Feels So Good To See You Here, It's The Atlanta Comics & Fantasy Fair 1976

1976! America celebrates 200 years of doing business in the same location! The state of Georgia basks in the not-always-welcome attention of the world as a former peanut farmer, Naval officer, and Governor is elected President! And the Atlanta Comics & Fantasy Fair holds its crucial second convention as the state capital's number one (and perhaps only, apart from DeepSouthcon 14) convention for fans of the fantastic. 

 

Atlanta Comics And Fantasy Fair II was held August 13-15 1976 at the downtown Marriott - NOT the Marriott Marquis, which wouldn't open until 1985, but a different Marriott -the Marriott Motor Lodge at 165 Courtland, which is now a Sheraton. Could the team that brought you the ground-breaking 1975 convention repeat its success? Yes, and yes.

 

the Marriott Motor Lodge in the 1970s

 

 

With a convention committee involving future Flaming Carrot and Mystery Men creator Bob Burden, then-current LSU student Harley Anton, and future Kennedy assassination researcher Lamar Waldron, the 1976 iteration of the convention invited LSU prof Kenneth "Phantasmagoria" Smith, Marvel Comics artist Frank "Howard The Duck" Brunner, DC editor Dick Giordano, and Howard The Duck creator Steve Gerber as guests.

 

Dewey C. met Brunner at the convention and had the forethought to bring along some of his vintage Merry Marvel Marching Society stationery for Brunner to sign, as seen here in an image ganked from his comicartfans gallery.
 

 

You can see from the ACFF schedule that the entire convention basically takes place in three rooms - one room for the dealers, one room for the art show, and one room for everything else, including keynote speeches, old movies all night long, panelist talks, dinner breaks, and of course, the sacred ritual of the Screening Of The Star Trek Bloopers.
 

Vintage films were a big draw for the ACFF. 1976 was a time before home video, before cable TV, when the only chance you had to see something like an old SF movie or a cult horror film or curiousities like the 1965 Robert Morse funeral home comedy "The Loved One" was a late-night TV rerun or a screening at the local film society or university cinema.
 

The spectacle of a comic book convention was still big enough news for the Atlanta Journal to devote some column inches to the story, and that's exactly what they did!
 

Some vintage Terry Austin fan art of Dick Giordano rounds out the program book - did this piece net Austin some future DC work? - and we're closing the book on 1976's Atlanta Comics & Fantasy Fair.
 

Thanks to Devlin Thompson for the use of the 1976 ACFF program guide!

-Dave Merrill