COMIC-CON BEGINS: Origin Stories of the San Diego Comic-Con and the Rise of Modern Fandom

I Love the Mid-to-Late ‘80s

Episode Summary

Navigating throughout the ever-expanding pop culture constellation of the turbulent 1980s, we seek out intelligent new life in the final frontier: the Hollywood blockbuster machine. Meanwhile, comics go uptown, with Pulitzer Prize winners, the birth of graphic novels, and four guys named Neil, Alan, Frank, and Art.

Episode Notes

Navigating throughout the ever-expanding pop culture constellation of the turbulent 1980s, we seek out intelligent new life in the final frontier: the Hollywood blockbuster machine. Meanwhile, comics go uptown, with Pulitzer Prize winners, the birth of graphic novels, and four guys named Neil, Alan, Frank, and Art.

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

Kids project 

Maureen Cavanaugh at San Diego’s KPBS

Mark Evanier

Scott Shaw!

Barry Alfonso

Erin Hanna and her book Only at Comic Con

Bjo Trimble and “The Star Trek Concordance”

The works of Bill Schelly

Wendy All

Fantagraphics’ “We Told You So: Comics As Art

Michael Keaton Batman David Letterman Interview June 22 1989

Alan Moore on Hollywood adaptations, The Show & Northampton

Prisoners of Gravity: Watchmen

Episode Transcription

Barry Short:

The really remarkable thing to me that happened in the early eighties, from the perspective of being program director at Comic-Con, is that prior to that, there'd been some focus on what's happening with like the underground, but there was a lot of focus on, on the background of things that had happened before and on history. And suddenly in the early eighties, we had people coming to us. We weren't trying to develop programs as much as we were trying to figure out how did we get all of this into the schedule? Because there was so much that was happening, so many incredible new creators coming onto the scene. I remember, and I can't remember which year it was, it may have been ’81: For the first time we had as guests and just showed up on their own, by the way, these are not invited guests because they just aimed at the car: Frank Miller, Bill Sienkiewicz, and Dave Sam. We had the guys like this, we had Alan Moore and the only time he ever attended a convention in North America was San Diego one year.

 

Brinke Stevens: 

Welcome back once again to Comic-Con Begins. I'm your host Brinke Stevens. And I can't wait to roll out the next installment of our more than five-decade-long story about the largest pop culture event worldwide, the San Diego Comic-Con. As always, we suggest you go back and listen to Episodes One through Four, if you've not done so already. Meanwhile, here we are. We've made it to the totally tubular 1980s. A very special time in the journey of not only the Con, but of geek culture itself. In 1984 alone, we're talking: Gremlins, Ghostbusters, The Terminator, The Karate Kid, Sixteen Candles, The Toxic Avenger, Revenge of the Nerds, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Not to mention the launch of Apple's Macintosh computer. Is it mere coincidence that this was also the year Mark Zuckerberg was born? Right on the heels of all of this, we fangirls and fanboys were there to witness the leveling up of comics: Art Spiegelman's Pulitzer Prize-winning Maus, Neil Gaiman's black leather panache, Frank Miller changing the face of Batman forever with the Dark Knight Returns in 1986. And then of course in that same year, there was Alan Moore's Watchman.

 

Alan Moore:

It was an idea for a more interesting than usual superhero book. We're talking about nothing more important or serious than superheroes themselves, which don't have very much relevance to the real worl. But we wanted to comment upon some of the traditions of the superhero book. That was more or less all we wanted to do. A revisionist superhero book.

 

Brinke Stevens:

Watchmen would go on to be inducted as the only graphic novel or comic book series in Time Magazine's 100 Greatest English Language Novels of the 20th Century. Though delighting many in the comics field that one of their own had made it to the list, there was certainly some contention by academics and critics who created a stir over Watchmen now being literary canon alongside Ulysses, The Grapes of Wrath, To Kill a Mockingbird, and The Catcher in the Rye. And then there's the fact that Alan Moore was no stranger to causing a stir himself.

 

Alan Moore:

Hollywood clearly hasn't had an idea in the last two or three decades.

 

Brinke Stevens: 

Yes, Watchmen unquestionably elevated the artform of comics and, by proxy, the Comic-Con. But what to do about Alan's notorious persona? Courtesy of an interview conducted by Comic-Con Begins creator Mathew Klickstein in 2014, we'll now hear from Len Wein who passed away in 2017. Along with creating Swamp Thing, The X-Men's Wolverine, Storm, and Nightcrawler, as well as Batman's Lucious Fox, legendary comics mastermind Wein was also Watchmen's editor. He additionally may have been one of the few people who could at least on occasion reign in the mad genius known as Alan Moore.

 

Len Wein: 

Professionally, we got along great. We had no problems. I mean, every so often we'd argue about a line or we'd argue about a plot direction he wanted to go in. But we were professionals. We did our jobs. So we got along fine and now he's become the character he used to play on TV.

 

Jim Valentino: 

He wasn't wearing the wizard outfit during those days, but he did have long hair and the beard and, uh, the weird rings and stuff.

 

Barry Short: 

I was a little bit in awe and a little bit terrified by the guy, but he was fascinating to listen to.

 

Len Wein: 

Alan is a very talented wordssmith. Arguably, the best the industry’s ever seen.

 

Barry Short:

This is the time of Alan Moore and Swamp Thing. That's what he was really best known for at the time he was at Comic-Con.

 

Jim Valentino: 

The, uh, Eisner Awards were done at a banquet during those days.And somehow or another, I wound up at two different tables. Also. I went over to talk to Alan, who was sitting with, and this is how I met Alan, he was sitting with a friend of mine named Jerry Siegel. Anyways, I got along famously with Alan. He got caught somewhere, surrounded by a group of fans. And he just had this look of terror on his face. Like he just wanted to get away. And I knew a back way out of there. So I grabbed him, said, “Come on with me,” and went to the back way and escaped. He was like forever grateful to me for it.

 

Dave Scroggy:

He said he had nightmares about Comic-Con, because all he saw was a gigantic ocean of hands extending to shake his. Uh, there were so many people and everybody wanted to shake his hand that it became almost like a nightmare scenario for him. Hands everywhere.

 

Barry Short: 

I can't say that I remember any specific sentence or phrase or anything like that that Alan had to say during any of his presentations at the Comic-Con that year. But I can remember sitting there with my mind trying to process the things he was saying and trying to put them into any sort of context, because he was just shaking up the world.

 

Trina Robbins: 

In fact, I always felt about Watchmen, that it was thought it was the final statement about superheroes and that after Watchmen you didn't really need any more superhero comics. But unfortunately they kept coming.

 

Brinke Stevens:

The guests that attended Comic-Con each year, were some of the best of the best. Though films, television, and animation were major staples of the Comic-Con since day one, it was in 1974 that we welcomed into the fold three-time Oscar-winning director, Frank Capra. Capra was the guy who made such cinematic masterpieces as: It's a Wonderful Life, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, and It Happened One Night. Here's Roger Freedman:

 

Roger Freedman:

I do remember Frank Capra coming. He was actually, as I recall, was invited by Shel Dorf.

 

Mark Evanier: 

I think Shel was a little upset that more fans there didn't know who that was. So he was steering people who did know who Frank Capra was towards him. And I found myself having lunch with Mr. Capra, who was a charming, fascinating man who loved the opportunity to talk about himself for, for, for the time he was there. And he talked about nothing, but, but you know … it's Frank Capra. Why not enjoy it? Years later, I got to have dinner with Jimmy Stewart who was in a lot of Frank Capra pictures. And I said, “I had lunch at a comic convention years ago with Mr. Capra,” and Jimmy Stewart, without missing a beat, said, “Did he talk about anything besides Frank Capra?”

 

Barry Alfonso:

I dimly knew who Frank Capra was, but I don't think I'd ever seen a Frank Capra film. And I was one of the people that escorted Frank Capra from the El Cortez Hotel, across the street to the studio of Channel Eight. And I remember going to his hotel door and knocking on it, and this older kind of little Italian guy with, uh, no hair on the top of his head and a little mustache, uh, came along and we took him over to Channel Eight. And one of the local hosts of the like the afternoon movie show, uh, was a man named Bob Dale, who was a kind of a revered, uh, local personality, was just fussing over the fact that Frank Capra was a guest there and all of that. They came to his, his, uh, his show because he never had gotten people like that to come to the, uh, afternoon movie show. And I thought that was all really nice, but I had no real appreciation of who Frank Capra was. If I had done this now, or if I had been older at the time that I did this, I mean, this would have been a big deal to me, but it wasn't much of a deal because I just didn't really appreciate who he was. In hindsight, I do remember that.

 

Brinke Stevens: 

In 1975, another big name in Hollywood made it down to the Con: Cordell Walker himself.

 

Chuck Norris:

Well, it's really a pleasure being here at the Comic-Con today. And I'm glad you enjoyed the movie. Uh, Bruce, who I've known for about 10 years now, uh, I … in fact, first time I met Bruce was in New York City, about nine years ago when I was fighting. In fact, I was fighting for the world title. And Bruce was, that’s when Bruce was doing The Green Hornet series. And, uh, he came back there as a celebrity, as a celebrity guest. And, uh, after I won the title, the promoter introduced me to Bruce. And so we started talking about our philosophies in the martial arts and so forth. And anyway, we were both staying at the same hotel, the Americana in New York. And we started walking over to the hotel. As we got going up the elevator, I remember Bruce was staying on the seventh floor and I was on the ninth. As we got to his floor, we were really getting pretty involved at our, into our conversation. So instead of me going up, I stepped out in the hallway with him and it's like 11, 1130 at night. And we started working out in the hallway. And next thing, that next time I looked at my watch, it was seven o'clock the next morning. And it was amazing because the guy did, he had so much knowledge. And as you know, on the screen, ability, that it seemed like an hour had gone by, and as far as us working out and, and exchanging ideas. So he said, “Well, when we get back to Los Angeles, why don't we start working out together?” Which we did. When I got back, we started training together and then the series was canceled. And then he went to Hong Kong …

 

Roger Freedman: 

That was really the beginning of understanding that Comic-Con wasn't just about comics. And it wasn't just about science fiction. It was about all sorts of things that involve popular culture. And to be honest, you know, many of us were just as entertained by those martial art films as they were by going to see 2001 or going to see Logan's Run or any of the other science fiction or comic book related stuff that might've been available to us.

 

Richard Butner: 

I saw the movie Enter the Dragon, which is the first Kung Fu movie I ever saw. And it was great. I loved it. It's still one of my favorite films of all time. Then later, Dave Stevens, who was my, one of my best friends and actually my best man in my first marriage, he and I were rabid fans of Bruce Lee and Chuck Norris. Of course, we were so excited about seeing the new movie with Chuck, Bruce Lee and Chuck Norris, we went down to the theater and the guy said, “Uh, guys, it's in a week.” Oh, oops! We were a week early to go to the theater to see the movie! That's how freaked out we were. We showed a clip from Return of the Dragon with Bruce Lee and his fight at the Coliseum. And then I introduced him and he spoke for quite a while about Bruce Lee and about himself and his friendship with Bruce and about Bruce's death. Then he and his brother, Aaron, did a karate demonstration, which everyone was just freaking out about. Those guys were moving so fast, it was just unbelievable. And then of course, Stan Lee took a liking to Chuck Norris also and created Chuck Norris comic books after that. See how I said it just kind of merges to comic books, and right back and forth. I saw it as a comic book on film, and Stan Lee saw it as a comic book on paper.

 

Barry Alfonso: 

That's the way the Comic-Con was in those days. If somebody really felt strongly about something, if it was conceivably part of the, the world of comics and fantasy and action heroes, then we could book a guest like that. 

 

Richard Butner: 

One of my favorite moments from Comic-Con was when we show, we had Bob Wall, who was one of the bad guys from Enter the Dragon. And we showed his fight with Bruce Lee from Enter the Dragon. And I was sitting between Jerry Siegel, creator of Superman, and Jack Kirby creator of everything else, Captain America. And I said, “Have you guys ever seen this before?” They said, “No!” And they watched it and they thought it was absolutely terrific. And I go like, this is so cool! To be sitting between these two guys and they're going, “This is great on the screen!”

 

Roger Freedman: 

So I think if anything, we could define what happened at Comic-Con and what was included in Comic-Con was the stuff that we thought was interesting. And we were interested in a lot of stuff. 

 

Brinke Stevens:

But it was in 1976 that things really launched into the stratosphere for the Con and geek culture. That was the year that a group of Hollywood publicists came down to San Diego to see what we all thought of a little sci-f movie you may have heard of, known at the time as The Star Wars. Notable author Paul M Sammon explains how it all went down a year before anyone else ever got to see Luke and Vader battle it out in a land far, far away.

 

Paul M. Sammon:

At the time, uh, prior to Alien’s and Star Wars’ release, there was a guy named Charlie Lippincott who recently passed this year last. And he was a good friend. He was a guy who targeted fandom. He said, “Hey, George Lucas. There’s this amazing kind of jumbled mass of people who will respond to this film, if we can get the word to them.” This is pre-Internet. This is the age of fanzines and mimeograph,and having like, you know, purple ink on your fingers when you were doing those things. And, uh, what Charlie did was he organized a traveling exhibition of props, slides, and occasionally guests that would specifically target the comic cons.

 

Roger Freedman: 

So they would have been like something of the size of a card table. And they're handing out posters and flyers and stickers for this new movie, the name of which was not even established.

 

Maggie Thompson: 

One of the challenges that Don and I had in 1976, was that we had a nine-year-old and a four-year-old with us. So what we did was we traded off in an evening. So one of us would be in the hotel room babysitting and the other one could go out and have fun. I went out and there in the hall was Roy Thomas, who had been a long-time friend. And he was there with Charlie Lippincott. Now Charlie was the promotions person for this movie that was going to come out the next year. And so I ended up in the room with the two of them, helping to sort through slides that they were going to use in their presentation the next day. Meanwhile, Charlie is talking up a storm about how great this movie is going to be. And so I got back to the room and I said, “Don, this, this, this movie sounds really good. We're science fiction fans already, there's a science fiction movie coming out. There's going to be a comic book … And let's go to this, uh, this presentation at this panel.” And, so, conversations with Charlie ensue. And then Charlie said, he said, “Well, you know what? I know you're here from Ohio, but if you happen to be in Los Angeles at some point, our offices are at Universal.” He said, “It's a 20th Century Fox movie, but our offices are at Universal. I can get you into the Universal Tour if you'd like, and I'd love to show you stuff at the office.” And we said, “Coincidentally, we're coming up the coast. And we would love to have the free Universal Tour, and we would love to see you in the office.” So we got a free Universal Tour, VIP Universal Tour … So anyway, there we were in Charlie's office. So in Charlie's office was things like the, uh, American Graffiti poster, the original painting for that poster was leaning up against the desk. And one of Charlie's big concerns that he expressed to us was, “Look, I'm going to show you all these photos from this movie that's coming out. You can't tell anybody about them. Please, please keep it a secret. But I just want you to get an idea because you understand science fiction, so you’ll like the whole idea about alien makeup is, I want to show you how inventive this movie is going to be.” And he showed the bar scene makeup on these different actors, all the aliens. And he said, “But I don't want it known, because Forrie Ackerman finds out, he’s going to play this movie up as if it's a monster movie. And it is not a monster movie. Please keep that a secret.” And we said, “Absolutely.” And we did. We kept our word. We kept his secret. And, by the way, I have one of those posters that were being handed out in 1976 at San Diego Comic-Con hanging on my wall. He said we can have it free. We didn't even have to pay for it if we would post it in our house and show it to our guests when they came to promote. That's the kind of guy Charlie was, Charlie was in that, you know, “I'm going to spread the word however, I spread the word” and he did. And there it was.

 

Dave Scroggy:

The only publicity that’d come out on Star Wars at that point in time was one article in the LA Times Calendar section that just kind of vaguely said there was this interesting science fiction movie being filmed and they had a photo of Chewbacca as part of it.

 

Barry Alfonso: 

I don't think we realize what would happen with it. I didn't … We thought it was just a really, you know, a promising science fiction film. ‘Cause we premiered other science fiction films earlier, I think, that weren't really good and didn't become famous. The Golden Voyage of Sinbad, I think, was one. This is not a well remembered film. That was ‘74. I mean, they were all just kind of, you know, feeble in some way. And Star Wars was not feeble.

 

Brinke Stevens: 

What impressed us the most then I think was the new technology where things just looked so amazing. It just blew everyone's mind. It wasn't just a little model of the Enterprise hanging there in Space. It was just this astounding, beautiful visuals. And we were just totally in love with that.

 

Paul M. Sammon:

Star Wars has got that zip and that energy and that forward momentum and that real primal American entertainment. Americans had very little patience. They want things to get on. And Star Wars was a “get on” kind of movie. There was so much energy in that. And this was in 1978, late ‘77, right around the time of the whole Star Wars phenomenon. So I went to Ron Miller who at the time was running Walt Disney. And he was the son-in-law of Walt. And this was the interim period before the Disney, the corporate octopus we know today; it was very small back then. I said, “Look, the Black Hole.” I said, “I realize you’re remaking 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea but on a spaceship”. And he stared at me like, “How did anyone figure this one out?” And I said, “The reason I bring that up is I'm a fan. I'm not only a professional working for you, but I understand the culture. I'm part of it. And I think there would be a great deal of interest in bringing this movie down to Comic-Con.” And so I, in 1978, I guess it was, started really my own long journey of being a presenter and bringing various films down to Hollywood. I brought Dune to the Comic-Con, I made a short film, it's called Destination Dune, which you can find online, which is one of the only behind-the-scenes featurette that's made about the making of Dune. I even brought Blue Velvet to the Comic-Con, because when I was working at DEG, I had just worked for two years on Dune for Universal as an executive, as a junior exec in advertising, and then popped over to DEG.And, and DEG did not know what to do to develop it. They were going to dump it. And I, Dino De Laurentiis, in his screening room, ran a screening just for me. And I sat there and watched it before it was released, and went, “Oh my God! This is a masterpiece! What's wrong with you people? They go, “Oh, it's too weird.” You know, “It was all this sex. What is it?” I said, I'm going to take it to the cons. And I took an unrated trailer, which has Dennis Hopper cursing at the end of it. And, uh, you know, people were like, “Whoa!” And it right there, it started. There was much more freedom given to me as a producer and guiding light and marketing expert on how to do this for the conventions then than there is now. There is no control now. The studios have an iron grip on it. Before, I was lucky enough to slip through a crack in a door that was only open for a short period of time, during a period, the same period when the studios were absolutely clueless as to what science fiction, fantasy, and horror was. Much less what a Comic-Con was.So they relied on the expertise of people like myself, or Charlie Lippincott or Jeff Walker or Craig Miller. We were the ones who could tell them, “Okay, this is happening this weekend. This is where it is. This is the group. This is what we should bring down.” That just snowballed.

 

Barry Alfonso: 

The whole game changed when Star Wars came out, when fantasy films could be done that didn't look ridiculous. That looked heroic.

 

Paul M. Sammon: 

So you've got them both tied. Comic-Con. Star Wars comes to Comic-Con. And Star Wars at the same time completely up-ends the technical way of shooting a fantastic film and gives filmmakers this whole new palette.

 

Roger Freedman: 

I think one thing that was very rewarding for all of us who began as science fiction fans, that were involved in Comic-Con in the early days, was to see the tremendous evolution of science fiction on film over the decades in which Comic-Con itself was growing as well. Starting with 2001: A Space Odyssey, which had amazing special effects that still work super-well today that were done with such an amazingly antediluvian technology. So, for instance, the fact that in 2001: A Space Odyssey, all those screens and all the spacecraft showing all these, these wonderful flat panel displays that we're used to seeing today, all that was done with, actually, motion picture projectors, back-projecting onto the screens that they're watching for all that stuff. Again, totally Jurassic technology. And yet it works so well today. And the fact that we can see the evolution from that into what went on in Star Wars, which actually created a science fiction world to look like it was lived in, which is quite amazing in and of itself with, again, what seems like definitely old school special effects today, but works super-well and still holds up today and going onto what happened with, um, Spielberg in particular with Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Beautiful special effects in that. And then the advent of CGI going into the nineties and early two thousands, which is what made superhero movies actually work. ‘Cause, certainly attempts to do that beforehand … Just think of the original Superman movie from 1978, which works super-well, but how hard they had to work to make it look like Superman could fly. And today that's, that's, I won't say trivial, but it's certainly, uh … You're able to do things with CGI that would have been completely impossible.And also the tremendous evolution in animation, because we were just as interested in animation as we were in anything else. And the fact that what you can do in CGI animation today, and the interest in that, has really been tremendously rewarding to us.

 

Greg Bear: 

Well, special effects were huge for all of us, because they could put down in a way that other people could understand the things you were seeing in your head. And when you got to the, there there's a dividing line between CGI and practical effects. And that dividing line happens with the time of Jurassic Park. Jurassic Park suddenly knocks things out of the ballpark. There were a few instances before that. Tron is an interesting mix of, of actual classic Disney animation techniques using, and then some CGI. And so in 1983, I proposed an article for Omni saying, “Hey, this coming revolution in CGI is going to be fascinating. You'll want to do an article on it. And send me around to the different studios.” And they said, “Sure, we'll send you around to the West Coast studios.” So I went up and down the West Coast and drove and met with people and got to meet some of the major pioneers of who are going to become, you know, the CGI revolution. I couldn't get into Industrial Light & Magic. Uh, Alvy Ray Smith, who I met later on in Seattle as part of Microsoft, couldn't convince George Lucas to have me come in and do this sort of thing.And it didn't … Lucas didn’t care for publicity about that particular issue. But that was going to become major, because when Phil Tippett went out, actually it was picked out for Jurassic Park, he put together stop-motion animation models and did scientific research on their strides, their movements, all that kind of stuff, built them and suddenly, uh, they're putting together an early version of videos. To show where the technology is, and Dennis Muren, who I knew from years ago, came back with this video, uh, showing Struthiomimuses running across the field. And they were wireframe only. But the motion was so amazing. And they could see the interaction with the characters as they're running between them and stuff. So, Phil, I think was, I was at that point, says, “I think I'm extinct.” Well, they actually brought Phil back. They, they, they fired Phil for a little while, but then suddenly they didn't like the way the dinosaurs were moving, and they realized what they needed to do was to take the dinosaurs expertise from the animators, the stop-motion animators who knew how to think in the minds of the dinosaurs they were animating or the animals they did, uh, the Harryhausen contingent, and they needed to bring them into the digital contingent and teach the animators on digital frames, how to do this stuff. And that's what Phil did. Phil was able to muster the technical expertise, but also the technical people created this amazing instrument, which was called, I believe a DSD or anyway, Digital Input Device, where you had this, what looked like a dinosaur with wires all around it and cables and stuff. And when the animators would move it, it would put an image into the digital form of the dinosaur. So the animators would stop-motion animate this thing. Uh, and, and they would create this digital image, which then you could, you could manipulate digitally.And that was, that was where CGI really took off, because you took the combining the beautiful motion that was in the fingers and the hands of the stop-motion animators that they knew. They knew their animals. And they could walk around and, and imitate the motions and all this stuff as animators typically do. Certainly Disney animators. And if you took that and expanded it into the digital form, suddenly you have these amazing dinosaurs that you see onscreen that look more real than anything we've seen before.

 

Roger Freedman: 

As a scientist, I will say I'm super-excited to think about the fact that the animation studios, for instance, Dreamworks has a head scientist, who has a PhD in applied mathematics from Harvard, who works with all these computer tools to actually make the physics turn out right. So when you're looking at a movie, for instance, like How to Train Your Dragon, where you see the dragon actually doing an inside loop with Hiccup riding on the back of it, where the aerodynamics are actually correct. Or something as simple as: there’s physicist from San Jose State University who was hired by Dreamworks to make sure all that physics was correct. Even as something like Madagascar 3, there's a scene where the zebra character that's voiced by Ben Stiller is walking on a tightrope. There's lots of visual references for bipeds walking on tightropes. But nothing for quadrupeds. So, how do you make that work? So, they actually hired a physicist who says, “Okay, how would that actually work? What would the stresses be like and so on? And well, how would the rope actually behave?” And that's done correctly.

 

Scott Aukerman: 

That's a big part of Comic-Con culture, I think, is special effects. You know, the fact that a guy like Tom Savini is a superstar at Comic-Con is like incredible because, you know, he's created these things which have so enraptured us. He should be famous. He should be just as famous as George Clooney, as far as I'm concerned.

 

Roger Freedman: 

It's exciting to be both as an animation, as a science fiction fan, and as a scientist, that all those worlds have come together and have led to this tremendous blossoming and all this popular media that I enjoy so much.

 

Brinke Stevens: 

We were really flying now at the Con. We were growing at an exponential clip. Hollywood and the mainstream had officially taken notice. They saw the value of what we were doing, but also what we could do to help them. And in all fairness, that's also when some of the trouble started. All of a sudden, Comic-Con had gone from being a singular place for fans to celebrate their pop culture heroes, to a fertile new marketplace and easily accessible focus group whose commercial potential could be exploited, too. Here's Scott Shaw!

 

Scott Shaw!: 

I remember the first thing that I ever saw that felt like the Hollywood fertilizer factory coming down here was when, um, NOW Comics had the license to a Ghostbusters and they had the Ectomobile on display. And that was kind of, that sounds pretty ordinary, but that was the first time I ever saw in a, like a, a big display of something at the Con that was more Hollywood than, than funny book.

 

Paul M. Sammon: 

As again, one of the first pioneers in genre marketing, bringing studio products down to the Comic-Con in the late seventies, um, by the early eighties, uh, the momentum built up to such a degree. The bottom line in Hollywood is always the bottom line. And everyone at every studio looked at the success of Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back.

 

Barry Short: 

The Hollywood influence builds. Obviously we all know about 1976 and Star Wars. We know about, about, uh, Empire Strikes Back being promoted at Comic-Con when that came around a couple of years later. And in ‘83 with Ghostbusters is kind of a big deal. It is the point, I think, where Hollywood really begins to notice. Star Wars had been kind of an obvious fit for Comic-Con. That was an experiment for Charlie Lippincott who brought that promotion to Comic-Con. By the time you get into ‘82, ‘83, ‘84, that process is starting to be refined. And Hollywood has started to recognize the people who are at Comic-Con as opinion leaders for the first time. And this is interesting because it is one of those transitions from the freaks and geeks kind of thing, to the people at Comic-Con being something other than that, that they begin to bring Hollywood material in to get our reaction primarily in the hope that we’re going to see it and go out and rave about how wonderful it is and do all of their work for them basically for free in promoting their film.

 

Erin Hanna: 

Charles Lippincott took Star Wars around not just to Comic-Con, but to other conventions that year, too. So it was part of a consolidated effort to raise awareness about this film. Obviously the size of these conventions in the seventies suggests that this wasn't like going to cause a massive shift or change the outcome for Star Wars. But it's an interesting case of kind of experimentation that's really resonant with what you see at Comic-Con and just in popular culture at large, in terms of how the industry markets stuff to fans happening way earlier than I think we tend to think of it happening because we do tend to associate it so much with social media.

 

Barry Short: 

I think Hollywood recognizes this for a while, that the people who are at Comic-Con are the ones who can make or break their movie for them, and becomes very, very dedicated to finding ways to get their material in front of us and are very cooperating for a while with fanzines and fanzines are moving into pro zines, with things like Starlog and Cinefantastique and magazines of that type that are basically promoting all of this stuff long before it ever reaches a theater.

 

Paul M. Sammon: 

I tried to get Arnold Schwarzenegger to come, because I knew Arnold for a year at this point. I was on location with him in Spain, I was around when he proposed to Maria Shriver. You know? I mean, so I was, I was there. I was part of that scene. And I remember him going, “Comic-Con! Whoa, those weirdoes!” You know. He doesn't do that now! 

 

Scott Aukerman: 

I was there, again, just for my yearly pilgrimage. And I saw my manager who was a really super Hollywood guy on the floor at Comic-Con. And I thought to myself, “What is he doing here? Like, he doesn't like any of this stuff!” And he looked so lost. He was in a corner trying to absorb everything that was going on. And just, half-heartedly looking in a back issue bin and pulling out random issues and sort of opening them like, “Is this what I'm supposed to do? Like, am I supposed to read this to know what to adapt?” And that really, to me, was like the beginning of the end in a way of Comic-Con being a special place that only a select few people knew about. And when Hollywood started flooding it.

 

Anthony Russo: 

I remember that moment where I sort of had that realization that like, “Wow! Wow, some people come here as if they're coming to a business convention.” And I just like, it was such a surprising idea to me because the experience is like so valuable, you know, without that idea even being applied to it. But it is kind of shocking to realize that there's a layer of what's happening there that is simply just that.

 

Brinke Stevens:

Hip hop, punk rock, and riot grrrl. Heavy Metal Magazine, National Lampoon, and zines. MTV, Nickelodeon, and comedy specials on HBO. In the 1980s, the youthful weirdoes, misfits, and outsiders were making a name for themselves as the new wave of creative arbiters of culture. Rejected as nerds in the past, we were now becoming proud, self-proclaimed geeks. It was becoming the case that you weren't cool if you didn't know every line from Back to the Future or Blade Runner. Were you more into Tron or The Last Star Fighter? You no longer had to worry about getting a wedgie at school, engaging in such debates. At least not nearly as much as before. Here's one of today's most prolific comic creators, best known for Hack/Slash, Tim Seeley, with more on how the 1980s will forever be known as the Decade When the Geeks Inherited the Earth.

 

Tim Seeley: 

You know, in the early eighties, late seventies, you sorta get that computer culture and you had to be smart enough to understand how these things work. So, but you know, those people were also, if they were into tech, they were probably into science fiction ‘cause that inspired their love of tech. So, you know, the, the consolidation around that, and then you sort of had like this backlash because people were getting successful as smart people who liked computers. And so you see as a backlash from the American culture, which you always had. There's always this sort of masculinity backlash against that stuff. So I think that's where it comes from. It's this weird American thing to sort of, you know, say, “Oh, but those people don't get laid, so fuck ‘em.” Like, or “They don't have lives or they aren't cool …” You know, it's like, it's, it's always this, this sort of nerd backlash against them starting to pick up all the money.

 

Caseen Gaines:

What so many films in the eighties did was sort of level the playing field, where geeky guys, especially guys, mostly guys, but geeky guys were able to get the girl, even if it's something like Fast Times at Ridgemont High, where you have the guy who's in the bathroom and he's able to sort of like spy on Phoebe Cates getting out of the pool. You know, he doesn't get the girl in that moment, but he sort of still, you know, it doesn't live up to today's standards of what's necessarily appropriate. But even in that moment, you can sort of commiserate with him and identify with him and just sort of fantasize and wish that you could just have even a moment of being able to see the hot girl get out of the pool, dripping wet. So I think in the eighties, you really saw the pinnacle of all of these geeks sort of having their day. And, you know, George McFly in Back to the Future is an excellent example of that. You know, that he actually gets someone like Leah Thompson in that movie is, um, something that would probably never happen in real life, but it makes for a great fantasy. Doesn't it?

 

Scott Aukerman: 

So, have the geeks won? In a certain sense, they have. As a comic book fan, I remember being so excited anytime a comic book adaptation would come on. The Spider-Man television show, the Wonder Woman in 1977, the Incredible Hulk series … And even I remember there was an Incredible Hulk movie, I think, that came out in the late eighties that had Thor in it. And, and you, you would get so ramped up for each one of these, because this was finally going to be the time when maybe they would do it right. And they would be faithful to the comic books and what you loved about the comic books. And so you would go in with an expectation of like, “Oh, I hope this is going to be the one that's right!” But you would also go in with a fear knowing that if this one wasn't good, it would kill the chances for another comic book movie for a year or two years, sometimes the decade.And, so, when Superman: The Movie came out and it finally treated comic book source material as something that could be done with respect, with Marlon Brando in it, and you know, these incredible actors and, and directed seriously and not winking at the camera, it really seemed like, “Wow, we're finally, we're going to get comic book movies that are taken seriously.” And then there weren't any more for years and years and years until Batman in 1989. And even after Batman in 1989, one would open up and, your Catwoman or your Daredevil, and you'd be sitting there just cringing in your seat, with all the choices that they made, they thought in order to appease a mass audience who wouldn't take the source material seriously, and you're sitting there going, “No! This makes it stupider!” Or like, “You're, you're, you're just making your movie less popular, because it's like, it's not leaning into what is cool about comic books.”So in a sense, now we have, at least with Marvel Studios, you have movies and television shows that are really treating the source material with respect, and the mainstream audience at large, everyone in the world is now enthralled by the stories and the interconnectedness between these stories. And I think they have become comic fans like we were comic fans growing up and always, you know, cross-referencing every issue of like, “Oh, okay, well, Wolverine, yes, he's in the X-Men. But he actually first started out in the Incredible Hulk ’94,” and you know your history as a comic book fan and the lore. And now the public knows that and they see these Marvel movies. And they're always wondering, “How is this one going to set up the next one?” And, “Oh, the Winter Soldier, he was in the post-credit scene of this movie, of Black Panther, which means they're setting this up for Avengers.” So, that's exciting to have the thing that you love treated with reverie and, and acceptance by the public at large,

 

Brinke Stevens:

After the break, we'll talk about the time when those who grew up going to Comic-Con were now being invited back as artistic professionals. 

 

[INTERMISSION]

 

Brinke Stevens:

As someone whose life was irrevocably changed for the better by the Con, I know all about what it was like to go from fan to pro during this transitory period for the Con and geek culture. Here's long-time Eisner Awards producer Jackie Estrada to bring us back to a time when many fans were finding themselves on the other side of the autograph table, thanks in large part to their attending the Con in their youthful years,

 

Jackie Estrada:

I've gone to panels at Comic-Con where the guys on the stage will say, “I used to come here when I was a teenager. And I always thought, well, someday, I'm going to make a movie and be up on the stage at Comic-Con.” And I think there's just a generation of fans that grew up and became the big hot guys in Hollywood. And then it was like, “I'm going to, I'm going to somehow have my program at Comic-Con. I'm going to go to Comic-Con.” That's the kind of element that has contributed to it getting bigger. That's for sure.

 

Mark Evanier: 

As time Went by those of us who read comic books began to move into the media, mainstream media. We were writing TV shows. Some of us were working in movie studios. Some of us wanted to replicate what we loved when we were kids. And you started seeing movies that were done by former comic fans, produced by them, written by them even acted by them. And all of a sudden, the superheroes, the characters who were birthed in comic books became mainstream. Suddenly everybody knew Tony Stark was Iron Man. Suddenly countless people were rushing on opening day to it's, the Superman movie or the Batman movie. And we were no longer part of our little secret society anymore. Everybody else had joined it.

 

Bruce Campbell: 

Sam Raimi actually did read Spider-Man. I mean, I think I actually have memories of him reading comics.

 

Al Jean:

Oh, I would say the literature that most influenced my writing on The Simpsons -- everyone has their own story -- but mine would be Marvel comics and Stan Lee. The way that they made you feel like you're a, you're a part of this world that's really cool with these, you know, many characters, interlocking. And, um, I was privileged to have it all come together. We had Stan on the show a few times. The first one, I Am Furious (Yellow). And he’s at the read, with Jim and Matt Groening. And I couldn't believe it all came together. You know, this, this, you know, really geeky, you know, fantasy. And I got to go to lunch with him twice. And the first time I said, “Wow, you know, I've been waiting for a Spider-Man movie to come out on my life.” And he said, “So have I!”

 

Stan Lee: 

But I have another scoop for you. This is a day for scoops for us, but you gotta promise it must go no further than this room. So you're all really, you're all under oath. Um, I, not sure now that Brian is going to write it because we've changed the entire concept of the Spider-Man movie and it's not going to merely be a story of Spider-Man the way it was planned to be. But it's going to be something more, not quite, but more in the direction of a rock opera film than a regular story, ya see? And we're discussing it now. And there's tremendous interest in Hollywood among some very big people. And in fact, I was just on the phone to Crimms last night, and we're trying to work out the details. You'll read all about it in the Bullpen. Or if you want to hear about it sooner, it's very easy. Get together, pool your money, have another convention here in about a month, invite me, and I'll tell you all about it. But otherwise you'll read about it in the Bullpen. But anyway, that's the story about why, at the moment, I'm not writing the Spider-Man movie.

 

Kevin Smith: 

And we pulled up to get dropped off at the back area where you sign in and then they take you to do your panel. There is Stan Lee coming out from having done a panel, going to get into his car, the driver waiting for him. And he sees us. “Hey Kev! Hey, you,” to Jason. He never remembered his name. And, um, we chit-chatted and, uh, it was, uh, “What are you doing? All right. Let's hook up later on. All right, bye.” And then he pulled away. And we were sitting there talking for like 10 minutes. And then Jason, right afterwards goes, “Could you imagine? Don't you want to go back in time and tell us in 1995, that like, we keep coming to Comic-Con and we become so regular that like Stan Lee greets us when we get there personally.” And I was like, “Yeah, I would like to do that.”

 

Brinke Stevens:

One group of Hollywood celebrities hedged the line between fan and professional so well, they began coming every year with their own band. Named after the infamous manifesto against comics, Seduction of the Innocent from the 1950s, it was fronted by none other than our dear friend, Bill Mumy. Mumy, you may remember as the original Will Robinson from TV's Lost in Space, and Twilight Zone’s diabolical little Anthony who could wish you away to the cornfield if you heckled him one too many times on stage.

 

Bill Mumy:

In the seventies, I used to go down to the Con. I never thought to announce myself to the executive board or anything. I just went down there to collect books and spend a night, collect some more books the next day and head on back to Hollywood. I think it was 1987, Miguel Ferrer, Steve Leialoha, and Max Allan Collins and I were at a San Diego Con party. And it was a very bad kind of a bar mitzvah entertainment going on very, middle of the road stuff.

 

Jackie Estrada:

I guess it was at Jack Kirby's 70th birthday party, there was a band playing there. Now, purposely the band was for Jack Kirby and his wife. And so they were an older couple who were playing piano and clarinet and, you know, playing standards and stuff for people to dance to.

 

Bill Mumy: 

And, uh, we who were all in rock and roll bands and professional musicians, as well as other professions that we hung our shingles out as, we said, “God, man, we could play some rock and roll that would really kick ass.” And I think it was Jackie Estrada, who's become a long-time friend now, I think she overheard us and said, “Well, would you guys really do that?” And we all went, “Yeah, sure we would.” So, the next year we were officially invited to become the house band at the San Diego Comic-Con, and Seduction of the Innocent was born.

 

Roger Freedman: 

Yeah, the name of that band, Seduction of the Innocent comes from the book of the same name by the somewhat dubious psychiatrist, Fredric Wertham.

 

Jackie Estrada: 

My parents owned a music store. So, we borrowed some amplifiers and also a drum set that was actually my nephew’s, uh, for them to have to play. And, uh, so they, they played for Comic-Con and they started doing their own songs that they wrote that were comics-related songs.

 

Scott Shaw!: 

One was “King Jack,” I remember, about Jack Kirby. And, they even did a whole CD of them. They were a terrific band and they performed a lot of … We'd actually have dances at Comic-Con. I don't know of any other comic con that had social things like that going on back when, you know, it was kind of surprising that we could find enough people of the opposite sex to even dance with, but we did.

 

Brinke Stevens: 

Next time on Comic-Con Begins, we'll conclude our story of the rise of San Diego Comic-Con and the attendant fan culture that exploded in its ever-expanding wake. We'll hear from our robust stable of Comic-Con originals, a few more celebrity guests, and even our very own Comic-Con scholar, Dr. Erin Hanna, about what happened when Twilight and Robert Downey Jr. came to Comic-Con, as well as why the heck it is that anyone would want to wait in line for eight hours, or for that matter, three weeks to get an exclusive autographed action figure. I guess it all goes back to what our late spiritual mentor and comics godhead Jack Kirby once said in the early 1970s, when everyone else thought he was crazy: “One day, Hollywood is going to come to Comic-Con to get its ideas.” You were right, Jack, Oh boy, were you right!

 

Roger Freedman: 

He understood, for instance, what Comic-Con was going to become, decades before it actually became that way. He was able to see far tino the future, not necessarily in terms of detail, but in terms of what the grand scale of things was going to be.

 

Dave Clark: 

He said, “Boys, this is the greatest thing in the world. We have it all. This is going to be the future. Comics are going to dominate the culture. We have all the stories. We have everything storyboarded out. Hollywood is just waiting to take our stories and put them on the street. It's going to be the biggest thing in the world.”

 

Roger Freedman: 

And so understanding what young people really like, I think it was something that really in retrospect was pretty much second nature to him. He could look at what was going on and look at general trends. And from that figure out what they, the overall arching gestalt of the society was. And then incorporate that into comic books and do awesome stuff with that.

 

Dave Clark: 

And what it took was computer graphics and special effects to catch up to the imagination of Jack Kirby. And of course, now these comics are the biggest thing in the world. Superhero movies are the top draw of anything by far globally. So Jack Kirby's vision for the future has been completely justified and vindicated.

 

[CREDITS]