Here’s a look at more of the Program Book for the first Mighty Marvel Comic Convention, held on March 22-24 in 1975. This was one of two New York conventions that Marvel put on by itself–thereafter, the company was content to leave the convention organizing to others and simply make appearances as guests.
Possibly the most interesting feature in this book is this one, which reproduces the full text of Marv Wolfman’s plot for TOMB OF DRACULA #32 along with a couple of pages of Gene Colan artwork from that story. This showcases exactly how detailed a plot was at this time.
The better to allow con-goers to successfully stalk the Marvel personnel who were present, the booklet includes this extensive photo array of more or less everybody who was working at Marvel at that point.
Sal Buscema’s name is spelled wrong in that final line. Oops.
Also interesting is this photo-feature shot at the 1974 San Diego Comic Con, where attendees who had completed a collection of all 100 Marvel Value Stamps (and thus destroyed the value of 100 prime Marvel comics of the era, including the first appearance of Wolverine) got to attend a special one-on-one event with Roy Thomas.
And here’s a look at the programming schedule. Amazingly, the convention ran from a Saturday through a Monday, rather than starting on a Friday as later became the norm.
The Tom Brevoort Experience 
Saturday through Monday was apparently quite common for fan events in those days (as I discovered when reading Joan Winston’s invaluable Making Of The Trek Conventions).
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That’s a wonderfully compendious collection of photos!
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Each numbered paragraph of the plot shown here, seems to correspond with one page of the issue. I break my scripts down panel by panel. I’ve only worked with 6 different artists, but that seemed to be what they all expected, or at least didn’t dispute it. Sometimes I’ve gotten asked for more detail in a specific panel.
Those Colan pages look great.
Always interesting to see photos of the folks who make the comics we enjoy. So many looked so you, even with beards. I was surprised to see Dick Giordano included. I always think of him as going from DC and Continuity Studios, to Charlton, & then back to DC. And then seeing his inking at Marvel (incuding over JRJr’s drawings in late 1990’s ((?)) “Thor”) & for Valiant. only after he retired his management job at DC. Bob McLeod & Roy Thomas look like they could be related. Same for John Constanza & John Buscema.
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Oh, God, those 1970s hairstyles.
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Aha! I wondered about Janice Cohen and what she had done before she colored Jon Sable Freelance for First. Does anyone know where she is now?
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Always was a bit curious as to how detailed the plots where on Tomb of Dracula, as Gene Colan admitted in interviews that the looser the plots he was given, the more likely he was to have trouble pacing out the issues. There are a few Captain America issues from the late 1960s / early 1970s where the endings are remarkably rushed, and in one of those issues Colan admitted that, having recently seen the movie Bullitt, he took what was supposed to be a two page car chase and made it last half the issue. So I can certainly understand why Wolfman’s plot was fairly detailed, with specifics as to what had to happen on each page.
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Coming from DC I was used to writing full scripts. I liked controlling the pacing of the stories, especially horror stories and humor stories where pacing was everything. My Marvel plots tended to be much longer than the other writers and it certainly helped with Gene for the reason one of the other letter writers above noted.
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