By Mike Towry Next year (2012) will see the 40th anniversary of the first El Cortez Comic-Con, which was held August 18-21, 1972. I was Chairman of the con that year, at the ripe old age of seventeen, and it’s always held a special place in my heart. I’m not alone, however, in looking back […]
Greg Bear
Comic-Con has just posted details for the Ken Krueger panel at http://www.comic-con.org/cci/cci10_prog_fri.php. The panel will be held on Friday, July 23, 2010. Hope to see you there (wearing your Ken Krueger Fan Club t-shirt, if you’ve got one). Here are the details:
With Comic-Con #41 coming up next month, I thought you might like to read Ken Krueger’s Chairman’s message from the program book for Comic-Con #1 (August 1970). Since Ken just gave first names, here is a list of the full names of the committee members he was thanking: Shel Dorf, Richard Alf, John Pound, Scott Shaw!, Barry Alfonso, Bob Sourk, Greg Bear, Dave Clark, Ron Cearns, Bill Lund, Gary Pagel, David McGlone, Pat McGlone, Steve McGlone, John Hull, Mike Towry, Steve Shipman, Dan Stewart, Bill Rupp, and Glen Walker.
On March 21, 1970, San Diego’s Golden State Comic-Minicon was held in the basement of the U.S. Grant Hotel in downtown San Diego. This small, one-day convention was held to raise funds and fan-recognition for the initial three-day convention, San Diego’s Golden State Comic-Con, to be held in August of that year. Richard Alf, who was Minicon Co-Chairman (Bob Sourk was Chairman) recently found a set of photographs from that small event. One of these is reproduced above.
At the ComicConMemories.com web site, you can listen to audio recordings of many committe members and guest speakers from the first San Diego’s Golden State Comic-Con, which was held August 1st thru 3rd, 1970 in the U.S. Grant Hotel. The list of those recorded includes the following: Ken Krueger, Shel Dorf, Barry Alfonso, Greg Bear, Ray Bradbury, Roger Freedman, Mark Hanerfeld, Earl Kemp, Jack Kirby, Scott Shaw!, and Morrie Turner.
Alan White sent in the following picture of Ken Krueger with some of the original Comic-Con gang at Comic-Con International #40, July 2009. Alan helps to put on the Xanadu science-fiction convention in Las Vegas (http://www.xanadulasvegas.com/). He has a nice mention of Ken on his web site (http://www.scifivegas.com/) along with a link to this site.
It was in a phone conversation with Ken that I discovered that he, like myself and several other alumni had been invited as special “40th Anniversary Guests” to the 2009 San Diego Comic-Con. I think it took me all of a day to realize that this would be a perfect opportunity to gather all of Ken’s “boys” together in one room. It was Ken who started the tradition of Sunday dinner during the cons at Filippi’s, an Italian restaurant in the Little Italy section of SD. A tradition my sons and I had kept going all these years, so it was a fitting place to have the dinner.
Why is Ken important? Because in the late 1960s he reached out to a scattered neighborhood of green youngsters and introduced them to professional publishing, cheap collector’s items, fan and pro history… I could go on and on, but Ken Krueger was one of my earliest publishers of both literary essays and artwork. He clearly […]
Ken Krueger caricature by Milton Caniff