I rediscovered some of the literature about the Comic Convention that Colin Campbell put on in 1979.Colin was the owner and operator of "Biytoo Books", through which he sold imported comics, fanzines and art related books. I bought a lot of things off him in those years and even worked on his tables at the Birmingham Comic Marts, it was a lot of fun.
So, because I lived locally to the Comicon venue, he asked me to be the head of security for the big show! I should have said "No" but I was and still am, an idiot, so I said "Yes".
Given that I was pretty much of a loner, how the heck I thought I could find a crew of guys to help me out, I don't know... but I did it! Thanks, then as now, belong to Nigel Whittaker, Mike Llewellyn, Barry Dawes and at least two other people that I can no longer recall. I should have made more of an effort to tell you all how great you were at the time, because it's a bit too late now. Mike Llewellyn got to protect Jim Steranko's portfolio for the entire convention, a job I'd like to think he enjoyed.
The only black mark on our record was the theft of several pages of original art from a display in the hotel lobby. They were all early try-out pages by John Byrne and belonged to Colin Campbell. The two displays were double sided, with art on both sides, and we were doing fine until the hotel decided to push the displays up against one of the lobby walls and when the time came to take down the displays, someone had crawled in behind them and stolen the pages. I was mortified, but Colin was very understanding and chalked it up to experience. Thank you Colin!
To the best of my knowledge, Colin Campell is now one of the owners of Forbidden Planet International.
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