This year, San Diego Comic-Con International featured a poster presentation created by the San Diego State Comic Arts Committee highlighting the history of the convention.
The presentation “Preserving Comic-Con’s Cultural History: The Richard Alf Collection and the Comic-Con Kids” was showcased online via comiccon.sdsu.edu and in print at Comic-Con. Both presentations shared the origins of how the Comic-Con “kids” founded the conference in the 1970s.
The grant project’s funding was given to SDSU’s Comic Arts Committee through the Community Stories Grant Program from the California Council for the Humanities in 2009, after the convention’s 40th anniversary. SDSU Comic Arts Committee Chair Markel Tumlin said the purpose of the grant was to fund the recording of interviews with the original Comic-Con kids and to preserve California’s history.
“We’re trying to preserve that history for the future, for academics, for comic fans, for researchers and … build other ties between the comics community and San Diego State,” Tumlin said.
In Fall 2011, Dean Gale Etschmaier created the Comic Arts Committee, giving selected library employees different tasks to put both presentations together.
“(Acquiring the Richard Alf papers) is like a major cultural movement in San Diego,” Special Collections and University Archives librarian Anna Culbertson said. “As the ‘guardians of Special Collections,’ it’s kind of our job to preserve that.”
The website, called The Comic-Con Kids: Finding and Defining Fandom, features interviews with Comic-Con’s first co-chairman Alf and 15 other teen comic enthusiasts who helped found the conference in 1970, many of whom also became SDSU alumni.
“There is a palpable, enthusiastic energy surrounding our interviewees,” Comic-Con Kids project coordinator Pamela Jackson said. “Their stories draw the early Comic-Cons as an inclusive environment, where young people’s talents were mentored, and a mutual love of comics, popular arts and reading were nurtured.”
The second part of the presentation was featured on Saturday at the Comic Arts Conference in conjunction with Comic-Con. The panel displayed artistic compilations and in-depth ideas about various comic elements. Many exhibitors chose to focus on the sociological and psychological aspects of comics, rather than just the art. Attendees were drawn to the event in hopes of discovering and discussing a deeper connection with the comics they’d grown to love.
At the poster presentation, iPads displayed screenshots of the website and Alf-related artifacts in addition to snippets of interviews with Comic-Con founders. Handouts and an SDSU Comic Arts Committee button, which featured a drawing from early Comic-Con fan and SDSU alumnus Clayton Moore, were given out.
The papers Alf wrote are “a fascinating look at how fandom and nature of the times in 1970 coalesced in the creation of Comic-Con,” Tumlin said.
The Alf papers were donated to SDSU’s Love Library after his death and are located in the Specials Collections & University Archives.
“Alf was one of the key figures in the founding of Comic-Con, even though he was only 17 years old at the time,” Tumlin said. “His is a very interesting story, and we are happy to have been entrusted with his papers.”
Tumlin said the committee’s work to preserve the cultural heritage of Comic-Con is ongoing. For those interested in learning more about the project and presentations, visit http://library.sdsu.edu/guides/tutorial.php?id=25.
