San Diego Comes Out to Play at Comic-Con

One of the first commercial conventions celebrating comic books was the Detroit Triple-Fan Fairs, which was founded in the mid-1960s by Michigan resident Shel Dorf. When Dorf moved to San Diego, California, he carried his obsession with him. In the spring of 1970 he organized a daylong convention called the Golden State Comic-Minicon, intending for it to be a sort of "dry run" for a larger convention that he planned to stage later. The one-day event was a success, so a few months later he held his first three-day comics convention in San Diego, the Golden State Comic-Con, which took place at the U. S. Grant Hotel and drew more than 300 people. Dorf's association with the convention continued for many years, with the convention taking place at various hotels and convention centers in the area until it was moved to the San Diego Convention Center in 1991, where it has been held each year since.

The yearly convention is organized and supervised by a panel of 13 board members, as many as 20 part-time and full-time workers, and more than 80 volunteers, all of whom assist by way of committees to oversee exhibits and events planning. The convention is a four-day event beginning on Thursday and ending on Sunday, although a preview night is held on Wednesday for four hours, for exhibitors, professionals in the comic book industry, and some guests who have pre-registered for all four days of the convention. Comic-Con is not only the name of the annual event, it is also the name of the organization that hosts it. Comic-Con International produces two similar conventions, Alternative Press Expo (APE) and WonderCon, both of which are held in San Francisco.

The convention was originally designed to showcase comic books, fantasy and science fiction, film and television, and other popular arts mediums. But over the years it has expanded to encompass a much wider range of pop culture elements, including animation, horror, anime, toys, manga, video games, collectible card games, and fantasy graphic novels. With more than 125,000 attendees, the San Diego Comic-Con is the largest comic convention held in the Western Hemisphere, and is the second largest comic convention in the world, surpassed only by the Angoulême International Comics Festival in France.

Along with seminars, panels, and workshops held by professionals in the comic book industry, the convention includes previews of upcoming feature films, a costume contest, portfolio review events with video game and comic book companies, evening awards ceremonies, and the Comic-Con Independent Film Festival, showcasing feature length and short-format movies that have not been signed yet for distribution. In all there are more than 350 hours of programming available on all aspects of pop culture and comic books in general.

The large floor space of the convention center is packed with exhibitors including media companies, TV networks, movie studios, collectibles merchants, comic book dealers, and an autographs area and "Artists' Alley" where popular comic book artists sign autographs and create and sell sketches of convention attendees. The alleys may even include models and writers of comic books. Professionals and academicians hold the Comic Arts Conference, where they present scholarly studies dealing with comics used as a medium. Forums such as these contribute to Comic-Con being able to maintain its status as a non-profit event.

This year's San Diego Comic-Con will be held from Thursday, July 22, through Sunday, July 25. Tickets have already sold out for the Wednesday preview event, as well as single-day tickets for Friday and Saturday. So if you're planning to get your comic on at Comic-Con in San Diego this summer, you'd better hurry to www.comic-con.org to grab a ticket for one of the other days while they're still available!