This past Sunday (December 27, 2009) the San Diego Union-Tribune paper published an article titled “The year we lost legends.” The article’s introduction cited the passing, among others, of Walter Cronkite, Patrick Swayze, Farrah Fawcett, Andrew Wyeth, John Updike, Ted Kennedy, and Eunice Kennedy Shriver. It then went on to explain, “But behind the headlines are real people who touched lives. We asked staffers to write a tribute to someone who died in 2009.”
Staff writer Pete Rowe, who has written previously on things Comic-Con, and whom we have been assured by another staffer is among the “cream of the crop” of Union-Tribune reporters, chose to write about none other than our very own Shel Dorf and Ken Krueger!
This certainly shows a big change in the status of comics in our culture when two of the founding figures of a comic convention can be remembered and honored among such famous company by a major metropolitan newspaper. Of course, some of this change is due to the efforts of Shel and Ken and all of the other fans who have worked so hard over the years (decades, even) to establish and grow San Diego’s Comic-Con International as well as the many other conventions around the country.
Read what Pete Rowe had to say about Ken and Shel at http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2009/dec/27/year-we-lost-legends/ .
Ken Krueger caricature by Milton Caniff