Shel Dorf; Guardian obit by Mark Evanier (!)
Hyfler/Rosner
Devoted comic fan and historian who founded the
international Comic-Con convention in the US
Mark Evanier
http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2009/nov/24/shel-dorf-obituary
Shel Dorf, who has died aged 76, was a fan and historian of
comics and the founder of the annual Comic-Con International
convention in San Diego, California. It was in early 1970
that Dorf proposed the idea of a convention to a local
comics fanclub. He persuaded the comic book artist Jack
Kirby and science-fiction writer Ray Bradbury to appear and
even to waive speakers' fees. In August, the first gathering
was held and deemed a huge success, with 300 attendees who
enjoyed artists' speeches, bought and sold comics, and
watched classic comic-related movies.
Dorf and his committee did not dream that San Diego Golden
State Comic-Con, as the first one was called, would grow
into the largest convention of its kind. As Kirby predicted,
the convention went on to embrace movies, television,
animation and other forms of imaginative fiction in the 80s,
when the event outgrew what was then the largest convention
facility in San Diego. In 1989, the city opened a larger
centre ringed by luxury hotels as part of a civic
redevelopment project inspired in part by the success of
Comic-Con. Attendance at the 2009 event topped 125,000.
Dorf was born in Detroit, Michigan. Smitten with comic
strips at an early age, he began clipping them from
newspapers and pasting them into large, keepsake scrapbooks.
He also corresponded with the creators of many of his
favourite characters. A trip at the age of 16 to meet
Chester Gould, the creator of Dick Tracy, was especially
memorable, as was his correspondence with Milton Caniff,
creator of Terry and the Pirates.
With an eye towards someday joining their ranks, Dorf
studied art at Cass Technical high school and the Chicago
Art Institute, but his many attempts to sell a strip of his
own creation proved fruitless. Though he found intermittent
work in newspapers, the closest he came to the comic strip
profession was when his hero, Caniff, hired him to do the
lettering on his military-themed adventure strip Steve
Canyon. With great pride, Dorf inked in the lettering in the
captions and dialogue balloons for 14 years, until Caniff
died in 1988. He also spent several years assembling a line
of books that reprinted old Dick Tracy strips.
By that time, Dorf had withdrawn from Comic-Con. Throughout
the 1980s, he quarrelled with the convention operators over
the direction of the event. Once a prominent host, he
resigned in 1984 and scaled back his attendance until, by
2002, he would no longer even attend the convention he had
founded. "It's become too big and too depressing," he told
friends. "The last time there, I could barely find any comic
books."
Dorf's appreciation and promotion of comics were
instrumental in the growing respect and admiration for the
art form, leading them to be preserved in libraries,
exhibited in galleries and studied and dissected by
scholars. Dorf was especially proud that two comic
characters - a football player in Caniff's Steve Canyon and
a wizened leader of lost boys in a Mister Miracle comic by
Jack Kirby - bore close resemblances to himself.
Dorf became reclusive in his final years. Items from his
extensive collection of comic art and memorabilia were
either sold or donated to the archives at Ohio State
University. His health worsened and after suffering a fall
in 2008, he was hospitalised for the rest of his life. He is
survived by his brother Michael.
. Sheldon Dorf, Comic-Con founder, born 5 July 1933; died 3
November 2009