Post on 14-Aug-2015
What Comic-Con
Looked Like in its
Early Years
TYP Entertainment, Inc
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Australia
GrowTix
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Salt Lake City, UT 84118
What Comic-Con Looked Like in its Early Years
It was 1969 when humans first walked on the moon. A year later, a group of self-professed
comic book junkies met in a California Hotel in what they called the West Coast Comic Book
Convention. Many years later and nine Apollo missions after, it has now re-franchised as Comic-Con
International: a single-day event that gathers a crowd of over a hundred thousand, attracts famous
celebrities, and launches careers.
Los Angeles Beginnings
David Glanzer, the face and spokesperson of Con said the event entered mainstream culture
because it was not just about comic books in the first place. Comic-Con, as one sees it today, is about
all kinds of pop culture. Although the earliest guests were mostly legends in the comics industry,
slowly, Con welcomed speculative literature, films, video games and even fine arts.
Writer Brian Lowry hints at the role of the movie industry in the ways with which the
convention turned from a small hotel-room gathering into a massive media juggernaut. Partly because
the Con was rooted near Los Angeles, and partly because Hollywood cannot help but dip a finger into
the Con’s colorful, easily riled and at that time, only a handful, audience.
From DIY to 130,000
During the 1977 gathering, George Lucas brought Star Wars. Con began attracting a larger
crowd in the 1980s, sometimes reaching thousands of attendees. About this time, everything about
the convention possessed a distinct DIY character. From the newsletters to the organizing, to the
booklets and the announcements, everything then was made by hand.
As Con was pushed further and further into the mainstream, DIY was not to meet the
standard of thousands of participants. People flocked to LA once a year to be a part of the Con. Some
would be there for TV, some for card/role-playing games. Soon, major comics companies and major
indies began playing part in the gathering.
The convention’s monster success can be associated with two things: location and
diversity. Positioned in the heart of the US popular culture industry and with its doors being wide
open to all forms of art and interest, it was bound to skyrocket into mega-stardom. Last year,
Con gathered 130,000 attendees. From DIY, Con now grew to include satellite locations and
event management software solutions, too.
References:
http://www.growtix.com
http://www.comic-con.org/about
http://io9.com/5320525/in-the-early-days-of-comic-con/