INTERVIEW: A History Lesson on The Comic Convention With Mathew Klickstein

Lee Mars, Catherine Yronwode, and Carol Lay at the Women in Comics Panel in 1982

Dragon Con. NY Comic-Con. Flame Con. SDCC.  The comic convention as juggernaut may seem like a recent occurrence, but the journey to get there stretches back five decades.  To understand the present (and what the future may hold), we must look to the past. Pop culture historian Mathew Klickstein’s new book, See You At San Diego: An Oral History of Comic-Con, Fandom, and the Triumph of Geek Culture collects 50 years of history of San Diego Comic-Con, but fandom in general.

Several White men at a drawing table staring at a drawing on the table.
The cover to See You In San Diego: An Oral History of Comic-Con, Fandom, and the Triumph of Geek Culture by Mathew Klickstein

It’s an extension of his SiriusXM audio podcast, “Comic-Con Begins,” and we chat with Mathew about putting the book together and the future of comic-cons in an evolving post-COVID world.

Let’s begin at the beginning: how did the idea for an oral history of Comic-Con come about? It sounds like it was inspired in part by a podcast you did for SiriusXM.

Klickstein: A few years back, I’d worked on a book focusing on soi-disant “nerd/geek culture” through which I became friendly with an early Comic-Con organizer named Wendy All.

In early 2020, Wendy agreed to help me gather the sources I needed to put together what would be an oral history of Comic-Con and modern fandom itself as a book.

Unfortunately, for those in the cheap seats, it was early 2020 – and everything went completely topsy-turvy in the months thereafter. A friend of mine who I’d helped out a lot over the years had become a producer at SiriusXM, and he suggested we could produce the project as an audio doc series for the company in order to keep what I was trying to achieve alive during what was otherwise a historically chaotic time.

We were able to complete the initial version of the project that way, it did quite well, the 50+ interviewees involved were delighted by our work, and as things calmed down a bit last year, we were able to get back on track for the book with the audio doc series as “proof of concept.”

Our first choice for publisher – Fantagraphics – jumped at the opportunity, and a year later, here we are!

Comic-Con, both the New York and San Diego versions, have become pop culture juggernauts, especially in the immediate years prior to COVID. What do you think readers who only know these events as these larger-than-life happenings might find most surprising about the early days of Comic-Con?

The most surprising lesson from the book is that though there are those who kvetch that “Comic-Con is no longer just about comics,” it was really never “just” about comics. It was always about all of pop culture. Science fiction, animation, fantasy, magic, fine art, hard science, wrestling, kung fu movies, toys, tabletop games …

From the very beginning, Comic-Con represented fans from all walks of pop culture nostalgia, and that’s really the track we took with the book as well. It’s as much about The Twilight Zone and Star Trek and Star Wars and anime/manga and Twilight and Beyond the Valley of the Dolls and Rick and Morty and Ray Bradbury and Ghostbusters as it is about comics and so-called “comics culture.”

Because that’s what Comic-Con and the story of Comic-Con is really all about: the intersectionality of all of these fandoms.

The front of the book features a dedication to Mike “McBeardo” McPadden, who passed away nearly two years before its release. What role did he play in bringing this work together?

Mike was a longtime personal friend and collaborator on previous projects of mine who happened to pass during the production of the audio doc series/book.

He was also a much beloved and integral pop culture historian himself. He was additionally something of a mentor to me in years past, and both his books/articles (and other projects over many years) and his mentorship to various other folks who work in the realm of pop culture/fandom coverage today inspired me to dedicate the book to him.

This book is a great deal about forefronting those who came before us in the world of pop culture nostalgia/fandom, and I felt spotlighting Mike would be a great way to introduce that fact.

There is an amazing amount of archival footage in this book: photos, posters, zines, miscellaneous artwork. How were you able to obtain, view, and study such treasures?

I still have PTSD and nightmares about it all!

Gathering more than 400 pics and art, ensuring everything was properly labeled, organized, and credited, almost entirely on my own (on an extremely tight deadline with a non-existent budget) was certainly no easy task. But, working with Fantagraphics, I knew we had to make something that was visually explosive, which I believe we’ve done.

We were extremely lucky to tap into unseen private archives of the likes of the Clay Geerdes estate through estate manager Dave Miller and people like photographer Alan Light who were some of the only folks who even had the massive amounts of photos we needed for such an undertaking.

But a lot of it just came from my own relationships with both the folks in the book who (rightly so) saw this as much as theirs as mine, and from connections I had to various museums, colleges, libraries, and more from over the years of similar projects.

In the end, it became a matter of ascribing to one of my favorite all-time quotes from (ironically) Kant: “I can, because I must.”

The style of this book is unique on two fronts: first, in that it is an oral history. How did you solicit folks to contribute to the project? Was there anyone in particular that you were particularly excited to receive their contributions? Or anyone that you wish could have contributed?

I strongly feel that – especially these days when so much history is being brazenly rewritten, erased, or flat-out ignored – it is essential that we gather as much primary/first-person accounts of vital cultural institutions such as modern fandom as possible before the people who made it all happen are gone forever.

Many of those who I reached out to were familiar with my past work, were delighted to have someone with my imprimatur onboard to accurately tell their story (which has often been misrepresented/misinterpreted even by high-profile media outlets), and did what they could to help me along the way.

It took me over a year and six representatives of his to get RZA onboard for our interview that led to the afterword in the book, but it was well worth it. He’s been a major influence on me in so many ways since Wu-Tang first appeared on the scene in the 90s, and getting to Zoom with him was a literal dream come true.

I wish we could have gotten Mary Henderson who passed away before I began this production onboard. Mary and her husband Gene were elder statesmen and visionaries of the Comic-Con/fandom world, and I’m very proud of the fact we were able to get Gene into the audio doc series and book before he too was gone, which did happen during the production.

The other stylistic aspect of this book that caught my eye is its visual design. It’s presented like a series of folders with typewritten papers, like your rifling through someone’s filing cabinet in the 1970s and 1980s. What inspired that style choice?

That credit has to go to our genius designer Jonathan Barli. If this production were a film, I would’ve been director/producer/writer and Jonathan most certainly would’ve been director of photography/camera operator. He really brought to the fore the visual aesthetic of the book beyond anything I myself could have imagined.

He and I had talked early on about a kind of DIY/punk rock zine aesthetic mixed with something of a museum/archival look. And, my goodness, that’s exactly what he created!

I still haven’t been to a comic convention since prior to COVID, but from what I have heard anecdotally, the cons that have returned have somewhat returned to their roots: smaller, focusing less on big publishers and more on dealers and artists. Do you think this trend is here to stay? Or will we see the return of a pre-COVID convention before long?

Cons are of course all very different and distinct from one another, so it’s hard to predict – particularly on the global stage – what they will do or not do in the months to come during our still transitional period from what we all went through over the past three years.

But, I will say I did have an opportunity to go to the SDCC Special Edition event in November 2021, and everyone told me that it was exactly what it was like in the early 90s when Comic-Con was just big enough to be spectacular but also still small enough to be intimate, welcoming, and relatively easy-going. No Big Hollywood presence. No Big Corporate presence. No Big Media presence. Just the true-blue fans and the creators. And it did feel very special, at least to me and to those with whom I interacted.

I know a lot of the old timers would like it and other large-scale cons like it to continue that way. Will that happen? I don’t think anyone can say, but I guess we’ll just have to wait and see!

What is one thing you hope readers take from this book after they reach that final page?

Fandom is at its root about the unfettered sharing and exchange of ideas and stories. We are part of a continuum of those who came before us and those who will be coming after us, and we all have to do our part to keep those stories and memories, and ideas vibrant and accessible for all.


We’re thrilled to showcase several photos that you will see in See You At San Diego, which is available in bookstores on Tuesday, September 6th from Fantagraphics.

A photo of Harvey Kurtzman, Jack Katz, and Sergio Aragones at the Berkeley Con in 1976

The Hernandez family (Gilbert, Jaime, and Mario) at 1984's Petunia Con

Lee Mars, Catherine Yronwode, and Carol Lay at the Women in Comics Panel in 1982

Attendees in costume at the 1982 San Diego Comic-Con

 

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Kate Kosturski

Kate Kosturski

Science publishing nerd (and librarian) by day, comics nerd by day and by night. Also published at Geeks OUT and Multiversity Comics (where she is also the social media manager for the site). Originally from New Jersey, now of Connecticut and New York City. Raging feminist your mother probably warned you about. Body positivity and LGBTQ+ advocate. Lover of good whiskey, football (American and otherwise), baseball (New York Mets in particular), Doctor Who, Lego, Funko Pops, and knitting. Find her on twitter at @librarian_kate

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