Comic-Con 50: Longtime Attendees Explain Why It's So Special
Speaker 1: 00:00 Comicon is celebrating its 50th year. It's evolved into an event that sprawls out from the San Diego Convention Center and attracts upwards of 130,000 attendees. But it wasn't always that big. KPBS arts reporter, Beth Hock Amando speaks with some long time comic-con goers, including a pair who have been to every single show. Speaker 2: 00:23 Oh, this is Jackie Estrada and I'm one of a few people who've been to every single comicon. And, and since I've been to all of them, it's very hard to pick. But in 1977, we had the creators of Superman, Jerry Siegel and Joe Schuster. We had the cocreator Batman, Bob Keane. Uh, we had Robert Heinlein who we had the very first, uh, blood dry for comicon. It was Robert Heinlein Memorial, uh, blood drive. And he came specifically to San Diego just for that. And then we had really interesting cartoonists like B Cleveland known for his cat cartoons, which was a big craze fad at that time. The Cross section of people who were at the show and the underground cartoonists from San Francisco also came down. The interactions between everybody when the show was small enough that you had these blendings of people hanging out that you never assumed would ever happen. Uh, I went to see a showing of a, a somewhat Tezuka animated film called Phoenix 24 42 with Beekley band and Victor Moscow. So who's one of the zap underground artists that started around comics and we watched the movie twice cause we liked it so much. Speaker 3: 01:41 I'm Mark Evanier, I'm a comic book writer and editor. I run a lot of panels here at comic con. This is my 50th comic con in San Diego. I've been to all of them. I can't figure out why. Maybe it's all the fun people. Maybe it's all the exciting stuff around here. I went to the first one in 1970 we were in the basement of the u s grant hotel, which was undergoing construction. So everybody is walking on painters papers and there's plywood walls to navigate and we have 300 people there. And we thought that was astounding. Now there's 300 people ahead of you in line for the men's room. And what is fascinating about this thing to me is every place you look, someone has made something, someone has published a book, someone has done a drawing, someone has written something, someone's made a costume, someone has sculpted of famous president out of Lego blocks, whatever it is. And it's just amazing to be around all this creativity. And that's the way it was at the very first one. And that's the way it still is. Convention gets bigger, it gets more commercial, it has more famous movie stars at it, but it's still about just a lot of creative, brilliant people getting together. My name is Josh Bungalow and I'm one of the founders of the legal geeks blog and podcast. And this is our fifth comicon. Our first one was 2015 and we've Speaker 4: 03:00 been able to talk about star wars and star trek and the law marvel movies in the law. And one of the most memorable experiences was at our first one where we had tattoo law talking about star wars law and we have a federal judge with us and there was a youth in the audience who probably was seven and he asked a complex question on whether droid manufacturers could have the same level of liability as say a gun manufacturer or a tobacco company. It was profound to hear a seven year old articulate something that legally complicated and the federal judge answered the question. But it was just wicked cool to see how people care so much about the law. So I love being here. It's like the nerd Superbowl and it's a, I'm glad this is our fifth year. Speaker 5: 03:54 Hi, I'm Eric Nakamura. I'm at the giant robot booth and this is my 26th year here. So my first year was in 1993 and I remember someone brought me here and I remember I only had two hours of time. That was it. And I came inside, ran around and was a amazing everything mind blown and Oh, I was just like suffering because there's only two hours of time. And I had to leave cause I was here down here for a job, but I didn't know anything about comic con. And after that, uh, I decided I can't miss another one and I haven't. And uh, here I am today. So running a booth, I started off with this with a small table just with very little things. And then it just kind of grew little by little. And I like to say that I grew with comic con, which is kind of amazing, right? But from inside is different than being outside of the booth. That's one thing that understand is when you're in a booth, you're protected outside. You're completely like, you know, you're, you're kind of, I don't know, I would say you're, you're sort of stuck in this giant like hoard, you know, it's like a Zombie horde or something. And inside I'm kind of like, I'm, I'm shielded. So it's nice. It's kind of on, it's a wonderful, uh, craziness. Speaker 6: 04:59 I am Rebecca Hicks, the creator of the Little Pyres, a web comic and our writer and illustrator. And this is my goodness, my 26 total San Diego comicon. But my very first comic con I'll go was that 1994 and I remember walking up to the door and buying a one day pass. And then just over the years it was like, oh, now we can buy our pass for next year at this year's show. And then, and then, oh no, we got even bigger still and now we've got to buy them online. It's just omega, watching it go from, it was a big show the first year we attended. And then to watch it grow has been amazing. But 13 years ago we were like, oh my gosh, we need some place to be able to sit and eat lunch. The show floor is so crowded. So I wrote a book and got a small press table and I have now been an independent writer and illustrator for 13 years because just wanted a spot to be able to eat lunch in San Diego comicon. So that's my story. I'm sticking to it. Comic-Con continues through Sunday. Go to kpbs.org to see all our comic con coverage.
