Unlike the public domain or orphaned comics properties frequently presented here on Boppin' (Like The Hip Folks Do), the pages you see today are copyright DC Comics Inc. Their appearance here is still intended as fair use, preserving a wonderful oddity and a magic moment from my teen years: the official program from the one and only Super DC Con, held in New York City in February of 1976.
I was 16 years old, and the Super DC Con was my first comics convention. It's still the only big con I've ever attended, and I wish I could find more coverage of that weekend somewhere. (And if anyone is aware of such coverage, please let me know!) A recent issue of Back Issue magazine included a brief retrospective of that convention, but I would surely love to read much, much more. Someday, I'll try to recreate my own memories of the con for posterity: of my Dad and I taking the train from Syracuse to New York--the trip was a present for my 16th birthday--and being informed upon arrival at the Hotel Commodore that a strike had moved the convention over to The Americana; of learning at con check-in that DC publisher Carmine Infantino had been replaced by a woman named Jenette Kahn; of Dad leaving me free to fully immerse myself in the entirety of the convention experience without a chaperone (and his amazement that I didn't even want to stop for lunch); of meeting other fans; of meeting Superman creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, Batman co-creator Bob Kane, my writer-artist idols Denny O'Neil and Neal Adams, and legendary editor Julie Schwartz, among others; of losing to Richard Morrissey in a trivia contest administered by E. Nelson Bridwell; of the treasures of the dealers room; of the cavalcade of DC superhero films screened, including a fragment of Kirk Alyn in Superman, a 1948 serial then thought to be lost; of wearing plain clothes in the costume parade, claiming I was dressed as writer Elliott S! Maggin, who had written himself into a Justice League of America story the previous summer (afterward, Maggin shook my hand, laughing, saying that Jenette Kahn had just been telling him that his JLA appearance meant that DC now owned his name and likeness); the panels; the giddy thrill of participating in something I loved, surrounded by others who loved it just as much as I did; the satisfied train ride back home to Syracuse after the enchantment ended. I really need to write about all of that.
But for today, this program will serve as a souvenir. This scan came from that vast series of tubes we call the internet. But I still have my copy, covered with autographs from all of the comics luminaries named above, and many more. There's an autograph from Jenette Kahn, with the inscription, "May you be published soon." There are memories contained therein, memories that fill me with a glow of content more than four decades later. Faster than a speeding bullet. More powerful than a locomotive. This feeling can still leap tall buildings in a single bound. You had to be there. I had to be there. I'm so grateful that I was.
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I did lots of work on this book!
ReplyDeleteAnd it remains appreciated. A souvenir of a magic memory for me.
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