On the cusp of its 40th anniversary, here’s an article I wrote for The Amazing World of DC Comics Special Edition No. 1 Celebrating the Super DC Con ’76, the program book for that legendary gathering. Back in the olden continuity, Kal-El/Clark Kent’s birthday had been established as falling on February 29 (thank you, E. Nelson Bridwell), which occurs once every four years, so this three-day event, organized by NY Comicon promoter Phil Seuling at New York’s Hotel Commodore, was held on February 27-29 (Note: As Bob Rozakis points out in his comment below, the convention was moved at the last minute to the Americana Hotel due to a strike at the Commodore). Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster were guests, as were many other Superman creators, and much of the staff of DC Comics. (And lots of Twinkies. I mean bins and bins of the Hostess snack cake; ITT Continental Bakery was a DC advertiser, of course–where’s the Archives Edition of the Twinkies ads, DC?!–and they not only bought the inside front cover of the program book for a Vinnie Colletta drawn ad of Superman shaking hands with and accepting congratulations from “Twinkie the Kid,” but also supplied complimentary Twinkies for all.)
(By the way, 2016 is a Leap Year, so I’ll meet you all at the Hotel Commodore on February 29 to raise a Twinkie in toast to Kal’s birthday!)
My contribution (page filler!) was a fact-filled (page filler!) article containing valuable (page filler!) information for the newbie (page filler!) comic book collector on how to start, grow, and manage (page filler!) their collection. It was state of the art advise for the day (a little 3.5″ x 5.5″ notebook for maintaining an easily portable “want list” while hunting through those back issue bins…and by “notebook” I didn’t mean a little electronic device; I was talking about a, y’know, little book with paper in it that you wrote on).
Read and learn. There will be a quiz.
Tags: DC Comics, E. Nelson Bridwell, February 29, Leap Year, Phil Seuling, program book, Super DC Con 76, Superman
I’m still trying to figure out how to fit my comics in the allotted space, 30 years later!
Actually, the convention was moved to the Americana Hotel at the last minute because of a strike at the Commodore. Too late to change the already-printed booklet and a nightmare for those of us on staff who had to get already-delivered boxes out of the Commodore.
I forgot about the move to the Americana. Thanks, Bob! I’ve made a note of it in the post.
I was there all three days, Bob. You guys did a FANTASTIC job. I had no problem at all finding my way around the Americana and getting to all the panels I was interested in.
I love your description of your article!
Fun article, too. It reminds me of 1976 comic collecting (I was 12). Also cool to see the Sergio Aragones illustration.
Hunter
We got Siegel and Schuster and other artists/writers to sign the program for us, we only went Saturday.