THE ORIGIN OF COMICONS

During an interview by a couple of young wide-eyed Newsarama stringers during the late New York Comicon, Michael Uslan, Batmaniac and champion of comic book superheroes everywhere, reminisced about attending his very first comicon, which, he said, was 45 years ago in New York, “the first comic book convention ever held anywhere,” he intoned, grinning in smug satisfaction. He means, of course, the con arranged in the summer of 1964 by Bernie Bubnis, who also coined the term “comicon.” But it wasn’t the very first comicon: the first was convened a few months before, in April 1964, in Detroit by Robert Brosch. Uslan may be permitted his hyperbole, I suppose, if we assume that the New York affair was all about comic books and nothing else: the Detroit con, on the other hand, included science fiction and movies in addition to comic books.