Here’s a batch of scans of pictures of Shel Dorf from Shel’s negatives from the 1974 San Diego Comic-Con, which was held at the El Cortez Hotel with Bill Lund as Chairman. (I received the negatives from Shel’s friend and cartooning partner Charlie Roberts.
Photographs
The first ever AfterCon Artshow took place on July 22nd , 23rd , and 24th 2010 at Suture Gallery in San Diego generating $1,810.00 for the Shel Dorf New Talent Encouragement Fund.
Matt Lorentz writes: “Here’s a great pic for the site featuring AfterCon artists Winged Tiger comicbook artist and founder of Cartoonists Across America, Phil Yeh; long time Comic Con attendee and Cartoonist Across America muralist Rory Murray; and Simpson’s comicbook artist and character designer Phil Ortiz. Photo by Groo colorist Tom Luth.”
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.
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.”
On February 20, 2010, the Glendale, California specialty bookstore Mystery and Imagination Bookshop hosted a signing for the new anthology of new and/or previously unpublished weird stories The Bleeding Edge. Authors in attendance included Ray Bradbury, George Clayton Johnson, and many more. At the signing, Bradbury was happy to receive from Greg Koudoulian his very own, personalized Shel Dorf Fan Club Badge.
Greg Koudoulian organized another gathering of the Shel Dorf Fan Club and George Clayton Johnson Entourage in remembrance of Shel Dorf and the early years of Comic-Con. This latest event was on February 13, 2010 and was attended by Wendy All and Greg Koudoulian from the Los Angeles area, Clayton Moore from Victorville, and Richard Alf, Anthony Keith, Alan Scrivener, Mike Rossi, and Mike Towry from San Diego.
Artist Matt Lorentz sent in the following two new pictures of the giant greeting card that he took around Comic-Con 2009 so that many artist friends and admirers of Shel could sketch on it for him. (See previous article “Artist Matt Lorentz Remembers Shel Dorf”.)
Inside Comics #2, August 1974 (published by Galaxy News Service) featured a Mark Evanier article titled “The Mini-Cons That Attacked Southern California!” The article focused on one-day mini-conventions, in particular Greg Koudoulian’s First Sunday Club and the Super Sunday convention produced by David Alexander and Terry Stroud. One other small convention that was featured was the King Kon put on by Comic-Con International’s own Shel Dorf and Ken Krueger. The following is an excerpt from that article reprinted with the author’s permission.
Jack Kirby (left) and Shel Dorf — Nov. 9, 1969