Why ComicCon San Diego?
Ray Bradbury loved comics
ever since he was a boy growing up in Waukegan, Illinois.
“His abiding love of graphic fiction fairly
exploded
out of his passion for Dick Calkin’s
Buck Rogers comic strips
and Hal Foster’s adaptations of Edgar Rice Burroughs’s
Tarzan of the Apes
.
– Jonathan R. Eller,
Becoming Ray Bradbury
He was the one they went to
when Comic Con started. A group of teenagers decided to launch the first ComicCon in 1970. They hoped Ray Bradbury would appear. When they confessed they couldn’t pay him a fee, he said," Oh, OK! I’ll come for free." About 250 people attended that time.
Now 130,000
come from around the world. Ray Bradbury continued to be an honored guest throughout
his life.
