Since then, Comic-Con has been a madhouse. The “Twihards” took fandom to a new level when they camped out overnight to secure a spot to see the panel. And, he thinks, it began the slow evolution of the convention into what it is today.įor most, the real tipping point for Comic-Con and Hollywood came in 2008 when “Twilight” descended on the Gaslamp District. “It made Hollywood sit up and take notice,” Towry said. The success of the original Star Wars may have a wake-up call for Hollywood. “He ended up giving some of them away.”Ĭompare that to 28 years later, when Lucasfilm revealed the title for the final Star Wars prequel, “Revenge of the Sith.” Germain Lussier, a staff writer for the websites io9 and Gizmodo, remembers it being “electric.” Some 7,000 screaming people jumped out of their seats and made a mad dash to the showroom floor to get one of the T-shirts available at the Star Wars booth. “He didn’t even sell them all,” Thomas laughed. He remembers the PR guy, Charles Lippincott, trying to sell the posters later for $1 apiece. “All we could do was sit there and talk about it and show a poster.” But we didn’t even have any footage,” Thomas said. It was, of course, “Star Wars” and he was working on the promotional comics that Marvel would put out prior to release. In the summer of 1976, the artist and two other panelists took the stage to preview an unknown sci-fi property that wouldn’t hit theaters for another 10 months. Roy Thomas remembers being part of one of the first “real movie events” at Comic-Con. “Comics back then were looked down on by pretty much everyone.” “We were just looking to get together with our fellow comic fans and some of the people who created the comics and science fiction we enjoyed,” Towry said of the early years. But it took a while for Comic-Con to really “go Hollywood.” “That seemed pretty far-fetched to us, but Jack Kirby was pretty visionary.”Īs the 50th Comic-Comic kicks off Wednesday, with a big Marvel Studios panel on Saturday that’s sure to be the hottest ticket in town, and Spider-Man and the Marvel Cinematic Universe dominating the box office, Kirby proved to be right. “A long time ago he said, ‘One day Hollywood is going to come to Comic-Con to get its ideas,’” co-founder Mike Towry said. LOS ANGELES > No one expected their culture would ever become mainstream when a few hundred comic book and science fiction enthusiasts and creators gathered in the basement of a San Diego hotel 49 years ago for what would become known as the first Comic-Con.
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