The Creation Comic Book and Science Fiction conventions in the late 70's and early 80's were shows that I used to enjoy attending in my comic book collecting years as a middle school/high schooler. I don't know how long they continued after my collecting years but I had periodically looked to see what information I could on them over the years but found nothing. I eventually found the coordinators website "Creation Entertainment" and see that they've been putting on shows based around television shows such as Supernatural. Anyway, this is a long winded flip through of some of their promotional material that I kept.

Anyway, I just wanted to put something out there on these comic book conventions that I had such a great time at in those days. Los Angeles had what turned into a monthly show that continued on for decades but the Creation Los Angeles shows were larger in scale and had bigger names attending. San Diego was always the largest show back then but that was too far for me so even 3-4 artists at a show was pretty big. I got comics signed by Kirby, John Byrne, Michael Golden, Brent Anderson, George Perez, Joe Rubenstein, Chris Claremont, Jim Shooter, and one or two others over the course of about 6 conventions that I attended. I had drawings done by Brent Anderson at one show of Colossus and I had Byrne draw me Spiderman fighting a robot. Well attended shows back then weren't swamped with people and you could usually just walk right to an artist. Now, someone like Byrne was pretty busy as he was the biggest name in comic art at that time but I probably only had to wait about a half hour to get my drawing (which, I think, cost me $35). Jim Shooter was at that same show and sat next to Byrne in the booth so both would be signing books in between drawings. The signature I always remember, and got such a kick out of was in X-Men 137 where Shooter wrote "and she shall stay dead -Shooter".

Another event at these conventions that was a lot of fun was the "no minimum bid auction". It was always at the end of the day on Saturday and was always so hard to save money for it. You never knew what was going to be auctioned off but it was comics, comic art, posters, memorabillia, and sometimes joke items such as a $20 bill. I might have won more auctions but the two that I remember (and still have) was a box of about 80 new magazines that ended up being titles such as Eerie, Creepy, Fangoria, Starlog, Vampirella, and several others. There's several copies of some issues which makes me believe it was a donation by a vendor of some old inventory that didn't sell in their store. What some coordinators to is to have any vendor attending donate an item(s) for the auction with a $20 value or something like that. The other auction item that I won is a pen and ink drawing of The Thing breaking through these roman style columns by George Perez. It's on this 12" x 18" layout page. I had wondered if it was some comp for a cover or something like that, that never materialized.

Another event at all of the shows was the art contest. Guest artists would be the guest judges for the event. At the convention where Byrne and Shooter were attending, I happened to decide to enter one of my pieces. There were two age categories: 14 years and below and adult. I was 16 and was hating that I was in the adult category but got my nerve up to enter. When we were turning in art, and I saw the other pieces by guys that were a lot older than me and, I thought, really good, I felt like an ant and wondered what the heck I was thinking by entering. Then, when it came time for the contest a few hours later, watching my piece get held up and then past around to my top "art hero" Byrne had me so nervous and I can still picture it in my head. BUT, I took second place! lol. What a shock and relief. I have no recollection of walking up to the stage or what I won whatsoever.

Anyway, such great times for that kid back then. Upon checking out the Creation Entertainment website and seeing the two guys that ran that show were still the ones running things, I dropped them a note to let them know how much I appreciated their shows and how much fun I had. I'd save my lawn mowing money for months in anticipation of the shows and spend the whole day there. It's where I picked up most of my back issues of things. Back then a Hulk 181 was about $10-15 in nice shape. So thanks to Adam and Gary for their really fun and well run shows!

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