right now, I'd like you to meet our founder, our advisor, all-around good guy, Mr. Shel Dorf.
Brinke Stevens:
Shel wasn't just the linchpin to the creation of Comic-Con. He was also integral to helping it grow.
Jackie Estrada:
The first convention had 300 people. The second one had about 800, the third one had 900 or so. The fourth one, which was in 1973, was when we hit a thousand.
Chuck Graham:
Last day of the convention, in ‘73, we finally broke a thousand attendants, which included not only the full memberships, but also all the one-day memberships. And that was great. That was, that was kind of a significant milestone. We've never had a thousand people before. No, of course that sounds kind of grotesque now. But uh, at the time we, we thought it was pretty notable. It was.
Barry Alfonso:
Well, there was a desire to make it big enough that it would be sustaining. You know, you needed a certain amount of people to pay the bills. And I think it was kind of cool, but it wasn't a frantic sort of thing. And it was not to put money in anyone's pocket.
Jackie Estrada:
Then: 1974, we doubled, more than doubled to nearly 2,500. Part of that was because that's the one and only Comic-Con that was six days. It was, um, July 31st through August 5th of that year. And we had some really famous people at the show. We had Charles Schulz, we had Milton Canniff, we had Frank Capra the moviemaker. We had Chuck Jones from animation. We had Walter Koenig from Star Trek. We just had such a stellar lineup of people that just … everybody who'd been to the previous year's show raved about it. And then it just doubled.
Barry Alfonso:
You know, there was, over time, by the mid-seventies, a national network of fandom. And I can remember, ‘cause I loved maps, and in one of the progress reports, I had a map colored in by how many people from what states were coming. And there were people from, I bet it was a good 35, 40 states of the Union who were attending by say ‘74. And that was just through word of mouth, that was through networking. And there were zines at that time that publicized things. I mean, there was an infrastructure that had grown up even in those few years, it had grown up
Jackie Estrada:
’77: 4,000. ’78: 5,000. And ’79: 6,000. So, in the seventies, it went up about a thousand a year toward the end of the seventies.
Barry Alfonso:
And that's nothing compared to now. So it was a slow build. And uh, I can tell you this, I don't think the Comic-Con was considered particularly important at all in the seventies by the Convention Visitors Bureau or anybody else. It was tolerated. It was okay. But it was just kinda, kind of, uh, geeky and fairly trivial, I think.
Brinke Stevens:
Despite his best intentions and perhaps because of his worst, Shel became definitively impossible to work with. Here's Moey Alzmann:
Mo Alzmann:
I think when Shel left in ‘84, I found it uncomfortable because, A) He had started the convention and B) He had a lot of knowledge, and C) I thought he was leaving because his feelings were hurt. I thought that people had driven him away, for one reason or another, with all the negativity. And I didn't think that was fair. And I didn't think that was the right thing to do. I didn't think that the founder of the convention should be driven away for any reason. And it seemed like afterwards for a, quite a quite a long period of time, people were hesitant to even talk about him. And it wasn't until several years later that people started just acknowledging the fact that he was who he was and what he had done for the convention.
Clayton Moore:
I guess he just kind of “moved on to greener pastures” is the way he would put it. He found other interests. He got involved with an art center down in Tijuana. He was doing the lettering for Steve Canyon until that ended. And then it's almost like Shel was looking for the next big career break to happen. And I'm not sure that it did. But in 1991, Disney made the Dick Tracy movie with Warren Beatty. And because of Shel's connection with Chester Gould and this love of Dick Tracy, somehow or other Warren Beatty got Shel Dorf to be a consultant on the movie. So Shel went to LA, and Shel worked for Disney, and Shel was doing all the things that, that he had dreamed of doing all of his life. And then they offered him a job. He told me this, up at Disney studios. But that's in LA. And the air isn't so good in LA. And he started thinking about it: If he moved to LA, he'd lose the place he had, where he’d been living for 20-odd years, which agreed with him. Then again, I don't know all his health concerns, but he was getting older and he decided not to take that step. He decided not to work for Disney. And he decided to stay with his lifestyle. And he was telling me at lunch that he was happy with that he was glad he made that choice because if you had gone to LA, where would he be now?
Scott Shaw!:
I was really sick with the flu. And I'm laying there, and the phone rings and I pick it up and I'm like burning up with fever, and it’s Shel. And I hadn't talked to Shel for three or four years, at least. And I was working as a producer at Hanna-Barbera. He didn't even announce it, he goes “You're just jealous of me because of all my success!’ Like, “Who is?” “It’s Shel.” Oh. And I, and you know, when you're really sick, the first thing that goes is your editor inside your head. And I said, “Shel, why would I be jealous of you? You're the person that all professionals have nightmares about winding up as.” It was. It was kind of like, okay, I guess I drew the line, but it was absolutely true.
Mark Evanier:
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, somebody just says, ya 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 had happened to him.
Brinke Stevens:
While Shel’s spotlight had been snatched away from him and his relevance to the comic book scene had faded, Comic-COn itself was ready to explode.Here's Barry short.
Barry Short:
There was a huge change in the early eighties for Comic-Con.
Jeanne Graham:
In the news media, they became less and less condescending and started really taking notice as it grew over the years, and the bigger it got and the more money it started pulling into San Diego, the less they sneered and their news reports at all those geeky people, they had a very great condescending or patronizing attitude. And most of their news reports.
Chuck Graham:
Yes, “Look at all of the Star Trek freaks, look at all the comic book geeks!” But, uh, as time went on, that gradually started change. And we gained a greater amount of credibility, as comics and Star Trek became more and more of a part of popular culture, a certain greater amount of respect came along with that. So we felt sort of vindicated after a while.
Barry Short:
One of the things that happened: Larry Geeck became executive vice president, the guy who really started cracking down on the uncontrolled spending that was going on with the Con. We really had to tighten the reins, uh, as the convention grew, as the attendance grew, as the needs for the facilities and security and all the other things grew. We just had to tighten that up a little bit and make sure that it, it was able to sustain itself.
Roger Freedman:
You basically, you build the experiment so it just barely works, and always needs continual maintenance. Because you build it more than that, you actually spent too much time building it instead of actually doing experiments with it. And everything kind of hung together. And if something went wrong, well, things went wrong, but we were able to fix them. Today, Comic-Con is much more refined in that regard. It's a much more fine-ly running machine, because it has to be. Because of the scale. But certainly in the early days, it was sort of a, uh, uh, a clock that was just barely hanging together.
Wendy All:
You know, we all had our heads up our butts in those days and we really didn't know what we were doing. But, to the point of not failing, you know. It was Shel and Richard and Ken that made sure that, you know, things really did go through and got taken care of.
Jim Valentino:
it started, I think, because of Shel. But also Richard Alf put up the money and, uh, it was Ken's credit cards that got the hotels secured and stuff like that. So, Shel was the impetus. But if it wasn't for all those kids, you know, Scott and Barry Alfonso and Richard Alf, and these guys were all high school kids, David Clark, you know, Greg Bear, you know, all, all these guys, they were high school kids and they did all legwork.
Mark Evanier:
I got 150 Shel Dorf stories. And they're basically all about this guy trying to figure out who he was in comics, because he wasn't a writer and he wasn't an artist. He was a letterer for Milton Caniff for a while, which is not a position that gives you an identity in comics. Nobody, you know, lines up at comics conventions to get the autograph of the letterer of Steve Canyon.
Scott Shaw!:
I think Shel genuinely wanted to help people and liked seeing connecting kids to their heroes, because that's what he was. Unfortunately, the bottom line became: how is it going to affect Shel? And I don't really have much good to say to him beyond that. I quite honestly, I've only known a couple of people in my life where I felt like, boy, my life, it would have been a lot better without knowing that guy.
Clayton Moore:
It was like, you know, water under the bridge. He was like, I say, he had other interests and I didn't know what they all were, but he would come to Comic-Con like in, uh, 2001, 2004, I think. He came to Comic-Con and he was a proud guy, but he needed a wheelchair. So I saw him upstairs, outside the sales pavilion in the modern convention center. It was a big open hallway there. And I saw Shel Dorf in a wheelchair. And, “Hey, how are you doing?” “Oh, hi.” You know, I like to go, well, I'll, I'll take you there. Now. I took him around a few places. I'd take him to the panel he wanted to go to. He says, “Fine, just take me to the front.” I said, “Okay, fine. I'll take you up to the second row.” He says, “Yeah,” I just parked the thing here and I'll go sit down. All right. “You staying until the end of this?” “Yeah.” “Well, I'll come back when it's over.” And I took him around for a while, and then somebody else showed up. They said, “Hey, I'll take Shel around.” “Okay, all right. Have a good day.” You know? And he was happy enough doing that. And if he was at a panel, they kind of recognized him, but you know, he wasn't able to walk. So he wouldn't really want to be recognized. But he still came. He still came and saw what was going on and saw people there, all the networking, and you know, the between panel kind of things. You know, he was there for that. And that was important to me. I was glad to see that he had at least enough, you know, he felt enough positive about it to come back.
Jim Valentino:
He came around at one of the conventions in one of those driving wheelchairs. And, uh, he stopped by our table, got up out of the wheelchair, started walking around. “Why were you in the wheelchair?” “Oh, I'm just doing that to get people's sympathy.” And I remember turning to Ken and going, “What do you say, you know, to somebody like this?” And Ken said, “You don't say anything. What can you say? You know, he's in his sixties, He's not going to change. This is who he is.”
Mo Alzmann:
He talked about himself leaving, he never talked about the Con, he never asked questions about it. As far as I knew, it was like a dead subject to him at that time. I wouldn't say, you know, we would hang out. But, yes, I, I talked to Shel and saw Shel, and I think we went to a couple of, of movies. And we talked about taking a class together I think one time. So, I was in touch with him. But I, I wasn't, you know, we weren't really friends.
Clayton Moore:
Shel Dorf was not a rich guy. He had an apartment in Ocean Beach, and he lived there until he died. But he was happy there. He liked it. It was just what he needed. He was a single guy and he could afford it.
Jim Valentino:
I asked Ken once, I said, “You know, I know Shel came in town and, you know, said, ‘Let's do this, and blah, blah, blah.’ But, there was so many people involved with the founding of the Comic-Con, you know. Why did you let Shel take all the credit?” And Ken shrugged his shoulders and said, “I have the kids. I have Patty, I have friends. Shel needs this more than I do.”
Gus Krueger:
My dad had such a fulfilling life. He really did feel like he didn't need to compete to own Comic-Con. And Shel needed that. And my dad knew that he needed being the guy to do Comic-Con, that he just let him do it. And then there was a, you know, there was a lot of respect between the two of them over the years because of that. As the years passed, you know, Shel always reached out to us. You know, maybe once a year we would get a call and I'd answer the phone and it would be Shel. Maybe like, “Oh, hi. Hey, Gus, how are you doing? Is your mom around? Is your dad around?” And he just wanted to talk. And, you know, it wasn't really something at the time, but even looking back on it, he just sounded very lonely.
Dave Scroggy:
If yout talk to Scott, if you've talk to Jim Valentino, I mean, these guys are both my friends, you know, and they're still my, they're my friends then and they're my friends now. And when this comes up, I still, I just don't engage with it any more. They are Shel haters. And there's more than just those guys. I know that Rolling Stone article was kind of very slanted, because a lot of the Shel haters were able to contribute most of that article to whoever wrote it. So it was very slanted, anti-Shel. It was like exposing Shel almost. One thing that they do bring up that I would like to add, that is a true statement is that Ken Krueger often does get overlooked in favor of Shel. And Ken Krueger was very much what you might call a co-founder along with the others, Mike Towry and Richard Alf, and many of the other people who came before me. But the difference is that Ken, of course, was a grown-up adult and nobody else was. And so he and Shel were really the only two grown-ups of the founding members. And Ken never sought credit or anything. But he certainly was instrumental in making Comic-Con happen.
Brinke Stevens:
No matter what we all think about him, no matter our conflicting opinions and emotions, no matter what we've said about him here or elsewhere, or will be said about him in the future, Shel Dorf was Shel Dorf. There has never been nor will there ever be another, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. So, before we move into the final stages of the Con's history, let's leave off with Shel himself at the very first Comic-Con in 1970.
Shel Dorf:
Right now, I would like to have, uh, the fellows responsible for this whole thing just stand up and make themselves known. Our staff consists of recording secretary Barry Alfonso. He's our youngest member. Barry, I think, it's either 12 or 13. 12 years old. Parliamentarian and fanzine liaison Bob Sourk. Bob, stand up, please. I think Bob was upstairs typing his fanzine. Mike Towry. Mike is probably in the dealers room. John Pound. John is out getting a piece of board for our cartoonist Chalk Talk. Greg Bear. I think Greg is still … is Greg around? Greg is over at Sea World, Dave Clark hasn’t arrived yet. And the fellow that's my good right arm, is a boy named Richard Alf. Richard, are you here or you're behind your table? Oh, one of the, one of the most, uh, pleasurable sidelines to this thing for me, is a discovery of new talent in the field. And I have, uh, really, uh, been impressed by the range and the ability of some of the amateur fan, some of the amateur artists and the students in this group. Two of the most outstanding are Scott Shaw!. Scott, could you stand up and take a bow? This is a man to watch, folks. See his illustrations in your program book. The other one, who has talent oozing out of every pour, is John Pound. John, are you around? There he is, folks! There's another one to watch. Bill Lund. Stand up for a second, Bill. I'd like to say, uh, kind of something; Bill is, Bill is kind of a special fan. Uh, Bill is a Vietnam veteran. And while over in Vietnam, he did something phenomenal that you only find in the States. And it's probably a very … first for fandom to have a fanzine originate in Vietnam. Let’s have a hand for Bill.
Brinke Stevens:
This has been another episode of Comic-Con Begins, an original Sirius XM podcast.
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