Comic-Con Co-founder Dies
By Pandora Young on Nov 04, 2009 12:58 PM
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.”