Comic Art Convention

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The Comic Art Convention, begun in New York City in 1968 and held annually through 1983, was the first large-scale comic book fan convention and one of the largest national comics gathering of its kind until San Diego, California's Comic-Con International. It was founded by Brooklyn high school teacher Phil Seuling, who, years later, as a wholesale distributor, helped create the "direct market" of comic-book stores.

Program book featuring Joe Simon's original 1940 sketch of Captain America, co-created with Jack Kirby.
Program book featuring Joe Simon's original 1940 sketch of Captain America, co-created with Jack Kirby.

Comic book conventions had occurred before, yet on a smaller scale, with fans and back-issue dealers drawn from regional areas. The Comic Art Conventions coincided with the critical mass of a modern comics fandom that had been building since at least March 1964, with a seminal gathering of Midwestern fans at the Detroit, Michigan home of fandom "founding father" Jerry Bails. By 1970, recalled early comic-art dealer Bud Plant, the "convention impresario Phil Seuling had run [the third] of his legendary New York Comic Art Cons, which were then by far the biggest in the world".[1]
 

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[edit] History

Circa 1961, enterprising fans including Bails, Shel Dorf, Bernie Bubnis, and future Marvel Comics editor-in-chief Roy Thomas began following the pattern of the long-established science fiction fandom by publishing fanzines, corresponding with one another and with comic-book editors (most notably DC Comics' Julius Schwartz), and eventually arranging informal and later professional, commercial conventions. Among the first were the 1964 New York Comicon and that same year's Detroit Triple Fan Fair. The only previously known comics fandom, for the 1950s' EC Comics, did not progress so far along.

As Seuling described his convention's genesis, "In 1964, about a hundred people found themselves in a New York City union meeting hall, a large open room with wooden folding chairs, looking around at each other oddly, surprised, not really know what they were there for, a bit sheepish, waiting for whatever was going to take place to begin. ... It was the first comics convention ever [and t]hat one-day assembly ... grew step by step into an annual tradition in New York and then elsewhere. In 1968, I became involved in [staging] my first convention. The following year began the current series called the Comic Art Convention".[2]

That 1969 convention, held Independence Day weekend at the Statler Hilton Hotel in New York City, cost $3.50 for a three-day ticket, with daily passes at $1.50. Admittance was free with a hotel room rental, which cost $15-and-up per day.

[edit] Legacy

Program book featuring Swamp Thing art by Berni Wrightson (as he then spelled his first name).
Program book featuring Swamp Thing art by Berni Wrightson (as he then spelled his first name).

The Comic Art Conventions provided the primary nexus for fans and the largely New York City-based industry during the Silver Age and the Bronze Age of comic books. As well, many of the Golden Age creators were still alive and in attendance at panels and for interviews, which helped lay the groundwork for the medium's historical scholarship.

The reputation of the Convention spread throughout fandom via an annual write-up published in The Buyer's Guide for Comics Fandom by columnist Murray Bishoff. Besides reporting on convention events, Bishoff also provided fans around the country with a benchmark market report by surveying attending dealers regarding what was selling and whether prices realized were above or below those quoted in the de facto standard, The Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide.

Will Eisner, creator of the The Spirit in 1940, credited the 1971 Comic Art Con for his return to comics. In 1983 interview with Seuling, he said, "I came back into the field because of you. I remember you calling me in New London, [Connecticut], where I was sitting there as chairman of the board of Croft Publishing Co. My secretary said, 'There's a Mr. Seuling on the phone and he's talking about a comics convention. What is that?' She said, 'I didn't know you were a cartoonist, Mr. Eisner.' 'Oh, yes,' I said, 'secretly; I'm a closet cartoonist.' I came down and was stunned at the existence of the whole world. ... That was a world that I had left, and I found it very exciting, very stimulating".[3]

Eisner, no relations to former Disney executive Michael Eisner, later elaborated about meeting underground comics creators and publishers, including Denis Kitchen: "I went down to the convention, which was being held in one of the hotels in New York, and there was a group of guys with long hair and scraggly beards, who had been turning out what spun as literature, really popular 'gutter' literature if you will, but pure literature. And they were taking on illegal [sic] subject matter that no comics had ever dealt with before. ... I came away from that recognizing that a revolution had occurred then, a turning point in the history of this medium. ... I reasoned that the 13-year-old kids that I'd been writing to back in the 1940s were no longer 13-year-old kids, they were now 30, 40 years old. They would want something more than two heroes, two supermen, crashing against each other. I began working on a book that dealt with a subject that I felt had never been tried by comics before, and that was man's relationship with God. That was the book A Contract with God...." [4]

1969 program book. Cover art by Hal Foster.
1969 program book. Cover art by Hal Foster.

In 1973, Seuling persuaded Dr. Fredric Wertham, author of the industry-changing 1954 book Seduction of the Innocent, to attend what would be Wertham's only panel with an audience of comics fans.[5]

The final two years of the 1961-1969 Alley Awards, sponsored by Alter Ego magazine, were presented at the Comic Art Convention.

[edit] Demise

As his comic-book distribution business occupied more time, and as other comics conventions, most notably in San Diego and Chicago, became larger, more prominent, and more commercially rather than fan-driven, Seuling segued his Independence Day-centered Comic Art Convention into the smaller, generally mid-June "Manhattan Con". Following Sueling's death in 1984, promoter Fred Greenberg began hosting two "Great Eastern" conventions annually at venues including the New York Coliseum. Other companies, including Creation Cons and Dynamic Forces, held New York City conventions but all were on a smaller scale than the Seuling shows. Changes in the industry, popular culture, and the resurgent city itself since the troubled 1960s and '70s made large-scale comic-book conventions difficult to hold profitably. Jonah Weiland of Comic Book Resources also noted that "...dealing with the various convention unions made it difficult for most groups to get a show off the ground."[6]

In 1996, Greenberg, at a very late point, cancelled what had been advertised as a larger-than-usual Great Eastern show, which the fan press had suggested might herald a successor to the Comic Art Con. As a substitute event, promoter Michael Carbonaro and others on the spur of the moment mounted the first Big Apple Convention in a church basement. These small shows nonetheless attract many notable comics creators and pop-culture celebrities, and in the mid-2000s began taking place at the Penn Plaza Pavilion at the Hotel Pennsylvania. In 2006, the first New York Comic-Con was held in the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center; another followed in 2007.

[edit] Dates and locations

This list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it.
Conventions held in New York City unless otherwise noted.
  • July 1968: Statler Hilton Hotel, 33rd Street and Seventh Avenue (later refurbished as Hotel Pennsylvania)
  • July 4-6, 1969: Statler Hilton Hotel — Penn Top/Sky Top Rooms
  • July 3-5, 1970: Statler Hilton Hotel
  • 1971: Statler Hilton Hotel
  • July 1-5, 1972: Statler Hilton Hotel
  • July 4-8, 1973: Hotel Commodore, 42nd Street and Park Avenue (building later demolished; Hyatt Hotel built on site)
  • July 4-8, 1974: Hotel Commodore
  • July 3-7, 1975: Hotel Commodore
  • July 2-6, 1976: McAlpin Hotel, 34th Street and Broadway
  • July 1-5, 1977: Hotel Sheraton, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (no New York con this year)
  • July 2-5, 1978: Americana Hotel, New York City [and] July 8-9, 1978: Philadelphia
  • June 30 - July 1, 1979: Statler Hilton Hotel [and] July 14-15: Philadelphia
  • July 4-6, 1980: Statler Hilton Hotel
  • 1981
  • July, 3-5, 1982: New York City
  • July 2-4 1983: New York City (as International Science Fiction and Comic Art Convention)

[edit] Quotes

Peter Sanderson, IGN Film Force: "Considering that the two major comics companies, Marvel and DC, are based in New York City, it has long been a puzzle why New York is no longer able to sustain a first-class comics convention. It used to: there was another Golden Age of comics cons, and in this case I was around for the tail end of it. These were the annual Fourth of July comics cons in New York City run by the late Phil Seuling, the pioneer of the direct sales comics market".[7]

[edit] See also

[edit] Footnotes

  1. ^ BudPlant.com: Bud Plant
  2. ^ 1977 Comic Art Convention program book, p. 5
  3. ^ Eisner interview (excerpt), The Comics Journal #267 (no date)
  4. ^ Transcript, Will Eisner's keynote address, Will Eisner Symposium: The 2002 University of Florida Conference on Comics and Graphic Novels
  5. ^ Comic Art & Graffix Gallery: "Fredric Wertham, M.D."
  6. ^ Weiland, Jonah, "Battling Conventions? Talking with the NY Comic Con and Megacon Organizers", Comic Book Resources (June 10, 2005)
  7. ^ IGN Film Force (Aug. 8, 2003): "Comics in Context #5: San Diego 2003: Day One"

[edit] References

[edit] External links