I went to Comic Con

About 35 years ago. Yeah, haven’t been there during the modern heyday of Comic Con, but in the 70’s I totally got to go two years in a row as a kid. My parents took me, and dropped me off at the hotel it was held in to hang out all weekend while they went and partied in San Diego proper.

It was held pretty much in the basement of the hotel. I don’t remember which one or if it is even still there, but it was all pretty low rent compared to today’s con. But it was amazing to me. I had yet to go to any kind of con, so I was just blown away by all the merchandise and stuff. Then it wasn’t a huge venue for film promos, but comic book companies were there, and always big names for the panels. I loved Captain Sticky. Cap was a big fat bearded guy in a superhero costume, and he had a Batmobile type care parked out in front of the hotel. The car was even more awesome than Batman’s car, because it shot peanut butter out of a turret on the roof! Captain Sticky was a real life local celebrity, because he had some kind of comic book cable show down there. He was an everyman hero, aiming his heroic sights on crooked car rental companies and other modern villains of day to day life.

But in reality, my best experiences were meeting Stan “The Man” Lee, and also Mel Blanc. A small group of us gathered around Stan (no crowd would be small around him these days, back then nobody but a diehard comic collector would have recognized him), asking questions about Howard the Duck and other stuff. But I got to spend close to an hour by myself talking to Mel! It was by the pool, and he was sitting down most of the time because he had broken a leg recently horse riding and was quite old. He did all the Looney Tunes voices for me, and sang a song for me in Speedy Gonzales’ voice. It was the most amazing celebrity moment of my life (although David Lee Roth giving me a hit off of his whiskey bottle backstage at a Universal City Walk concert in 2002 was a pretty nice highlight too).

Comic Con looks amazing these days, but I want to be honest, I don’t have a great love for crowds, especially crowds of super geeks. The smell of Dork-ass in huge quantities is like Kryptonite to me. But every year, as I watch some of the con coverage on G4, I remember those great little childhood memories of the early con days.