Comic-Con Circa 1988: Take A Walk Back In Time

I’ve had a blast watching all the tweets about Comic-Con this week. If you go Twitter Search and put in #ComicCon, you’ll see a never-ending stream of tweets flowing that are funny, witty and weird. The pictures of the cosplay are always my favorite. I’ve never been to Comic-Con, but it’s on my bucket list to go one year.

I found something today that I just knew I had to share with you. It’s Comic-Con from 1988! This year (2011), there were 125,000 people expected to attend this super geeky convention. In 1988, only about 8,000 people showed up. I found an amazing post from someone who actually attended Comic-Con in 1988, and reading about his experiences is truly like traveling back in time. You can check it out for yourself at San Diego Comic-Con 1988. You can click here to download the PDF of the Progress Report newsletter from that year’s event. Back then; the Omni hotel was brand new. Also that was the first year for the now famous masquerade. I put some pictures below that illustrate the before and after. How fun!

The first three pictures here are from Comic-Con 2011. They were taken by @ThomasJane, and you can see more of them at Thomas Jane. If you are at Comic-Con, Thomas and Tim Bradstreet will be doing an exclusive book signing for the 2011 limited edition Bad Planet #7 at 1pm tomorrow.

These last three pictures are from the program describing Comic-Con in 1988. Hmm… Things were just a wee bit different back then, weren’t they? :)