It’s Comic-Con season again! Nowadays, there are countless events to choose from in all parts of the country and even the world. But once upon a time, the only way comic book fans could connect with each other was by scouring the letters columns of sci-fi magazines for the addresses of fellow fans in the hopes of finding a willing pen pal. If you were lucky, there would be a few fans at your school for you to bond with.
This level of isolation may seem incomprehensible in an age when communication is instant, and sci-fi is a cool and popular thing to like. That’s part of the reason why it’s so important to preserve and remember the history of the early days of geek culture. Pop culture historian Mathew Klickstein has made it his mission to keep that history alive.
Klickstein has already told the story of San Diego Comic-Con’s (SDCC)—the world’s biggest Comic-Con—across multiple media. There is a podcast, Comic-Con Begins. Then there is a book, See You at San Diego: An Oral History of Comic-Con, Fandom, and the Triumph of Geek Culture. A documentary based on this book is in the works. And on Thursday, July 23, 2026, there will be the unofficial Oral History Panel at the Bards & Cards Game Shop in San Diego. The event, which gives attendees the chance to hear from several of the people who were there at SDCC’s beginning, is free to everyone, including those without a Comic-Con badge.
“It’s our shared history,” he says, “our heritage as weirdos, freaks, geeks and artists. And I want to make sure it gets taken down into the archives correctly, accurately and without any filter whatsoever so that generations to come can better understand how we got here and how to create such a revolution again in the future in a way that clearly works quite well.”
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While Klickstein didn’t grow up going to San Diego Comic-Con — “I used to go to much smaller, independent card/action figure/comic ‘conventions’ with my dad” and attended his first SDCC as an adult, he explains — he has always had a deep appreciation for how this event in particular changed everything for the geek community:
“[T]he culture, commiseration and community behind it, which flows through its veins and is such an integral part of its essence, absolutely all are and have been [a major part of my life] since the time I was a kid.”
SDCC is now a very massive, in many ways very corporate, event. There are pros and cons to this, but the sense of community that Klickstein talks about was the driving force behind the event’s creation in the 1970s. The efforts of dedicated volunteers kept it going through the early years, with a spirited sense of improvisation and “anything goes” prevailing. The ability to bond in person with like-minded fans led to many long-term and lifelong friendships — and is what enabled Klickstein to create this expansive oral history project.
This is evident in his connection to Wendy All. He was introduced to All, one of SDCC’s earliest contributors and committee members, by the host of another book-related event. She “immediately became a close friend,” so that by the time he hit on the idea of preserving SDCC’s history, he was able to reach out to her for her thoughts and assistance. She “connected me at once to around 50 of her old Comic-Con friends and colleagues,” says Klickstein, and that’s how it started.
The result has been a comprehensive, highly informative oral history that helps nerds everywhere, including those who have never seen SDCC personally, to understand and appreciate the effort it took to build the global community we now get to be a part of. Thanks in part to SDCC, which publicized the outrageous stories and characters once appreciated by a select few, formerly fringe interests have entered the mainstream in a big way. What began as an almost intimate gathering has become the pop culture event that tens of thousands of people around the world look forward to every year.
“I’m not the first to say it, but I agree that we no longer need to use the qualifier ‘pop’ in talking about these realms of creative expression and artistic vision,” Klickstein says. “Why say ‘pop culture’ when we can really just now in 2026 finally say what it is: ‘culture.’”
“Everyone’s got their thing, man,” he added later. “And that’s what SDCC and the fandom community are really all about. That’s it in a nutshell. Do your thing, man. And have fun. Why not? The alternative sucks.”
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