Comic-Con Co-founder Dies

Sheldon Dorf died yesterday in San Diego from complications related to diabetes. He was 76.

Dorf started Comic-Con in 1970, shortly after moving to San Diego from Detroit. From the San Diego Union-Tribune website:

“He was a completely generous person who was wholly devoted to furthering the comic arts, bringing the fans and the professionals together,” said J.M. “Mike” Towry, a computer programmer who was a young comics dealer at that first Con. “He never made a dime off Comic-Con.”

In fact, Mr. Dorf walked away from the Con in the mid-1980s, as it was beginning to become the nation’s foremost pop-culture extravaganza. Today, Comic-Con is San Diego’s largest convention, annually drawing 125,000 attendees.

“We had no idea it would get this big, Mr. Dorf told The San Diego Union-Tribune in a 2006 interview. To me, it’s just become an ordeal. I don’t know of any way to make it smaller, though. I guess in some ways it’s become too much of a success.”

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