SHEL DORF (CONTINUED)
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Comic-Con's creator SCCS' own Shel Dorf
Thanks Shel !
by Charlie Roberts
As a collector living in Pennsylvania in the early 1980's, I'd heard of
the San Diego Comic-Con but had never been able to attend. I'd
also read pieces by Shel and seen photos he'd taken, but never
met him.
In April 1983 my wife Joan and I drove from Pa. to the "Cartoon
Museum" when it was still in in Connecticut for a chalk talk by "
Terry and the Pirates" and "Steve Canyon" comic strip creator
Milton Caniff. The presentation was excellent, and Caniff was
incredibly gracious, signing autographs and talking to everyone.
During the chalk talk he had done an incredible "Dragon Lady" in
color. When we got home I wrote Caniff, inquiring about
commissioning a color "Dragon Lady" for the collection and
sending him the incredible amount of $ 40 (well, $ 40 in 1983 would
be equal to $ 42 today!). A few weeks later we received a great
specially done "Dragon Lady" original from Caniff, and within a day
or two Shel sent us a superb color photo he'd taken of Caniff with
our drawing. It turns out Shel and Tom French happened to be
doing a video interview with Caniff in Palm Springs when Caniff
received our request . The video actually shows Caniff doing our
art (Ta Daa !).
We moved to the Ocean Beach area of San Diego in August 1983,
and wound up living right around the corner from Shel. I was
having a hard time getting a job our first few months, and Shel
hired me to rule the lines and borders on blank "Steve Canyon"
strips for Shel to letter.( I really hated to cash those Milton Caniff
checks, but we needed groceries !) Shel also hired Joan to
transcribe a few interviews he's done.
"Superman" creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster for "Superman"
creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster for Blackthorne's "Dateline
1930's" book, and the home studios of Sergio Aragones, Zeke
Zekley ( who was George McManus' assistant on " Bringing Up
Father" from 1935 to 1954), Norman Maurer ( who was married to
"Three Stooge" Moe Howard's daughter Joan ), and Brad
"Marmaduke" Anderson. Shel also took me to my first "Southern
California Cartoonist Society" meeting in late 1986, where I first
met Jimbo Whiting and Paul Norris.
late 1986, where I first met Jimbo Whiting and Paul Norris.
In the early 1980's I'd come up with a cartoon panel idea based on
a sketch I'd done for my wife : "Baby Thid Thez", a lisping baby
going on 40 years old. Frankly, I can't draw too well so I would write
the gag, do a "rough" (real rough !!!!) and letter the panel. I
showed it to Shel, and we worked on it together for a year or so.
Shel inked everything but "Thid's " head. "Baby Thid" ran for 2 +
years in the Ocean Beach "Beacon".
So, within two years of leaving Pennsylvania here we were living a
block and a half from the beach, visiting movie stars and
legendary cartoonists, and I had a cartoon being published in a
newspaper... 90% of which was due to Shel Dorf !
This is just one small story based on knowing Shel, and there must
be literally hundreds of stories of life changing events and stories
from Shel's founding of the "San Diego Comic-Con" and how it
affected peoples lives.
Thank you for everything Shel, you are loved and appreciated.
by Charlie Roberts
As a collector living in Pennsylvania in the early 1980's, I'd heard of
the San Diego Comic-Con but had never been able to attend. I'd
also read pieces by Shel and seen photos he'd taken, but never
met him.
In April 1983 my wife Joan and I drove from Pa. to the "Cartoon
Museum" when it was still in in Connecticut for a chalk talk by "
Terry and the Pirates" and "Steve Canyon" comic strip creator
Milton Caniff. The presentation was excellent, and Caniff was
incredibly gracious, signing autographs and talking to everyone.
During the chalk talk he had done an incredible "Dragon Lady" in
color. When we got home I wrote Caniff, inquiring about
commissioning a color "Dragon Lady" for the collection and
sending him the incredible amount of $ 40 (well, $ 40 in 1983 would
be equal to $ 42 today!). A few weeks later we received a great
specially done "Dragon Lady" original from Caniff, and within a day
or two Shel sent us a superb color photo he'd taken of Caniff with
our drawing. It turns out Shel and Tom French happened to be
doing a video interview with Caniff in Palm Springs when Caniff
received our request . The video actually shows Caniff doing our
art (Ta Daa !).
We moved to the Ocean Beach area of San Diego in August 1983,
and wound up living right around the corner from Shel. I was
having a hard time getting a job our first few months, and Shel
hired me to rule the lines and borders on blank "Steve Canyon"
strips for Shel to letter.( I really hated to cash those Milton Caniff
checks, but we needed groceries !) Shel also hired Joan to
transcribe a few interviews he's done.
"Superman" creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster for "Superman"
creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster for Blackthorne's "Dateline
1930's" book, and the home studios of Sergio Aragones, Zeke
Zekley ( who was George McManus' assistant on " Bringing Up
Father" from 1935 to 1954), Norman Maurer ( who was married to
"Three Stooge" Moe Howard's daughter Joan ), and Brad
"Marmaduke" Anderson. Shel also took me to my first "Southern
California Cartoonist Society" meeting in late 1986, where I first
met Jimbo Whiting and Paul Norris.
late 1986, where I first met Jimbo Whiting and Paul Norris.
In the early 1980's I'd come up with a cartoon panel idea based on
a sketch I'd done for my wife : "Baby Thid Thez", a lisping baby
going on 40 years old. Frankly, I can't draw too well so I would write
the gag, do a "rough" (real rough !!!!) and letter the panel. I
showed it to Shel, and we worked on it together for a year or so.
Shel inked everything but "Thid's " head. "Baby Thid" ran for 2 +
years in the Ocean Beach "Beacon".
So, within two years of leaving Pennsylvania here we were living a
block and a half from the beach, visiting movie stars and
legendary cartoonists, and I had a cartoon being published in a
newspaper... 90% of which was due to Shel Dorf !
This is just one small story based on knowing Shel, and there must
be literally hundreds of stories of life changing events and stories
from Shel's founding of the "San Diego Comic-Con" and how it
affected peoples lives.
Thank you for everything Shel, you are loved and appreciated.
San Diego Union Tribune
July 16, 2006
When the San Diego Comic-Con International opens its annual run
at the Convention Center Wednesday night, Shel Dorf won't be
there.
throng.
throng.
LAURA EMBRY / Union-Tribune
A drawing of Comic-Con founder Shel Dorf is on a wall of fame at
the Palm Restaurant in downtown San Diego.
“We had no idea it would get this big,” he said in a recent phone
interview. “To me, it's just become an ordeal. I don't know of any
way to make it smaller, though. I guess in some ways it's become
too much of a success.”
He isn't bitter, not publicly anyway. He figures he had his run. He
was actively involved in the convention for the first 15 years, using
contacts he'd built from a lifetime of loving the comics to bring
some of the industry's biggest names to San Diego.
The convention also helped him get more work as an artist and a
writer and enhanced his reputation as a historian of comics. When
Warren Beatty turned Dick Tracy into a movie in 1990, Dorf was a
consultant.
But now, being in the background is fine with him. He declined to
be interviewed in person at his Ocean Beach home. “I'm not seeing
people,” he said.
He didn't want his picture taken, either. He suggested using a
caricature that hangs on the wall of a local restaurant – a cartoon
for one of cartooning's ultimate fans.
Advertisement
When Dorf was a kid, growing up in Detroit in the shadow of the
Great Depression, he made his own comic books. Every day he
would cut strips out of the newspaper and paste them in
scrapbooks.
He loved the stories, and he loved the artwork, and the people
who created the comics were his heroes. He knew them all by
name. When he grew up, he wanted to be one of them.
Back then, in the 1940s, being a fan didn't make you a creep.
Nobody knew what “stalking” was. You got a star's picture or
autograph because it meant something to you, not because you
were going to sell it on eBay.
Not many people considered cartoonists stars, but Dorf did. He
reached out to them, sent them custom Christmas cards. Some
became his friends.
He went to the Art Institute of Chicago to learn the trade, then plied
it – first at the Detroit Free Press, then in New York as a freelance
commercial designer.
In 1969, his parents retired to San Diego. Dorf helped them move.
The lifelong bachelor got one look at the city and decided to stay.
He brought along his scrapbooks, and kept adding to them. The
newspaper strips, he said, were “too good to throw away.”
It didn't take him long to find kindred spirits on the West Coast.
Within a year, he and some of his new friends decided to hold a
comic convention here. Dorf had worked on similar gatherings in
Detroit.
“I just felt that the cartoonists who entertained the popular masses
were not getting their fair share of recognition,” he said. A
convention would celebrate their many contributions.
Dorf, who was 36 then, also remembered what it was like to be a kid
burning with a desire to become an artist, and not really knowing
how to get there. A convention, he believed, would be a way to let
youngsters meet pros, get some advice.
They held a one-day test fair in March of 1970, then the first three-
day convention later that summer, in the basement of the U.S.
Grant hotel. About 300 people came.
They didn't know it, but a monster was born.
Several of the teenagers who helped Dorf put together the early
conventions moved on to successful careers. John Pound drew
the “Garbage Pail Kids.” Dave Stevens did “The Rocketeer.” Scott
Shaw went into comics, TV and advertising.
In that way, Dorf's vision came true, and it makes him proud. “The
convention is still doing its job in terms of new talent getting
discovered,” he said.
But he and other old-timers are uncomfortable with what they see
as a steady march away from the event's roots. “Hollywood has
kind of hijacked it,” Dorf said.
The four-day event is getting known more and more as a
springboard for new movies, video games, TV shows and toys.
Much of the pre-event buzz these days is about what film stars
might show up.
“Our real goal in the beginning was to let youngsters meet the
pros, the old guys, but that's not the priority that it once was,” said
Shaw, who has been at every Comic-Con. “A lot of us wish it was
more about the art than the business.”
Phil Yeh, another veteran artist whose work includes graphic
novels and comic books such as “Winged Tiger” and “Patrick
Rabbit,” tells a story from last year's convention that he said
illustrates the shifting priorities of the event and its audience.
He had a table next to a booth for the Cartoon Network, which was
giving away free T-shirts. People lined up for the shirts. As they
stood there, Yeh encouraged them to look at his books. Most
declined, he said, with many telling him they don't read.
(That's probably the wrong thing to say to Yeh. For the past 20
years, he has run Cartoonists Across America, which promotes
literacy as an essential component of a functioning democracy.)
“Sadly, as the Con grew ever bigger and the big movie stars drew
even bigger crowds, we lost sight of the fact that this convention
was set up for the promotion of the actual art of comics and not for
the selling of toys and games and promoting films,” he said.
That said, Yeh and Shaw will be at the convention again this year.
“It's still one of the few places in the United States where all the
creators get together,” Yeh said.
Shaw said he got his start doing posters and other promotional
work for the early conventions, and his steady presence at the
show – he said he's never missed a day – means a lot of people
recognize him now. He's grateful for that.
“The show is like an annual reunion,” he said. “It's just that I used
to know one out of every three people I'd see, and now it's like one
out of every 30,000.”
Convention organizers said their event remains the largest
gathering of comics professionals in the country, and they believe
the other attractions have come in addition to, not at the expense
of, the original goals and purposes.
“Over its 37 years, Comic-Con has evolved and grown to become
an event that offers many things to many people, serving as an
umbrella for fans of all aspects of pop culture,” they said in a
recent newsletter.
One of the reasons Dorf used to send Christmas cards to
cartoonists was to let them know how much they were appreciated,
he said. In many ways, that has been his life's work.
Now he wants to make sure they are remembered, too. He's
donated many of his old scrapbooks to Ohio State University,
where scholars study them for various research projects.
He's getting ready to part with five boxes of material related to the
Steve Canyon strip, by Milton Caniff. Dorf did the lettering for the
comic for more than 12 years in the 1970s and '80s.
He's also been heavily involved with a museum in Woodstock, Ill.,
for Chester Gould, the creator of Dick Tracy. He's ridden in the
annual parade there.
As for Dorf's own legacy, that will be on display again next week at
the convention center.
“Shel's fingerprints are on Comic-Con in the fact that it exists at
all,” Shaw said. “He stuck with it. None of us who were involved
when it started knew how huge it was going to be.
“He probably wishes he could be acknowledged a little more for
what he did, but life is strange that way. People go into a Ralphs
market and they don't wonder who Ralph is. Same with the Comic-
Con. It just is.”
Even without Shel Dorf in attendance.
John Wilkens: (619) 293-2236; john.wilkens@uniontrib.com
July 16, 2006
When the San Diego Comic-Con International opens its annual run
at the Convention Center Wednesday night, Shel Dorf won't be
there.
throng.
throng.
LAURA EMBRY / Union-Tribune
A drawing of Comic-Con founder Shel Dorf is on a wall of fame at
the Palm Restaurant in downtown San Diego.
“We had no idea it would get this big,” he said in a recent phone
interview. “To me, it's just become an ordeal. I don't know of any
way to make it smaller, though. I guess in some ways it's become
too much of a success.”
He isn't bitter, not publicly anyway. He figures he had his run. He
was actively involved in the convention for the first 15 years, using
contacts he'd built from a lifetime of loving the comics to bring
some of the industry's biggest names to San Diego.
The convention also helped him get more work as an artist and a
writer and enhanced his reputation as a historian of comics. When
Warren Beatty turned Dick Tracy into a movie in 1990, Dorf was a
consultant.
But now, being in the background is fine with him. He declined to
be interviewed in person at his Ocean Beach home. “I'm not seeing
people,” he said.
He didn't want his picture taken, either. He suggested using a
caricature that hangs on the wall of a local restaurant – a cartoon
for one of cartooning's ultimate fans.
Advertisement
When Dorf was a kid, growing up in Detroit in the shadow of the
Great Depression, he made his own comic books. Every day he
would cut strips out of the newspaper and paste them in
scrapbooks.
He loved the stories, and he loved the artwork, and the people
who created the comics were his heroes. He knew them all by
name. When he grew up, he wanted to be one of them.
Back then, in the 1940s, being a fan didn't make you a creep.
Nobody knew what “stalking” was. You got a star's picture or
autograph because it meant something to you, not because you
were going to sell it on eBay.
Not many people considered cartoonists stars, but Dorf did. He
reached out to them, sent them custom Christmas cards. Some
became his friends.
He went to the Art Institute of Chicago to learn the trade, then plied
it – first at the Detroit Free Press, then in New York as a freelance
commercial designer.
In 1969, his parents retired to San Diego. Dorf helped them move.
The lifelong bachelor got one look at the city and decided to stay.
He brought along his scrapbooks, and kept adding to them. The
newspaper strips, he said, were “too good to throw away.”
It didn't take him long to find kindred spirits on the West Coast.
Within a year, he and some of his new friends decided to hold a
comic convention here. Dorf had worked on similar gatherings in
Detroit.
“I just felt that the cartoonists who entertained the popular masses
were not getting their fair share of recognition,” he said. A
convention would celebrate their many contributions.
Dorf, who was 36 then, also remembered what it was like to be a kid
burning with a desire to become an artist, and not really knowing
how to get there. A convention, he believed, would be a way to let
youngsters meet pros, get some advice.
They held a one-day test fair in March of 1970, then the first three-
day convention later that summer, in the basement of the U.S.
Grant hotel. About 300 people came.
They didn't know it, but a monster was born.
Several of the teenagers who helped Dorf put together the early
conventions moved on to successful careers. John Pound drew
the “Garbage Pail Kids.” Dave Stevens did “The Rocketeer.” Scott
Shaw went into comics, TV and advertising.
In that way, Dorf's vision came true, and it makes him proud. “The
convention is still doing its job in terms of new talent getting
discovered,” he said.
But he and other old-timers are uncomfortable with what they see
as a steady march away from the event's roots. “Hollywood has
kind of hijacked it,” Dorf said.
The four-day event is getting known more and more as a
springboard for new movies, video games, TV shows and toys.
Much of the pre-event buzz these days is about what film stars
might show up.
“Our real goal in the beginning was to let youngsters meet the
pros, the old guys, but that's not the priority that it once was,” said
Shaw, who has been at every Comic-Con. “A lot of us wish it was
more about the art than the business.”
Phil Yeh, another veteran artist whose work includes graphic
novels and comic books such as “Winged Tiger” and “Patrick
Rabbit,” tells a story from last year's convention that he said
illustrates the shifting priorities of the event and its audience.
He had a table next to a booth for the Cartoon Network, which was
giving away free T-shirts. People lined up for the shirts. As they
stood there, Yeh encouraged them to look at his books. Most
declined, he said, with many telling him they don't read.
(That's probably the wrong thing to say to Yeh. For the past 20
years, he has run Cartoonists Across America, which promotes
literacy as an essential component of a functioning democracy.)
“Sadly, as the Con grew ever bigger and the big movie stars drew
even bigger crowds, we lost sight of the fact that this convention
was set up for the promotion of the actual art of comics and not for
the selling of toys and games and promoting films,” he said.
That said, Yeh and Shaw will be at the convention again this year.
“It's still one of the few places in the United States where all the
creators get together,” Yeh said.
Shaw said he got his start doing posters and other promotional
work for the early conventions, and his steady presence at the
show – he said he's never missed a day – means a lot of people
recognize him now. He's grateful for that.
“The show is like an annual reunion,” he said. “It's just that I used
to know one out of every three people I'd see, and now it's like one
out of every 30,000.”
Convention organizers said their event remains the largest
gathering of comics professionals in the country, and they believe
the other attractions have come in addition to, not at the expense
of, the original goals and purposes.
“Over its 37 years, Comic-Con has evolved and grown to become
an event that offers many things to many people, serving as an
umbrella for fans of all aspects of pop culture,” they said in a
recent newsletter.
One of the reasons Dorf used to send Christmas cards to
cartoonists was to let them know how much they were appreciated,
he said. In many ways, that has been his life's work.
Now he wants to make sure they are remembered, too. He's
donated many of his old scrapbooks to Ohio State University,
where scholars study them for various research projects.
He's getting ready to part with five boxes of material related to the
Steve Canyon strip, by Milton Caniff. Dorf did the lettering for the
comic for more than 12 years in the 1970s and '80s.
He's also been heavily involved with a museum in Woodstock, Ill.,
for Chester Gould, the creator of Dick Tracy. He's ridden in the
annual parade there.
As for Dorf's own legacy, that will be on display again next week at
the convention center.
“Shel's fingerprints are on Comic-Con in the fact that it exists at
all,” Shaw said. “He stuck with it. None of us who were involved
when it started knew how huge it was going to be.
“He probably wishes he could be acknowledged a little more for
what he did, but life is strange that way. People go into a Ralphs
market and they don't wonder who Ralph is. Same with the Comic-
Con. It just is.”
Even without Shel Dorf in attendance.
John Wilkens: (619) 293-2236; john.wilkens@uniontrib.com
Sergio, movie producer Jack Cummings, Shel,
Burne Hogarth
Burne Hogarth
Shel at 1986 Comic-Con
Shel and Sergio Arigones