Despite its name, Convention Scene carries little more than hype and hoopla about comic cons. Searches for “worldcon,” “Westercon” and “Loscon” didn’t return a single item.

The title of one link promised some fanhistorical excitement, the “History of the San Diego Comic Con Slideshow”, but didn’t deliver. Its makers seem to have little awareness of anything earlier than the past 10 years.  

The beginning — the Golden State Comic Con of 1970 – is represented by nothing more than an advertising flyer promising big name writers and artists. Fortuitously, I can report on Ray Bradbury’s 89^th birthday his name headlined the list of celebrities at the original Comic Con. Others included Jack Kirby and A.E. Van Vogt.

The slideshow says George Lucas attended in 1976 to raise awareness of the movie he was then trying to get released. There’s no photo of George, just an image of R2-D2. (Strange to remember how fandom was enlisted to help make Twentieth Century actually release the film. I scheduled publicist Charlie Lippincott for a similar presentation at the 1976 Westercon.)

There are few photos from the early Comic Cons and those fail to identify most of the people we’re looking at, up until the last 10 years of the montage.

However, I considered the slideshow well worth my time because it was my first exposure to a Vuvox collage. I expect there’s some fun I can have with that technology myself.

[Thanks to David Klaus for the link.]