The 1973 Comic Art Convention, New York 0

[N e r V]

 

If you haven’t seen this before it’s a great piece of history with early fandom, cosplay, and really old comics at silly prices from the way back machine.

No audio in the beginning but it comes in later.

 

 

 

 

https://www.dailymotion.com/pvt-snafu

 

Edited June 15, 2018 by N e r V

[DavidTheDavid]

I wanted to watch this but the ads are just too frequent.

 

[Junkdrawer]

A repeating Star Wars ad. You got me

[N e r V]

2 hours ago, Junkdrawer said:

A repeating Star Wars ad. You got me

 

3 hours ago, DavidTheDavid said:

I wanted to watch this but the ads are just too frequent.

 

Yeah, I noticed the ad repeated twice before playing the video. Should be good after that but I put a link to the site below in case anyone had a problem. The video is pretty damn cool.

[aardvark88]

Fairly long at 29 mins. Is that a young Brinke Stevens as Vampi?

[kav]

For some reason they dont have clumps of comics just strewn about and laying haphazardly in boxes at cons anymore.

[DavidTheDavid]

Man, who among you were around for those days? Give us some insider stories!

[comicjack]

Doctor Fate costume was pretty well done and those were some great times 

Edited June 15, 2018 by comicjack

[aardvark88]

1 hour ago, kav said:

For some reason they dont have clumps of comics just strewn about and laying haphazardly in boxes at cons anymore.

The good old days at Seattle, WA Center Con when dealer came in late and promoter had NO comicon tables left. Dealer just had short stacks of decent RAW vintage comics (Atlas heroes) unpriced sitting on the cold concrete floors. He gave me a discount, as dealer did not use backing boards on 1950s comics. He could barely afford polybags, forget about mylars!

[kav]

Man I wish that 'comic art' convention had featured some actual COMIC ART wtf

[Primetime]

Nice video. Thanks for posting it NerV. Even though they said it was missing a few wraps and the POFC, that Bat 1 would still run roughly $20K in today's market. 

[Pickie]

16 hours ago, N e r V said:

 

Yeah, I noticed the ad repeated twice before playing the video. Should be good after that but I put a link to the site below in case anyone had a problem. The video is pretty damn cool.

It's AWESOME. Thank you for sharing! Great costumes, VAMPIRELLAS, nice find of first editions , DRACULA and other film posters ... Coolest thing for me: the HOTEL location! Never heard of something similar here in Europe, neither back then nor in today's fandom. As to the footage: How do they tell it's from 1973 exactly (I might have missed that)?

[Artboy99]

have the program to it in that collection we bought.

[woowoo]

6 hours ago, Pickie said:

It's AWESOME. Thank you for sharing! Great costumes, VAMPIRELLAS, nice find of first editions , DRACULA and other film posters ... Coolest thing for me: the HOTEL location! Never heard of something similar here in Europe, neither back then nor in today's fandom. As to the footage: How do they tell it's from 1973 exactly (I might have missed that)?

They said the batman 1 was 33 years old at that time.

[Robot Man]

I remember shows like that on the West Coast. Small Hotel and Elks Lodge shows. Un-bagged GA comics spread out on tables with a clear plastic sheet over them to prevent theft. I was collecting ECs at the time. $3-5 horror-suspense titles and $5-7 for the sci-fi titles. On the floor, in-bagged in boxes were tons of other non-EC pre-code horror and other '50's books for a buck apiece. I would usually buy a couple ECs then hit the boxes on my hands and knees. Nobody cared about "classic covers", good girl art or all the popular themes of today. I got about 60% of my pre-code horror collection that way. $7. For All Negro #1 was actually expensive then.

San Diego con was amazing. Me and my friends would save our money for months and drive down. Pay the little old lady at the card table our $5. and enter comic book nirvana. Hanging out by the pool listening to Kirby, Eisner and the other treats tell stories of the old days. We would cram 6 guys in a hotel room. Stayed up all night playing poker with comics as chips and drinking beer we stole from somebody's dad. Up in the morning, a quick breakfast at Denny's (super cheap) and back to the dealers room to pile up as many old funny books as we could afford. Sleep in the car on the trip back up to LA tired, broke and loaded down with boxes of old comics. Good times. Thanks for posting this video. Doesn't matter if it were NY, San Diego, Houston or Chicago this is what it was like and it was magical

[Primetime]

1 hour ago, woowoo said:

They said the batman 1 was 33 years old at that time.

The Bat 1 owners did mistakenly say the book was from 1938-39. The lady interviewing them couldn’t believe they were asking $175 for it

Edited June 16, 2018 by Primetime

[N e r V]

8 minutes ago, Primetime said:

The Bat 1 owners did mistakenly say the book was from 1938-39. The lady interviewing them couldn’t believe they were asking $175 for it

Batman #1 was out by April 1940.

 

 

In 1973 new comics cost 20 cents, gas was around 30 cents a gallon, a new car was around $4,000.00 and a new home could be had in the $30,000.00 range. So yeah, $175.00 was a lot of money for a then little thought of hobby called comics.

I started collecting that year as a very young child and attended my first convention in 1974 in San Diego with my mother. I do remember the San Diego conventions looking like the video until well into the 1980’s. Never went to the Phil Seuling shows above but I did have older family and friends that did. They were the east coast counterparts to the San Diego Comic Con before his death and their dissolving in the 1980’s.

I don’t think comic books started getting much respect until the late 1980’s when it started becoming a little more acceptable to read and collect them and people started to appreciate they had value as a hobby. Before that it was kind of rough socially being in comics.

 

[N e r V]

1 hour ago, Artboy99 said:

have the program to it in that collection we bought.

 

 

The Phil Seuling Comic Art conventions had a great run of programs for a while there.

 

 

 

[Artboy99]

6 minutes ago, N e r V said:

 

 

The Phil Seuling Comic Art conventions had a great run of programs for a while there.

 

 

 

All of them were in that collection. There were 5 copies of 1972, the copy thehumantorch claimed had several signatures obtained at the show:

Jack Kirby, Neal Adams, Jim Steranko and several others. Quite cool! I claimed a copy for myself for the cover.

[boomtown]

Not sure, but it looked like the Vampirella up towards the top on the right hand side was Heidi Saha, Check out the "comic magazine" section for an interesting thread on her history.