no Elvis, Beatles or Rolling Stones in 1977 AFF program book

Sorry for the lack of Atlanta Fantasy Fair posts here at the so-called Atlanta Fantasy Fair blog... but real life sometimes intrudes upon our nostalgic wanderings.  At any rate, thanks to readers Z. V. and R. W., here are some images from the program book for 1977's Atlanta Comics & Fantasy Fair!

That's a Neal Adams/Dick Giordano illustration of DC Comics president, publisher, and editor-in chief Jenette Kahn gracing the cover there. How many women have there been in the top slots of major comic book companies since then?

Some amazing 70s convention program book design is in effect here, demonstrating how tough it was to produce small-press publications in the days before computer-aided desktop publishing software. You'll notice a wide variety of programming in what I assume was their one event room - guest speakers, keynote addresses, cartoons, old silent films, 50s Technicolor extravaganzas, and the Holy Screening Of The Blooper Reels, which in 1977 must have been unscratched and nearly pristine, ready for decades of being screened to eager audiences.

Neal Adams and Jim Steranko are still-active comic book and illustrator legends, Dick Giordano passed away in 2010, Jenette Kahn retired, and Ken Smith used to write impenetrable essays for The Comics Journal.

Remember kids, this was a time before home video, before 500 satellite channels, before the internets and streaming video and watching movies on a little gadget you stick in your pocket - if you were a SF nerd and you wanted to see Invaders From Mars, then by golly you sat your butt down on those uncomfortable hotel ballroom seats and you watched that scratchy print of Invaders From Mars. And you liked it!  We DO have confirmation that the Star Trek Blooper Reel was screened at this year's ACFF.

Here's the front and back cover, with a terrific Steranko piece wrapping things up.

The 1977 Atlanta Comics & Fantasy Fair was the first one to be held at what was then the Dunfey's Royal Coach, and would later become The Castlegate and slide slowly into decrepitude and ignominy. There is now a Wal-Mart on the site. I would not have been at this convention as I was 7 at the time.

1989 AFF video

This video was labeled on YouTube at one point as "Dragoncon", but subsequent research has shown it was shot at the Atlanta Fantasy Fair XV in 1989, held in downtown Atlanta at the Hilton & Towers, and it is now labeled as such.

The camera operator focuses on the ladies, but what's striking to me about this video is the astonishing number of middle-aged white dudes in khaki pants wandering around. It's as if they're waiting for somebody to invent IT so they can all get jobs. I am not in this video, but I know people who are.  Thanks to the camcorder operator and to the forward-thinking individuals who archived this piece of history for us!

AFF 1985 shirt

If you're interested in owning a piece of Atlanta Fantasy Fair history, Mouse Trap Vintage has a T-shirt from the 1985 AFF on sale at their Etsy shop!

Is that Susan Barrows?  I think that's Susan Barrows.

calling 1987

Here's the Progress Report from the 1987 Atlanta Fantasy Fair!  We are at the very peak of AFF's membership, I believe.  I don't have official records, so who knows?  This progress report went out in January and its arrival in your mailbox was the starting gun for the year's convention planning.

The guest selection might be the most varied in AFF's history: SF writers, science fiction TV legends, Adam West, Caroline Munro (I mean, she was a Bond Girl, kinda), Tom Savini, something for anyone interested in SF or fantasy in the 80s, all sequestered in downtown Atlanta in the absolute hottest time of the year. Get ready for some sweating.

Here's an introductory paragraph from AFF's president.  Note the "grid" elements - this was graphic design in the 80s, kids; drop some grids in there. When you're done reading it you can use it to map out your D&D campaign. Don't forget to pick up your AFF T-shirt, this year it has a girl with a sword on it. 

Comic book guests included a lot of top Marvel talent including Chris Claremont at a time of peak X-Men popularity.  Also appearing was Bob Burden, whom I believe was at every AFF. He always had the best stuff for sale at his table.

But enough of this, on to the costume contest!

What do we have here? A Gumby! Some of the aliens from the Heavy Metal movie! Marvin The Martian! It's Eddie from Rocky Horror! Some kind of tinfoil box head thing, some Elfquest elves, what appears to be Cerebus The Aardvark, what I believe are X-men mutants, Spiderman, Black Cat, and Moustache Rhino, and one of those horse-riding things from Wizards.  You all get candy!

And of course there's Japanese animation represented by production art from Robotech. I cannot recall if I was staffing the anime room at this year's AFF. Certainly I poked my head in a few times. I know I was on staff but lord knows what area. Most of what I did at this AFF was run around with my friends all over the Omni, hook up a VCR to the hotel room TV and show our own anime titles on Saturday night, buy a lot of comic books and toys, and generally misbehave.

AFF was still screening 16mm prints at this time. Remember, these were the days before everything was available on home video. If you wanted to see vintage Chuck Jones cartoons or old Ray Harryhausen epics, you had to come to AFF! Or catch them on television, I guess.

Judge Dredd looms ominously over the Omni Hotel making sure crime is kept strictly to the parts of the Omni Hotel that he cannot see. Seriously, back in '87 this was a bad part of town. It was pretty easy to get mugged if you ventured outside the Omni. We got to see a stolen Ford Explorer peel off down Marietta Street on Thursday night during setup. If you went out in search of food or supplies during the show (good luck, it was a retail dead zone) you were certain to get panhandled. Nowadays,  CNN Center, Philips Arena, and Centennial Olympic Park, the Georgia Aquarium, and the World Of Coca-Cola have tamed this once wild frontier.

We TOTALLY did not obey this rule, we had VCRs set up like CRAZY in our hotel room. I can remember this being a fairly common "house rule" back in the day, but I knew lots and lots of people who brought VCRs into hotels and nobody ever got in any kind of trouble with anybody. It's not like liquor; wheeling a trolley full of booze past the front desk will get some questions asked.

Here's one of the ads in the progress report:

Yes, this is the convention at which a guest died.  Here's a hint: he played Doctor Who. And no, he didn't regenerate.

I haven't any photos from 1987's AFF-  heck, I didn't even have a camera at that point - but if you do, throw them on the scanner and send them my way at terebifunhouse@gmail.com!

calling 1984

The middle of the 80s brought many new shows to the Atlanta convention scene.  Well, okay, two. 

One of these was the "Creation Atlanta" convention, which is a name that will bring sighs of recognition and eye-rolling from many of our more experienced con-goers, most of whom first experienced fan conventions at a Creation event. So let's not get all superior. Creation was and is a business that's in the business of running fan conventions, which they've done more than two thousand of around the nation. Mostly consisting of a dealers room, an events hall, and a table behind which celebrities can sign autographs, the Creation business model carves out a unique territory somewhere between your local car and/or boat and/or RV show, an industry trade convention, and the local arts & crafts event that sets up in your local park and kills the grass.

My first convention was a Creation convention that Dad brought us to as the dealers were closing up on Sunday afternoon, somewhere in downtown Atlanta. A giant room full of people selling comic books?  I'm in heaven. It was not, however, the show I have this schedule for.

This Creation event is from 1984, as we can tell from the events hyping the upcoming "Supergirl" and "Dune" movies, and it was in the Omni Hotel, unless there was another Atlanta facility with a "Knollwood Room".  And maybe there was. As there are six different Star Trek themed events happening on Saturday one might surmise their big guest was a Star Trek actor, and it was indeed - Walter Koenig "beamed down" to sign autographs and deliver a stirring lecture to the crowd on the need to vaccinate your children and spay and neuter your pets. Actually he didn't speak on those topics but it's a good idea to mention them anyway.

Sunday's schedule is pretty close to Saturday's - Creation was aiming at a one-day crowd that would buy a ticket, wander through the dealer's room, get Chekov's autograph, laff at the mandated-by-law screening of the Holy Blooper Reels, and go the hell home.

Another Atlanta event from 1984 with a different focus and a different feel was the Atlanta Comics Festival.

This two-day event is mostly remembered today as being host to the Jim Shooter Roast, a chummy comics industry event in which the popular Marvel editor was given the Don Rickles treatment. This was claimed to be "the ultimate in fan entertainment." This explains the cover of the program guide - you see, Jim Shooter is a tall guy, and that's the Marvel character "Nightcrawler" sawing him off at the knees. And boy! Just try to explain this to anybody not immersed in the trivial minutiae of the mid 1980s comic book industry! Now THAT'S the ultimate in fan entertainment!

Sponsored by a local comics distributor, this event had many Marvel guests like John Byrne, Bob Layton, Bob McLeod, Mark Gruenwald, and John Romita Jr.  as well as a dealers room and videos. A video of the Shooter Roast was available on YouTube there for a little while but got removed, as most YouTube videos do eventually.

Please note that, as required by law, the Star Trek Blooper Reel was shown on both Saturday and Sunday. This is how ubiquitous Star Trek was in the fandom scene of the 1980s - a convention with no connection whatsoever to television, to film, or to print or media science fiction in general still felt compelled to inflict the Starship Enterprise upon cash-paying audiences. 

How many of these comic shops are still in business? Survey says 'zero'.

By the way, at the time I was buying most of my comic books at a store in Smyrna's Belmont Hills Shopping Center - actually at the back of Belmont Hills, by the bowling alley - called the Book Trader. The owner was a man named Benny, who put up with a customer base made up of women bringing in shopping bags full of romance novels for trade and kids such as myself pawing through his comic books for hours, and channeled his irritation into a series of handwritten notes posted throughout his store reminding people that "others may sell for less but *I* know what my product is WORTH!" and similar passive-aggressive mottos. 

If this was held in the hotel I think it was held in, somewhere around 14th Street in downtown Atlanta, the site has long been turned into part of the Atlantic Station development. If memory serves the hotel was some kind of a mid-range franchise place. Maybe a Radisson. I was there for the Saturday and spent most of the time watching the anime film "Phoenix 2772" in the "Cabinet Room",which would pretty much be the template for the rest of my fan experience, ignoring American comic books in favor of Japanese cartoons. I regret nothing!

AFF 1983 newsletter

Here's some images of the 1983 Atlanta Fantasy Fair newsletter, sometimes referred to as a "progress report". In addition to flyers, conventions would find it necessary to publish 16 or 20 page newsprint booklets to really "sell" the show to a world that was decades away from web pages - it's hard to show the appeal of a costume contest, a film festival, or a giant downtown hotel in just a few lines of type.

I believe the 1983 AFF was the first show I was allowed to attend in any meaningful capacity - I roamed the halls of the Omni, bought my first Judge Dredd comics, watched five or ten minutes of "Robinson Crusoe On Mars", and purchased a full set of Elfquest comics that had me in a Pini-derived elfy-welfy haze for weeks.

I think that's a costume of the Godzilla movie-monster Angirus! That would have been something to see in the early 80s. Honestly I can't remember if we were allowed to stick around long enough to see the costume contest that year. Probably not. I did catch the amateur film festival, which as I recall featured a wonderful if overlong movie about a teenage magician titled "Summer Magic" that climaxed with a Houdini-style escape from a swimming pool. The next year's amateur film festival featured "Summer Magic II", a much shorter parody of the first film in which the underwater escape doesn't go quite so well. Also screened was a movie titled "Drugs From Deep Space" and the thrilling "Galactic Avenger", 30 seconds of cut-paper spaceship animation followed by three minutes of family home movies. You just don't get amateur films like this any more.

I probably made it to the con suite - what 13 year old doesn't want free soda? - but I didn't play any role playing games, see any auctions, or witness any awards ceremonies. Most of my time was spent poring through the entire dealers room, wishing I'd mowed a few more lawns that summer.

If you hurry you can get your membership to the 1983 AFF for only $13!! Or you might have to buy it at the door for $19. While you're at it, you can get a room at the Omni for $44. That's cheap even for 1983! Of course you have to spend the entire weekend worrying about getting mugged or killed while in scary dangerous downtown Atlanta, but that's a small price to pay.

Don't forget to pick up your AFF T-shirt and show the world you're proud to be a fan!

newsletter courtesy the Devlin Thompson National Archives

atlanta starcon & comics

ATLANTA STARCON & COMICS?

Yes, ATLANTA STARCON & COMICS was a one-time show from the former Atlanta Fantasy Fair organizers. After the disappointing 1995 show, the administrators ditched the AFF brand and replaced it with a new convention featuring a wide slate of guests from Hollywood, the comics industry, the martial-arts stars of the WMAC MASTERS, and the usual costume contests, video rooms, gaming, con suites, panels, art shows, and dealers.

I did not attend this show because it was held on the same weekend as the second Anime Weekend Atlanta. As it turned out the second AWA was a total success and the convention is still rockin' it after seventeen years. How did Atlanta Starcon & Comics go? I don't know.

I was told that the dealers were packing up on Saturday afternoon, which doesn't bode well for any show. First year conventions, even if they have a staff pedigree stretching back for years, are always a tough sell. This was the last attempt by the former AFF administration to keep a yearly show alive in the face of both Dragoncon and public indifference.

Note the hotel, the Marriott North Central - Dixie-Trek had already been there a few times and AWA would move in for its next two shows. But Atlanta Starcon & Comics would vanish into the mists of the '90s.