A photo-reminiscence of my return trip to Oklahoma City, where I attended my very first comic book convention in 1970.
My companions on the trip, comics dealer and historian Bob Beerbohm and his daughter Katie (left in photo above). One of the great attractions of the show for me was the appearance of author Bill Schelly. Bill has written several books on comic creators and the history of comics fandom. His latest is a biography of the great Joe Kubert. Back in the 1960s Bill published a fanzine called Sense of Wonder, and we've known each other through the mail (and email in recent years) since that time -- nearly 40 years! But we'd never met in person until this convention. In the photo below, I'm on the left, Bill's in the middle, and comic dealer (and original Texas Trio member) Buddy Saunders is on the right. Here's Bill signing a book for a fan and, later in the convention, retailer Bud Plant looking over a copy of Man of Rock, Bill's new Joe Kubert bio.
Here's a more-or-less panoramic view of the convention on Saturday afternoon:
	Cartoonist and author Craig Yoe at his table, sketching for me in the copy I bought of his new book Clean Cartoonists' Dirty Drawings. It's really not as salacious as it sounds.
Exhibitor Greg Huneryager (my fellow Comicart-l member from Lawrence, Kansas) and original comic art price guide guru Jerry Weist shopping at convention organizer Bart Bush's booth.
Some other old friends from the 1960s made an appearance: (Although I missed Frankie and his Bride, the Mummy, Superboy, Rat Fink and all those other Aurora model kits I used to love.)
One-time partners Bud Plant and Bob Beerbohm. I remember meeting Bud back at the 1970 show. Bart Bush presents the door prizes by quizzing the crowd on Saturday afternoon. I won a nice little book of 1921 Krazy Kat dailies by knowing the real name of singing cowboy Roy Rogers (Leonard Slye) -- easy for me, since Rogers/Slye and I share a birthday on November 5th.	Longtime fans shopping a small portion of the amazing selection Bob brought to the convention.
A little later the convention's final day was enlivened by a spirited auction. Here's a beautiful Dick Sprang Batman print up for grabs. I won a nice Harvey reprint comic reprinting Alex Raymond's Flash Gordon. It became a "must-have" when EC fan Roger Hill enlightened crowd with the fact that the cover was drawn by Harvey's art director Warren Kremer. Stumbo artist Kremer is an idol of mine, and I made a beeline over to Hill's table after the auction to pick his brain about him. I was in luck -- it turns out Hill had interviewed the great cartoonist late in his life for a book he's doing on Harvey horror artists. All in all a fun convention. It was great meeting (and re-meeting) all the longtime fans in attendance. I bought some cool comics, and passed out copies of my recently-published ODD Comics to several folks. Another highlight was an hour or so Friday night spent in conversation (sometimes several simultaneous conversations) with Bob, Bart, Grant Irwin, Larry Bigman and Bill Schelly, all of us articulate lifelong comics fans who know our stuff. And I've finally actually met Bill Schelly after all these years!