At a now-bookmarked site called Comic-Convention Memories, the author is posting some photos found in the late Shel Dorf’s collection highlighting: a) just how much fun the old San Diego really was; b) how majestic ’70s fashions really were.

Just a wee sampling:

Carmine Infantino, June Foray, and Dorf.

The caption says: From the left, Ken Krueger, Richard Butner, Barry Alfonso (kneeling), Greg Weir,Steve Stockbarger, Michelle Smith (in back), Dawn Greil, Rita Terrell, Chuck Graham (in back), ?, and Bill Lund.

Here you see people who appear to be actually lounging by the pool of the El Cortez. Jack Kirby is visible, and Neal Adams is at the center of the hubbub.

As Paul Pope alluded to in the comments, Taschen Books, the art book publisher whose sale we were just telling you about, actually started out as a comics publisher, and there’s more about it on their website, including this picture of what a comics shop in Cologne looked like in 1980, with a picture of a young Benedikt Taschen. Their first comics publication was a German edition of Wally Wood’s erotic adventure, Sally Forth.

Martha Cornog rounds up From Aya to Zapt!: 24 Graphic Novels for African American History Month:

The past year has left tweens and teens with many more quality comics that increasingly depict engaging African American main characters. Plus, we have our Main Man himself, Mr. President, the comics geek–turned–comics hero. Forthcoming from Eureka: a Graphic Classics anthology featuring adaptations of short stories by African American authors. Forthcoming from TV star Rashida Jones via Oni Press: a spy thriller titled Frenemy of the State.

Also, two blog posts imagining alternate casting for famed superhero roles.

We’ll add some more as the day progresses.

With a pain-wracked history emblazoned with love-hate names like Richard Todd, Vinny Testaverde, Boomer Esiason, Rick Mirer, Chad Pennington, Brooks Bollinger, Brett Favre, Browning Nagle and, God help us, Rich Kotite (the head coach who managed to win four games in two seasons), finding a comic book with a New York Jet on the cover was no easy task, but naturally, “Broadway” Joe Namath was the subject of one of those Personality Comics bios in the ’90s.
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1981, Creation Con, New York:

Mort Todd, Dan Clowes and Rick Altergott. Via Comics Comics

c 1991-2, San Diego Comic-Con

Jack Kirby meets his namesake, Kirby Veitch. Via Rick Veitch.

2006, WonderCon

The 52 crew: Mark Waid, Wizard 52 reporter Ben Morse, Grant Morrison and Greg Rucka. Kneeling, Geoff Johns and editor Steve Wacker.

Via the Cool Kidz Table blog, as part of their “decade” series. We don’t know which anecdote is more surprising: Morse nearly throwing up during a 52 editorial meeting, or Kiel Phegley mentioning that Wizard used a Filemaker Pro based blogging system.

2010, Wisconsin

Neil Gaiman channels Dr. Who. Via Birdchick. Many bird watching anecdotes in the link.

If you’ve stuck with us this far, you’ve got to go all the way, as the last batch of comics writers, artists, editors, marketers and chroniclers weigh in. If there’s one takeaway from reading all these responses? WE WON! WE WON! WE WON! Seriously, there is no way I could have ever imagined in 1999 that in 10 years I would witness this level of confidence and strength from member of the comics industry. We’ve come a long, long way. Together.

Great thanks to all who time out from their holidays to participate and here’s to a fantastic year ahead–I have a feeling it might just be another big one.

Stuart Moore, writer

2010 projects: CLOAK & DAGGER, with Mark Brooks: one-shot from Marvel, March 2010 SHADRACH STONE, with Jon Proctor: original graphic novel from Penny-Farthing Press, Spring 2010 DEADPOOL TEAM-UP #896, featuring U.S. Ace (formerly U.S. 1), with Shawn Crystal: Marvel, February 2010
X-MEN ORIGINS: CYCLOPS, with Jesse Delperdang: one-shot from Marvel, January 2010
THE 99, with John McCrea and others: monthly from Teshkeel
A pretty cool TRANSFORMERS story

And other Things as yet Unnameable

What was the biggest story in comics in 2009? I think it was the remarkable resilience of comics in a down economy. Sales are solid and the range of formats continues to grow. There are a lot of challenges to face, but many industries are in much worse shape.

What will be the biggest story in comics in 2010? I’ll say this is the year that actual digital purchasing of traditionally paper comics comes into its own. Of course, that depends on a lot of factors like the evolution of tablet computers and/or full-color dedicated readers; it might take another year. In which case, I’ll just be happy if a new issue of MAGIC WHISTLE comes out.

When I think of comics in the 00s I think of: For me personally, the 00s were an amazing, rocky, wonderful time. I started out having just left DC Comics, after nine years; had a whirlwind stint at Marvel Knights (thank you, Joe and Nanci, in case I haven’t said it enough); and wound up writing a wider variety of material than I could ever have dreamed. Cheers to everyone who keeps the sails on this crazy industry lashed against the currents; let’s keep doing it for another ten years. At least.
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It’s the biggest year-end survey ever! We’re going to keep going until it’s all done though. People from EVERY walk of the comics industry sounds off on what they hope for in the new year, and along the way there’s lots of news, and a few previews, too. Previous installments: one, two and three.

Kurt Busiek, writer

2010 projects: Astro City (Variant cover above), Marvels: Eye of the Camera

What was the biggest story in comics in 2009? Paul Levitz stepping down as DC’s President and Publisher.  The last guy in charge to have roots going back before the rise of the Direct Market.  Paul’s always been a careful, deliberate manager of DC’s fortunes, and whoever winds up at his desk, it’ll mean big changes, one way or the other, for DC and for the comics industry.

What will be the biggest story in comics in 2010? Comics and the recession.  Do they continue to skate above it, or do they stumble?

What guilty pleasure (of any kind) are you looking forward to in 2010? Can’t wait for the THIRTEEN (GOING ON 18) collection from Drawn & Quarterly.  John Stanley teen goodness!  And Im’ hoping for another WALT & SKEEZIX volume.  But I don’t feel guilty about either one…

When I think of comics in the 00s I think of: The rise of the ongoing company-wide storyline.  Not just a crossover, but a years-long narrative that surges through the major companies’ shared universe lines, exciting a lot of readers and chasing others away.  There’s a lot of talk of “event fatigue” these days, but it still seems to be working…for now.
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Wow, we had SO many responses there WILL BE A PART FOUR. And maybe a part five. Although there’s a perhaps not-so-surpsiing consensus on the biggest stories of ‘09 and ‘10, keep checking for the exclusive art previews, news of new projects and, of course, charming headshots. Thanks to everyone who participated! Below the cut, everyone from Keith Giffen to Jillian Tamaki.

Jeffrey Brown, cartoonist

2010 projects: Illustrating the latest in the zombie book craze – “Paul Is Undead”, zombies meet the Beatles, and working on Incredible Change-Bots Two (above). I also just finished the second cat book, “Cats Are Weird”
 
What was the biggest story in comics in 2009? I would say the changes at the big two comics publishers – DC with its corporate restructuring or whatever, and Marvel being acquired by Disney. A slight edge to the Marvel/Disney deal, since that seems to me the potentially more impacting event.

What will be the biggest story in comics in 2010? The Independent Film Channel will acquire Top Shelf, and shortly thereafter announces film adaptations of Blankets and Lost Girls. Win-win for everyone involved.

What guilty pleasure (of any kind) are you looking forward to in 2010? I probably won’t have time for any guilty pleasures next year. Only well reasoned, legitimate pleasure for me.

When I think of comics in the 00s I think of: The rise of literary/alternative comics, the rise of webcomics, the rise of comic art shows, and the rise of super company wide crossover events.
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Continuing our look forward with writers, artists, editors, publishers, retailers and other people who make the comics. Lots of news, art previews and insight in the jump.

Paul Gravett, author, publisher

2010 projects Curating exhibitions on the Moomins, Jack Kirby and Hypercomics. Preparing some major new books about comics. Planning the next evolution of the Comica Festival. And above all, relaunching Escape Books, the seminal publishing company I ran with Peter Stanbury between 1983 and 1989. It’s the perfect time to bring this back. We’ll be putting out graphic novels, new books of our own about comics, and reviving Escape as an anthology showcase for the internet age. Because we all need an Escape. www.escape-books.com

What was the biggest story in comics in 2009? I guess either Disney buying Marvel or Crumb illustrating Genesis, but to me the biggest under-reported story was the banning by an Egyptian court of the country’s first adult graphic novel by Magdy El Shafee entitled Metro.

What will be the biggest story in comics in 2010? The impact of the Apple e-reader 

What guilty pleasure (of any kind) are you looking forward to in 2010? Indulging my lifelong love of Jack Kirby and luxuriating in original art for this exhibition, co-curated with Dan “Picture Box” Nadel, for the Fumetto Festival in Lucerne, Switzerland.

When I think of comics in the 00s I think of: The medium coming into its own more and more internationally, resulting in utterly unexpected, wonderful comics I’d never dreamt I’d see – I have to keep pinching myself. 

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WOW, lots of reading to do to get yourself ready for the new year!

§ You will be dumbfounded with amazement at Douglas Wolk’s list of exciting books coming out in 2010 like (above) Dan Nadel’s Art in Time: Unknown Comic Book Adventures, 1940-1980, a follow-up to his Art Out of Time anthology.

§ Then you’ll gaze in awe at Shaenon Garrity’s rundown of candidates for Greatest American CartoonistPart One and Part Two, with more surely to come.

§ THRILL! as Sean T. Collins and Jog briefly debate Urasawa!

§ GASP! as Brian Hibbs of the the San Francisco comic shop Comix Experience uses his POS system to see what sold in his store in 2009. Overview

Books

Comics
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The Man Abides. He also twitters, and if you are following Smilinstanlee, you can only marvel (yes) at how a man approaching his 10th decade can be such a master of the social networking. Although Stan will forever be a controversial figure, his longevity and adaptability — at an age when most people are marking their 10th anniversary of sitting on a porch in Florida — is an inspiration for all.

I see Atomic Comics in Phoenix is cutting prices on their Stan Lee Birthday Sale. But if it’s to honor me, shouldn’t they RAISE the prices?

For those who enjoy filling the quieter times of the holidays with reading, pretty much the most essential online comics reading right now is the ongoing posting of content from The Comics Journal #300, namely conversations between comics figures of the last few decades. We’re enjoying the printed version ourselves, but the links are as follows:

Stan Sakai & Chris Schweizer

Jim Borgman and Keith Knight

Ted Rall and Matt Bors

Jaime Hernandez & Zak Sally

Denny O’Neil & Matt Fraction

Howard Chaykin and Ho Che Anderson

Alison Bechdel and Danica Novgorodoff

David Mazzucchelli and Dash Shaw

David Gibbons and Frank Quitely

Jean-Christophe Menu & Sammy Harkham

Since we never got around to doing a gift giving guide because we’re so lame/lazy, we’ll steal this post from Jeet Heer on the best comics anthologies of all time — as proud owners of every volume on the list, we can very easily back up that any one of these books would make a great gift. Some are OOP, but you might be able to find a used copy for a reasonable price. You should avail yourself of Heer’s insights in the link, but our own comments are appended:

1. The Smithsonian Book of Newspaper Comics, edited by Bill Blackbeard and Martin Williams.
A fantastic grounding in the Golden Age of the comics strip, and a fine platform to show further outgrowths.

2. The Toon Treasury of Classic Children’s Comics edited by Art Spiegelman and Francoise Mouly.
An amazing compendium of two genres — the comical comic and the animation-influenced comic. Plus, great comics for kids.

3. Art Out of Time edited by Dan Nadel.
The dusty, weed-choked byways of the comics highway often produce the most gorgeous landscapes.

4. An Anthology of Graphic Fiction, Cartoons, and True Stories, two volumes, edited by Ivan Brunetti.
Everything you need to know about Alt.Comix in two beautiful, essential volumes.

5. McSweeney’s 13 edited by Chris Ware.
An appendix, or sidekick to the above, combining the Alt All-Stars, conventional literary lions and a soupçon of the past masters. Call it the pluperfect ’00s guide to comics.

Heer disallows The Smithsonian Book of Comic-Book Comics for its perfunctory superhero contents and poor reproduction, and indeed its 1982 viewpoint is a bit dated, but it is a handy guide to the essentials as they were once understood, and as Heer points out, with an anthology reflects autobiography, it’s useful to know that these are the comics that most of the folks now in charge of making them viewed as the Penguin Classics of the four-color world.

More suggestions in the comments.

Cartoonist Lew Stringer explores the contents of the 1971 Christmas issue of VALIANT.

Google is doing one of its birthday tributes to E. C. Segar, creator of Popeye. It’s the 115th anniversary of Segar’s birth. The Guardian has a nice profile:

Popeye the Sailor – who famously attributed his strength “to the finish” to his consumption “of spinach” – first entered the public consciousness in January 1929, in Segar’s newspaper comic strip Thimble Theatre.

The cartoonist was born in Illinois, US, on 8 December 1894, and showed a talent for drawing at a young age. Segar worked as a film projectionist while studying a correspondence course in cartooning, eventually moving to Chicago to pursue his career.

Segar died at the very young age of 43 after a long illness, but not without leaving his mark on the culture. In addition to Popeye and his spinach eating powers, the Army’s workhorse, the Jeep is named after a character in the Popeye strip — Eugene the Jeep — perhaps because soldiers found the new vehicle exhibited the character’s ability to get around in tight spaces. Sounds kind of far-fetched but it’s the preferred etymology. Wimpy and Bluto had similar branding successes.

BTW, Fantagraphics released Volume 4 of their oversized Thimble Theater reprint series not too long ago, “Plunder Island”, which just happens to be perhaps the greatest storyline from the strip, so if you’re curious for more, that’s the place to go.

Beat pal Robert Simpson saw our post on comics surveys and was inspired to recall comics reader surveys of the past. DC Comics surveyed their readers in both 1970 and 1978 — possibly confounded by the emerging youth market and Marvel’s much higher Q. Both are archived online.

The 1970 survey from Comics Treadmill, with the immortal Superman quote “Let’s rap!”.

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Come March, Random House will publish Backing Into Forward a memoir by Jules Feiffer, master cartoonist, playwright, screenwriter and all around renaissance man. According to an early review, it includes much material on his time as Will Eisner’s assistant and other matter from the comics business of the period. As well as a fantastic resource for comics history buffs, Feiffer’s life is compelling material in general and he’s as strong and insightful a raconteur as we’ve ever encountered.

At his LJ, which often explores comics fandom and history of the early ’70s, Scott Edelman unearths an issue of Comics Reader from June 1973 with a cover by a “future comic-book writer and editor, not at all known for being an artist.” We’ve posted a bit of the cover — go over to Scott’s blog to play along.

A lot of the writer/editors of the ’70s had artistic aspirations at the start of their engagement with comics, or at least could doodle pretty damned well. We can think of Marv Wolfman, Len Wein, Archie Goodwin, and Mark Evanier off the top of our head. We could swear Mike Carlin actually wrote and drew a comic for SLG back in the day, but the internet has expunged all records of it, so maybe we imagined that? Grant Morrison has been known to do convention sketches of many different Marvel and DC characters. Alan Moore has drawn comics. Our sketchbook includes a drawing of Sandman by Neil Gaiman. Doubtless many more — add to the list!

But anyway, who drew that piece? It isn’t Paul Levitz or Scott himself.

Ken Krueger, a co-founder of the San Diego Comic-Con and an influential figure in comics publishing and retailing on the West Coast in the formative era of the Direct Market, passed away over the weekend. Krueger owned Alert Books in Ocean Beach and helped Shel Dorf and other comics enthusiasts get what would eventually be known as The Con up and running, and by all accounts, was a level-headed, stabilizing force. He also managed the warehouse for Pacific Comics, one of the early indie comics publishers and distributors, and helped publish the first work of many important figures. One of them, Scott Shaw writes:

Jim Valentino just shared the sad news that Ken Krueger, who was not only one of the founders of the San Diego Comic-Con — and who also attended the very first science-fiction convention in NYC on July 4, 1939 — has died. No details of Ken’s death are available yet, but Ken recently appeared at SDCCI’s ‘09 for its 40th anniversary. Although he was not in good physical shape (to be kind), Ken’s mind seemed sharper than ever, with a memory for details of the past that were quite impressive. Ken published my first comic book story; he also published the first pro work by SF author Greg Bear, GARBAGE PAIL KIDS painter John Pound, Dave (ROCKETEER) Stevens, Jim (Image Comics) Valentino and others. I and many of my friends owe him a lot. When Pacific Comics was a major comic distributor, Ken oversaw the operation of their warehouse. Ken was a down-to-Earth guy who never sought titles or fame, but added legitimacy to the formation of Comic-Con due to his experience in fandom and as a publisher and retailer.

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Just to follow up on the earlier post about how only one movie in the top 20 highest grossing films of the Aughts was based on an original idea, lets check out the ’90s to see how they compare. Original stories are in RED.

1 Titanic — ORIGINAL
2 Star Wars – Episode 1 – The Phantom Menace — Sequel
3 Jurassic Park – Novel
4 Forrest Gump – Novel
5 The Lion King — ORIGIINAL (sorta)
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