THE GOLDEN AGE OF COMIC FANDOM Signed

The book-length history of comic fandom's early years...now revised and expanded. The Fanzines! The Dealers! The Comicons! An American grass roots movement from its humble origins to its status as a true cultural phenomenon. Covers life before the Golden Age, the birth of Alter-Ego, the advent of the amateur comic strip, the first comicons of the 1960s, and much more. Fanzine mania, regional fan scenes, the coming of pro-zines, the first Overstreet Guide (1970), and finally the 1997 fandom reunion in Chicago. From Bill Schelly, who lived through this entire era and was a fan publisher himself, and later co-editor of Alter-Ego. Bill provides us an intimate look at the early shakers and movers of fandom, the fans-turned-pros, great photos of all the youngsters, early comicon pictures, lots of artwork. This is a must-have book for any comics enthusiast. This is the origin of so much that we take for granted today: creator-owned characters, independent publishers, comic stories and comic-cons... Fully indexed (it has a picture of me from 1968 and six entries on my early days in fandom). It’s a who's-who of amazing people who started with ditto fanzines and no budgets, to become famed publishers and creators (I came along rather late in this era, only discovering fandom in late 1965 as a 14-year-old, though I’d been reading comics and collecting Marvel and DC beginning in 1961. Bill signed these for us. He passed away several years ago but before that he sold us most of his remaining self-published books. I still consider this my favorite, from a personal standpoint. But his finest is probably the amazing and lengthy biography of Harvey Kurtzman, which remains in print. He also did outstanding and very readable biographies of Otto Binder and Joe Kubert, and more on early comics fandom.