In March of 2004, Shel Dorf and artist Matt Lorentz attending a lecture by Ray Bradbury at the University of San Diego. Charlie Roberts, who took this picture, says it may be the last photograph he ever took of Shel.
March 2010
We previously recounted how on Saturday, October 17th, 2009, a group of fans and professionals from the Los Angeles, Riverside County, and San Diego areas got together to visit Shel Dorf in the hospital. On the morning of the next day, Sunday, October 18th, author George Clayton Johnson, former Comic-Con committee member Clayton Moore, comic artist William Clausen, and Shel Dorf Fan Club co-founder Greg Koudoulian visited Shel’s former residence in Ocean Beach, San Diego, CA. While there, Greg videotaped George, Clayton, and William talking about Shel. (The following video is made available courtesy of Greg Koudoulian.)
On July 19, 1997, after a long day spent at San Diego’s Comic-Con International, author George Clayton Johnson (Twilight Zone, Star Trek, Logan’s Run, Ocean’s 11, Kung Fu), who is a long-time and much-beloved Comic-Con guest, and his wife, Lola Johnson, sat for a videotaped interview at the San Diego, CA home of Roy L. Dobbs, Jr. The interview features the off-camera voices of Comic-Con’s Founder, Shel Dorf, and the Chairman of Comic-Con #1, Ken Krueger. The video may be viewed at http://www.comicconmemories.com/2010/03/23/video-conversations-with-george-clayton-johnson-and-lola-johnson courtesy of George Clayton Johnson and Greg Koudoulian.
We recently discovered that Shel had done a painting of Frankenstein’s Monster in the late seventies or early eighties. Shel gave the painting to Ken Krueger who later passed it along to San Diego fan John Thibodeau. Recently, John gave the painting to Troy Beaver, who owns and operates the Footnote Books store in San Diego’s Hillcrest community.
On Sunday, March 14, 2010, comic artist, publisher, and mural master Phil Yeh was a guest at a Girl Scout Environmental event at the Nixon Library in Yorba Linda. At the event, Phil has happy to receive his own personalized Shel Dorf Fan Club and Entourage badge from Greg Koudoulian and comic artist William Clausen.
Shel’s friend David Scroggy just sent in the above two photographs with the accompanying description: “I was looking for something else and came across these two photos. They are from 1993. I was acting as an artist agent and also director of Comic Book Expo, which was the trade show associated with Comic-Con. I had an office on Fifth Ave. in the Gaslamp District of downtown San Diego. This office adjoined the Comic-Con office on the second floor of a Victorian building. Shel Dorf dropped in one afternoon and had whomever he was with take these.”
David Lemmo, who was a friend and admirer of Shel’s, has put up a nice memorial page for Shel at his Museum of Modern Mythology and Pop Culture website. Click here to visit it.
Jack Kirby (left) and Shel Dorf — Nov. 9, 1969