As we head into Comic-Con 2023, it’s time to take a look back at the very best San Diego Comic-Cons of all time.
July 20, the annual Comic-Con International will return to San Diego for another round of the biggest comic convention in North America. Because of the respective actors’ and writers’ strikes, this year’s San Diego Comic-Con won’t have the star power of years past. But it remains the premiere destination for fans of all stripes, and there are still some great panels awaiting you.
For the moment, we’re going to focus on the past. Comic-Con had a modest beginning in 1970 when the first-ever Golden State Comic Con attracted 300 fans to the U.S. Grant Hotel. Attendance rose steadily over the years, and the renamed San Diego Comic-Con kept expanding in size until it became an event unto itself. In the present, Comic-Con takes over a good deal of San Diego’s Gaslamp District during the show, and it just keeps getting bigger.
Below you’ll find our picks for the seven best San Diego Comic-Cons of all time. I was there for all but one of our selections, so I can offer some additional insight into what it was like to watch Comic-Con evolve into what it is today.7. San Diego Comic-Con 1977
In one of the last Comic-Cons held at the El Cortez Hotel, the convention reached a new height with over 4,000 attendees. And the featured guest list included some of the all-time greats including Jack Kirby, the co-creator of many Marvel heroes, C.C. Beck, the creator of Shazam/Captain Marvel, Starship Troopers novelist Robert A. Heinlein, legendary Mad cartoonist Harvey Kurtzman, DC’s most celebrated war comics artist, Joe Kubert, and more.
This was also a convention that featured Carl Barks, the artist and writer whose comics fleshed out Disney’s ducks by giving Donald Duck and his nephews high adventure tales. Barks also created their Uncle Scrooge and all of the citizens of Duckburg which provided the inspiration for both incarnations of Disney’s Ducktales.
