we went there, and it was just amazing. [Mark laughs] I liken it to— not having been in a fraternity, this was our fraternity, because I still know most of these people fifty years later. We had a blast. We really did. When you think about it, how much fun we had—I mean, we made movies, we had the Evening of Imagination before there were comic-cons. We insulted each other. We made fun of each other. [both laugh] And, of course, we read comics. I even remember the first time Sergio Aragonés showed up. He showed up at the Palms Recreation Center, and we were like, “Wow! Sergio Aragonés! What a great guy!”
hobby, and it wasn’t one of those, “Hey, look how much these old comics are worth” shows, and there was a minimum of “pow/bam/zap” or whatever. People are still looking for a copy of that—it’s a lost special. Gary [right] spent years calling KCOP saying, “Search the warehouse. You must have a copy of that someplace. It seems to be lost.” STEVE: Warehouse? I don’t think KCOP had a warehouse! [laughs] MARK: I think KCOP was a warehouse, or is one now. So, Steve and his brother Gary showed up at the meeting, and we met every Saturday in the afternoon and we played games. We used to play a version of Jeopardy that I designed which was like Jeopardy with comic book characters and comic book subjects. You know, it was like, “I’ll take Jack Kirby Inkers for twenty.” Things like that.
MARK: How many people do you remember were in that club meeting that day? STEVE: Maybe twenty, I would think? MARK: I thought it was more like forty. STEVE: Maybe forty. It’s hard to remember.
STEVE: SMASH.
MARK: Sergio remembers it being, like, five or six people, which I’m telling him, “No, it wasn’t.” We had a decent turnout for him that day. He was our first, and I think only, real guest speaker.
MARK: We also called the group SMASH, which stood for Society for Magazine Appreciators of Super Heroes, and I think I may have come up with that—
STEVE: I think so. But there were five people crowded around him, so that’s probably what he remembers.
STEVE: Probably. MARK: —in my stupider moments. The club was a lot of fun for a couple of years there. And there were no comic-cons. There were very few comic-cons anywhere then, but none in California. This is pre-San Diego Con.
MARK: Let me clarify here for people what Steve was probably talking about. Gary Owens, the great disc jockey, personality, did a show on Channel 13, KCOP local here, about comic book collecting. It was a special they did one evening, and it was a local station, but it somehow made us feel empowered because it was talking about our
STEVE: No. I think the only one was the science-fiction con in Santa Monica, which was the first one I went to. MARK: That was the Westercon. The Westercon was at the Miramar Hotel in Santa Monica in 1969, and that’s where some of our members of the club met Jack Kirby, who had come down. Jack and Roz had just moved to southern California. They were living in Irvine at the time in a home, which was their temporary lodging until they could find a house to buy. Jack wanted to meet the local comic fans, and this was the closest he could come to a convention. And he and Roz showed up there, paid admission, walked in, and some of our officers who were at the club—I think Rob Solomon and Mike Rotblatt and Bruce Schweiger and such—met him there and said, “Oh, Mr. Kirby! Would you come speak at one of our club meetings?” And he said, “Sure.” He never did, but he said, “Sure. Why don’t you guys come down to our house in Irvine one of these days?” That’s how I wound up going down to see Jack Kirby. I
[left] A sketch Jack did for Gary Owens. Non-locals probably know Gary best as the announcer with his hand over his ear on Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In. [above] The ad that ran in TV Guide for Gary’s TV special on comics, courtesy of Mark Evanier. Sadly, no video copy of the show has yet been found.
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