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Let’s get in the hot tub time machine, back to when conventions were fun and convention program books weren’t 90% ads! Let’s ride the bubbles back to Bay Con 1, in 1975!  Tim Bird Bay Con 1 program book, 1975 Tom Orzechowski, editor Comic conventions these days, especially the big ones, are often impersonal, over commercialized affairs where you can get lost, get exhausted, get hosed, and still not get satisfied. But, there used to be a time when this was not true. Comic conventions used to be informal gatherings where creators and fans could fraternize without bodyguards and autograph charges. Honest! Though the entry for this installment is not a fanzine per se, it’s close enough. The program book for the first Bay Con (I thought there was only one, but Tom Orzechowski tells me there was a second, more on that later) certainly looks like a fanzine in its appearance. It is filled with great art from pros and a few fans, has a few columns, and given its rarity, deserves coverage in this column.  Jim Starlin This convention book is also very much of its time, both visually and thematically. Professional comics were going through a real “cosmic” phase. None represented this better than the “King of Kosmic,” Captain Marvel, Dreadstar, and Warlock creator/revamp specialist Jim Starlin, with his cover seen above. Created long before you could apply a filter in photoshop to achieve the starry starry night in this illustration, Starlin most likely physically masked off the white areas of the figure and planets, then used a toothbrush to apply all those white stars. Starlin was also connected to the “ground level” independent comic Star*Reach, and many other contributors of that comic make appearances here. Underground comics were also still being published, and San Francisco was the headquarters of this cottage industry. The illustration by Tim Bird shown below pokes fun at this battle for readers being fought between the two related, but separate industries.  Tim Bird Of course there were creators that moved back and forth between these two variations of the comic book publishing world, but not very many. Most of the underground artists and writers were either considered not good enough for mainstream comics, or just too hard to control. From all indications, those same underground creators most likely wouldn’t work at Marvel under any circumstances anyway, as the freedom of content they had in the underground would have been strangulated by the comics’ code in “the world above.” One of the seminal underground artist/writers was Vaughn Bode, who contributed the Cheech Wizard piece below. You can explore his site in the archives here. Sadly, the same year this convention was held, Bode died under suspicious circumstances.  Vaughn Bode Several other underground talents show up in this program book, including Paul Mavrides, and Larry Todd, who contributed the back cover illustration below of his well known toker, Dr. Atomic.  Larry Todd The “ground level” crew at Star*Reach are well represented here, as well. It might have helped that super duper lettering pro Tom Orzechowski was in charge of “publications” for the convention. Tom himself showed some variations on his well known Howard the Duck logo below.  Tom Orzechowski Amongst the Star*Reach group was a subset of artists/writers from the fanzine Venture, including Brent Anderson, Frank Cirocco, and Gary Winnick. You can see a few of their contributions below. Another untimely death the year of 1975 was Bruce Lee, whom Brent Anderson paid tribute to immediately below. More Lee later.  Brent Anderson  Gary Winnick, Frank Cirocco All three creators were instrumental in the formation of this program book, along with Orzechowski, Jim Pinkoski, and John McLaughlin, the latter two represented below. Orzechowski has a font/logo creation website in the archives here. Tom imparted a wealth of inside info and anecdotes via facebook that will illuminate and entertain below: Bay Con was a comics con for only a few years before it became a science fiction con in ’81. Were you part of the original 1975 organizing committee? I came into it pretty early. I was living in Berkeley then, and had been doing lettering for a couple of years for Marvel and elsewhere. A guy named John Watson came by one day to ask if I’d be a guest. He belonged to a comics buying cooperative, and they felt that there were so many comics pros in the area that a con would be a good bet. Well, John and I hit it off immediately, and I’d already had some con committee experience, so I took on the job of ads and publications. Pretty soon I was also the pro liaison, because I knew people who knew people. After all that, when it came time for the con itself, I’m not sure I actually functioned as a guest. How soon after this convention did Vaughn Bode die? I think it was the same year, correct? Did you have much interaction with him? Along the same lines, I couldn’t find any info on Vincent Bode, who I assume is Vaughn’s brother. Did he do much cartooning himself? Vaughn didn’t attend in ’75, but his brother Vincent did the cartoon concert. This was a less than dramatic reading of Vaughn’s character dialogue set to a slide show of Vaughn’s comics, panel by panel, and Vaughn did it for a few year at different conventions. For us, Vincent did it as a tag-team with another of our guests, Brian Narelle. Brian was in the cast of an indie sci-fi film called Dark Star that won a “Best Special Effects” award. The film, incidentally, also starred Dan O’Bannon, who wrote it, and later co-wrote the classic film Alien. Vincent did some cartooning at the time, but moved into fine art. I am not familiar with quite a few of the artists. Did they work mostly in the undergrounds? Not everyone. There were some local mainstream-leaning artists...Brent Anderson, Frank Cirocco, John McLaughlin, Jim Pinkowski Gary Winnick, Carl Potts and Tony Salmons. And you. Most of you moved to New York within a couple of years and started getting great gigs almost immediately. And then, of course, there were the Marvel people who moved to the Bay Area at around the same time I did: Jim Starlin, Steve Englehart, Frank Brunner and Alan Weiss. A lot of the others had solid credits but weren’t in the first set of underground artists, so their names don’t resonate. On weekends, Watson and I traveled all over town, meeting these great people and collecting all of this incredible artwork. Larry Rippee had a solid sense of ‘20s-‘50s comic strips, and did pages for a lot of anthologies. Becky Wilson did only a bit of comics work, mostly for the Wimmens’ Comics collective. Otherwise, she worked in graphics and publication design. Paul Mavrides scripted and inked Freak Brothers, and did illos for the Church of the Sub-Genius. Jay Kinney did stories for some of the earliest undergrounds, including Young Lust and Bijou Funnies. Barry Siegel & Bruce Simon did some self- published issues and some magazine work, a lot of which I lettered. Sharon Rudahl was in some anthology comics, and did some single issues for Kitchen Sink Press, as did Lee Marrs, who was also published by Star*Reach. I don’t remember anything about Tim Bird. Finally, there’s Larry Todd, who was in a lot of anthology titles, and did a few issues of Dr. Atomic Comics. Larry was also good friends with Vaughn Bode, and brought that sensibility to the con. All of the local Marvel artists came through for you, it looks like. That was the easiest part, since we were all in fairly close touch right then. Jim Starlin and Steve Leialoha, yeah, I worked with them all the time then. The con was intended as a midway point between mainstream comics and the undergrounds, so the program book is all over the place. The Bay Con Pig that introduces the book was by Carl Lundgren and Greg Theakston, a couple of commercial artists I met in Detroit. Carl had done posters for Detroit’s late ‘60s music venues before moving into book covers. Greg had assisted Jim Steranko before joining Neal Adams’ crew of inkers. Frank Hill drew the Short Ribs and Bugs Bunny comic strips. Leslie Cabarga didn’t do any comics, but at that time he was doing ‘30s style pieces like this cover for Marvel’s short-lived underground style mag Comix Book, as well as Deco-influenced commercial work. Alan Kupperberg was a cartoonist for National Lampoon and elsewhere. Don Rico should have been better known, since he’d worked on Daredevil in the early ‘40s, and then for Timely/Atlas/Marvel afterward. Jack Katz had credits back to Fawcett in ’43 and then everywhere else for another 30 years, before launching his key work, The First Kingdom. Terry Austin and I knew each other in our fan days, and he was a pal to send me a piece that he inked over his own pencils. He was assisting Dick Giordano in those days. The Brunner centerfold, was that done as a collage by you guys, Brunner himself, or redraws of various existing pieces? You had it right the second time. Frank assembled that one himself from copies of his inked pages. Between Doctor Strange, and suddenly Howard the Duck, he was riding very high at that moment. The Howard logos you show, were those sketches before the final one, variations on the logo for other iterations, or what? Those were my submission sketches. Marvel went instead with one that looked like a Marvel logo. I never was a perfect fit with them. The chief editor there once mentioned to me that my work looked too much like underground comics. What can I say? I also went for that ‘20s-‘50s look. What is the significance of the Charles Biscuit Band art? They were friends of Larry Todd’s, and played at the con. That’s Larry’s illo. Any chance you remember who did what on that piece that is an ad for Cymbaline Records and the other store? Was it an actual jam piece done for the con? Frank penciled the duck and probably the skull; Jim drew the facial feature creature; Scott Bell, a friend of Alan Weiss’, drew the banana critter. Englehart probably drew the moon. Alan penciled the gal, “smegma,” added the dialogue, and inked the whole page. And yes, it was done for the con, probably at Alan’s house. Why did Bay Con become a science fiction con? After two years, John and I had had enough of giving up our weekends. A third comics-style Bay Con was handled by a different comics dealer, after which I moved back to New York. I believe that a World Science Fiction Con was then held in San Francisco under the name Baycon, entirely unconnected to the comics cons. From there, the name was adopted by an unrelated science-fiction con based in San Jose. We used Bay Con as two words for our two years, but it’s been just one word ever since.  Jim Pinkoski  John McLaughlin A few more cohorts of the Venture crew chime in with some beautiful full page illustrations below. Carl Potts, with some help from Brent Anderson, followed by Tony Salmons’s wonderfully airy tragedy in space photo op.  Carl Potts/Anderson, Tony Salmons Now, the “above ground” professionals had their part in this program book, as well. Two big names, one from each of the big two, are represented here. Below you will see a mini feature on both John Romita and Joe Kubert.  John Romita, Romita, Joe Kubert Relatively new pro Berni Wrightson is also present...well, at least for a few panels, as you will see below. I guess we can see now why Berni never had any trouble accessing the dark side.  Berni Wrightson Damn, but that Berni sure can draw hands well, can't he? Well...I can contain myself no longer! This program book, along with the inking (and publication) help of Brent Anderson, allowed me to have my first published work! Before any other fanzine illustrations (and there were many), the Bruce Lee piece you see below was printed, and it was a huge deal for me!, even though I never got to attend the con. I was a callow high school student in a small town in Utah...far, far away, in so many ways, from the underground headquarters in the bay area. So, without further a doo-doo...  Ken Meyer Jr./Anderson There are many other glorious illustrations in this chronicle of times gone by, but I will save some for the pdf here. For now, you can see work by Steve Leialoha, Jay Kinney, and Becky Wilson below.  Steve Leialoha, Jay Kinney, Becky Wilson Kinney moved out of cartooning eventually and into writing books and editing magazines. You can see his very well done site here. Steve Leialoha became a pro at the aformentioned Star*Reach productions, but also did a ton of work (mostly inking) for Marvel and DC. He still lives in San Francisco with his fellow cartoonist, Trina Robbins (a mainstay of undergrounds and Star*Reach, especially those dealing with women's rights and issues).
Thanks go out to Tom Orzechowski, who answered several questions and supplied some information on his own. I hope you have enjoyed your journey back into a time when cons were fun, informal, but still filled with incredibly talented and friendly people...people you could actually meet and have a relaxed conversation with! This convention and this convention book (though professionally produced), is indicative of the laid back nature of the San Francisco bay area. It makes you want to back in time, hop a trolley, and check out a head shop or two. Light up! [This article was written years ago, there are probably several items that need to be updated, but one that was point out to me is that Trina Robbins sadly passed away on 4/10/2024] Ken Meyer Jr. [email protected]
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Back for another shot at the title! The Collector! Weighing in with John Byrne, Ken Barr, Gil Kane, Don Newton, Don Rosa, and more! Ding!  John G. Fantucchio, Stephen Fabian, Bob Smith The Collector 28: 1973 Editor/Publisher: Bill G. Wilson Those of you who have been with this column from the beginning know of The Collector, since it was the very first zine profiled! That was issue 27. This time out, it is the following issue, again stuffed with great illustrations and articles.  Ken Barr As you can see above, as with most issues of this great 70s fanzine, editor Bill G. Wilson knew how to choose a cover! Ken Barr, already a professional at this time, gave us a great EC tribute cover, reminiscent of Russ Heath, Wally Wood, and Frank Frazetta...but still his own. One of the few fanzines that actually did spot color (on the covers and a few interior illustrations), The Collector stood out for this and several other reasons. Bill Wilson had a great stable of artists, and several of the regulars make appearances here. John G. Fantucchio gives us the somewhat goofy Prince Valiant laboring with the logo at the top, and will make several more flashy stops during this issue. Others will follow in this issue, which had several overriding themes. First though, we will take a hectic journey through writer William Reynolds’s and artist Bruce Patterson’s “Occupational Hazards.” Below you see a few pages from this silly and enjoyable superhero parody piece. Though artist Patterson cringes seeing seeing the art today, for a lad of only 20 this (and a few spot illos later in the issue) was fairly accomplished stuff.  Bruce D. Patterson  Patterson  Patterson There are two other entries in this piece above, which you can see in the pdf! Through email, Bruce told me he was a DC fan at first, but was later turned on to Marvel by a friend. I remember seeing his work here, in The Comics Buyer’s Guide and several other places, and liking his clean style and sense of humor. He still has it! Bruce was pretty active at DC and Marvel in the 80s and 90s, primarily as an inker, but he also did covers, letters, and even some coloring. Today, he is taking commissions, so find him on Facebook here. That’s his skull illo to the left! He more recently told me that "I did a lot of small sketches for various fanzines. I don't have any specific anecdotes, other than I was happy to do them. Acceptance was really all I wanted at the time. It was fun and I started submitting art to convention shows. I made some connections that I wish I had continued, but once I started working, I also moved a lot, too. I only remember meeting a couple of the guys, Jim Van Hise and a couple of Bills or Williams. I met Bob Layton and his friends, most of whom went into comics. It was just kinda cool to talk to people and share stuff. As a fan, I liked humor as much as superheroes." Following that bit of humor is another by an established and widely published fan artist/writer, Alan Hanley. There is a nice little site here that shows a plethora of Hanley’s pleasantly cartoony styled illustrations and strips, often illustrating one of his favorite characters, C. C. Beck’s Captain Marvel. There is a fan appreciation page on the late artist/writer on Facebook here. Lastly, long time fan and writer Bill Schelly wrote a book on the founders of comic fandom you and I must get...you can get it here. Hanley is one of many artists and writers covered in the book that you will have heard about, if you have read this column regularly. Hanley passed away in 1980. Below you can see a few pages from his Greenhorn series, which has some great parodies/homages to characters such as Blackhawk, Sgt. Fury, The Spirit, Airboy, and others.  Alan Hanley  Hanley  Hanley  John Ellis The next theme covers many of the female comic characters of the golden age, and is illustrated by a variety of artists, including John Ellis/Skip Olson, Mike Roberts, Bobs Conway and Smith, Paragon founder Bill Black, Comic Crusader publisher Martin Greim, and two gorgeous pieces by John G. Fantucchio. Check out a sampling of work below. The well researched article by Graham Sterling also reprints many covers from that era.  Fantucchio, Martin Greim, Mike Roberts, Griem/Al Bradford, Fantucchio  Don Newton Fantucchio had such an identifiable style (especially evident in the Black Cat illustration above), and was a highly sought after fanzine illustrator. He has a few other pieces in this issue that you can see in the pdf. Taking a break from the themes, we are graced with a gorgeous Don Newton western illustration portfolio. Don came on The Collector “staff” very early. I know I have issues as early as 15 or so with Don’s covers. I have an especially fond memory of his Captain America cover on one of the early issues of this great fanzine. His realistically proportioned and often detailed figures (usually draped in dramatic shadows) graced many a fanzine, and enabled him to enter the pro ranks a year after this issue of The Collector, starting at Charlton with The Ghost Manor and The Phantom, and continuing on to DC before his passing in 1984 at the age of only 49 from a heart attack. You can see a site of his wonderful DC work here. You can also see a feature on his Phantom and fanzine work here! Below and to the right you see a few images from this portfolio.  Newton After an article reviewing several golden age comics, the trend for themes continues, this time profiling the perennial TV fave Star Trek. Several artists take a crack at the crew and the ships, including John Ellis (seen in the masthead, unfortunately scanned in black and white, not the original color), science fiction great Stephen Fabian (that’s his space monkey in the masthead), Jim Pinkoski, and even John Byrne chimes in with several full page renditions of space ships, including the recognizable Enterprise. The article also prints several stills from the series itself, as well as art from the animated series. Check it all out below.  Ellis  John Byrne Let’s take a short break from the themes again and look at the singular Gil Kane’s rendition of Warlock, seen below. I am sure he could do these illustrations in his sleep, but, man, they still look awesome!  Gil Kane The last theme of this issue of The Collector is The Shadow, with the article written by another fandom stalwart, Murray Bishoff, and entitled “Shadow of the Ages.” Again, many of the cabal of artists take a shot (pun intended) at the Shadow. We see renditions by Mike Roberts, John Ellis, Bruce Patterson, Jim Jones, Don Newton (also on the back cover), and Ken Bruzenak. That’s right...the same Ken Bruzenak who would make his fame as the incredibly inventive letterer on Howard Chaykin’s American Flagg (and who lives right here in Savannah, his wife a professor at the Savannah College of Art and Design)! [Remember, this column was originally written about 10 years ago, when I was still in Savannah, and actually had a lunch with Ken!] Fittingly, it is a well designed piece, seen below to the right of the Mike Roberts version. Can you see Mike’s love of Steranko here?  Mike Roberts, Ken Buzenak The article, like the other main columns, reprints several of the great pulp covers, beautifully painted. Also shown and talked about is the Mike Kaluta DC Shadow series. Below you see the amazing Newton back cover of the “one who knows.”  Newton Now, remember, this is only a portion of this issue of The Collector 28! There is also a moody and gruesome story called Close Shave by Alan Riefe and Don Rosa, several other illustrations by John Ellis, Bruce Patterson, Anthony Kowalik, and Stephen Fabian, a Batman sketch by John Byrne, and more. And, if that’s not enough, howsabout a letter column featuring a much younger version of me? High school senior, to be exact, all gush and clue challenged! I AM actually pretty excited right now, because I DID NOT KNOW there was a Collector 29! I see it is available on eBay, and we will be profiling that at some point in the future!
Thanks this time go out to Bruce Patterson. Now, rush to download the pdf, so you can see the rest! Come back on April 1st for the next installment of Ink Stains! Please, leave comments, and feel free to leave requests! Ken Meyer Jr. [email protected] |
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