New Work Of ‘Fanthropology’ Excavates Origins Of Fan Culture And Comic-Con

San Diego Comic-Con has become such a force in the now-connected universes of media, entertainment, comics, collectibles, publishing, technology, and marketing that its humble origins more than half a century ago have become overgrown and obscure. But these days, especially when we’re presented with a unified field of corporate entertainment product, it’s important to remember the circumstances and the actual human beings who, by force of will, turned fandom from a niche into the mainstream of popular culture. That didn’t happen by accident. It wasn’t foreordained. It wasn’t even very likely, considering some of the stuff that took place along the way. But it makes for a great story.

Last year, pop culture writer Mathew Klickstein explored the origins of San Diego Comic-Con in a podcast called Comic-Con Begins, where he interviewed dozens of people who were present at the creation of SDCC back in the early 1970s. Now, See You at San Diego: An Oral History of Comic-Con, Fandom and the Triumph of Geek Culture (Fantagraphics Books) collects all that valuable material and more in a hefty volume chock full of vintage photos, artwork and reminiscences. [disclosure: my review of the original podcast is blurbed on the back cover of the book]

The book enjoys several advantages over the podcast. First, it covers more ground. The podcast devoted part of its first episode to the origins of fan culture in the 1950s and 60s, but the book tells a much more complete and integrated story of how isolated communities of fans came together in the pre-Internet days of letter-writing and mimeographed fanzines, and how the earliest conventions emerged from that. This “fanthropology” is critical to understanding where fandom gets the power, passion and sense of identity that make it such a force in today’s culture.

Second, the book identifies who is talking, so we can follow the story told through so many different – and not always harmonious – voices. This was a big shortcoming of the audio format, where speakers were rarely introduced or slated, and listeners had to be paying careful attention to follow the threads. The history of fandom, like fandom today, is riven with factions led by self-styled experts with axes to grind. See You At San Diego doesn’t play favorites in its presentation of the history but it does give readers better tools to make up their own minds about who and what to believe.

Finally, the visual components add much flavor and atmosphere. For SDCC attendees this century, the event is defined by its residency in the sprawling San Diego Convention Center, with its spacious sails pavilion, iconic habitrail-style escalators, and the cavernous Hall H. If you’re not familiar with the ambiance of cons from the 70s and 80s, it can be hard to picture an event that, at once seems gigantic relative to other conventions, but still so intimate.

Klickstein and the Fantagraphics production team have done a fine job wrangling all this content into a readable format. Sections of the book are tabbed out into chapters covering “the characters,” “the scene,” “the plot,” “the conflict,” “the expansion,” and so on, which imposes a structure on the bundle of interviews and recollections.

If you are a longtime devotee of either San Diego Comic-Con or premillennial geek culture, See You at San Diego is a wonderful trip down memory lane, featuring plenty of colorful anecdotes and history. And if you are a scholar, it’s an essential primary resource.

Klickstein also does the important work of recognizing the people who built fandom in its modern form, whose numbers grow thinner with each passing year. These folks aren’t household names but their youthful ambitions, enthusiasm and antics made a lasting contribution to American culture, and a considerable impact on the entertainment economy of the 21^st century.

For casual readers, See You In San Diego makes a nice addition to the shelf and a fun, episodic read. In today’s age of instant notoriety and viral media, where everything is built to scale big and scale fast, it’s impossible to imagine a subculture developing the same way as 1960s-70s era comics fandom, through a slow accumulation of experiences, intergenerational friendships between fans and creators, and fanatical attention to detail. Klickstein conjures that up through the tapestry of voices. As an insight into a lost world still within living memory, it is both life-affirming and bittersweet.