End of a (Comic-Con) Era …

When I was writing my 20+ part opus, “My Life in Comics,” on this here blog thingie, I often mentioned the name Fae Desmond, who was my boss at Comic-Con for all 21 years I was an employee. A news release was sent out yesterday, and—I’m happy to say, actually covered on the comics websites, even though it wasn’t about studios cancelling their Comic-Con 2023 programming plans—that revealed Fae is retiring from Comic-Con in the near future after 47 years with the organization. I’m not sure if that’s the correct number of years or not; I think the date when Fae first volunteered for Comic-Con, after attending the event with her husband, Rod Gates, one year in the 1970s, is one that’s lost to the ages. I do know one thing, though: Fae will hate the fact that I wrote about her, and hate even more that I included a photo. Well, you’re not the boss of me anymore, Fae, and I would feel remiss if I didn’t write about what is most certainly the end of an era for Comic-Con and a person who had an almost-daily impact on my life for over 20 years.

Fae volunteered in a number of different positions at Comic-Con before becoming the organization’s first paid employee in 1985 as the part-time general manager of the show. She founded the child care room and was active in the films department, PR, the Exhibit Hall, and created Comic Book Expo (at the behest of Will Eisner), the industry trade show that ran for many years. She eventually became the full-time executive director of the event, responsible for the day-to-day operations of Comic-Con, including the hiring and firing of employees. She reported to John Rogers, the long-time Board of Directors president, whose tenure started in 1985, the same year Fae was hired. They were a team who—to me at least—represented the heart and soul of Comic-Con and when John passed away in 2018, I knew the event would never quite be the same.

While Comic-Con is often accused of not caring about comics anymore, nothing could be further from the truth when it came to Fae. When she had the extreme wisdom and foresight of hiring me (AHEM), she said that she was glad there would be someone in the office full-time with a lot of comics knowledge. But every time I brought someone up, Fae invariably knew them. She had visited Jack Kirby at his Southern California home (embarrassed to go along with Shel Dorf and others when Shel decided to just drop in unannounced). She knew Frank Frazetta. She dealt with all the movers and shakers at all the companies, big and small. She was there when that extremely popular alternative cartoonist brought out a heaping plate of cocaine at a party at Comic-Con in the 1980s (“Time to leave,” she told me). Even without the influence of cocaine, she was passionate about the comics medium, and she was the person who started Comic-Con programming staples like the Comics Arts Conference, which brings together academics to discuss the medium each year at Comic-Con and WonderCon (and has done so for over 30 years now). She jumped at the chance to add WonderCon to the Comic-Con family and volunteered to help Dan Vado when he needed someone with convention experience to take over APE, the Alternative Press Expo. She even made it seem like “fun” to get up at 5:00 AM to set up tables at the Concourse Exhibition Center in San Francisco for APE, long after Vado faded from managing the show and Comic-Con ran it for almost 20 years. And she was incredibly excited to make the Comic-Con Museum in Balboa Park a permanent home to celebrate comics and pop culture, and fulfill Comic-Con’s mission statement year-round. She championed all those things, sometimes against the odds. She was, in short, a force of nature when it came to Comic-Con.

I first met Fae in 1999, when Jackie Estrada suggested me to do the PowerPoint presentation for the Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards. That freelance job quickly grew into me taking over the Comic-Con website—something I worked on for the next 22 years, as writer, editor-in-chief, and designer, with the help of many others—and ultimately led to me being hired full-time as Comic-Con’s director of programming in 2000. Fae was my boss, the person who hired me, but my relationship with her was contentious at first. Both of us are Geminis and we butted heads a bit; at one point early on, she told me, “You’re asking too many questions … figure it out on your own,” not exactly soothing advice for a newbie employee. In hindsight, I fully realize I was hired at the last minute as a warm body, someone to sink or swim when it came to putting together a programming schedule for Comic-Con 2000. Luckily, I at least floated long enough to learn how to swim in Comic-Con’s sometimes turbulent waters.

(Left to right): Justin Dutta (Comic-Con’s Director of Exhibits), Fae Desmond (Executive Director), Steve Sansweet, me, and Eddie Ibrahim (Director of Programming), right before Steve ordered Darth Vader to lop off all of our heads (except Steve’s) with that glowing light sabre. Photo from Steve’s Rancho Obi-Wan (click for more details), circa 2010 or so.

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Eventually, Fae and I came to some kind of detente. We started to travel together and I think spending that time out of the office gave us a chance to get to know each other better. We went to a memorial for Bill Liebowitz (the owner of Golden Apple Comics) in 2004 in Los Angeles, and the Will Eisner memorial in New York City in 2005. Around that same time, she and I went to San Francisco to do a site check for WonderCon to check out the new Moscone Center West facility, which we were going to use for that event in the following year. We endured a harrowing cab ride together with a Russian driver who spent most of the ride arguing with another cabbie, yelling and screaming at each other through their open windows in the cold winter air as they sped through the narrow streets of downtown SF. I think both of us were fearful that shots were about to be fired. It was on that trip that she asked me what I wanted to do next, since she sensed I was burning out doing programming and when I told her I wanted to do the organization’s publications, she managed to create a brand new position for me—one that pissed off a few people who felt they were more qualified.

When I took over as director of print and publications in 2007, she told me, “I want you to be the ‘me’ of publications,” in other words, the executive director. She was incredibly enthusiastic and encouraging when I brought up the Chronicle Books offer to publish a retrospective book on Comic-Con for its 40th anniversary in 2009, and gave me the freedom to run with it (even though she refused to let me be listed as editor). She had the initial idea for the Comic-Con Graphic Novel Book Clubs, which we started in 2014, and when the San Diego Central Library wanted to do a Comic-Con gallery exhibit in 2015, she gave me the reins, but she insisted on going along with me to pick out frames. Yes, she was a bit of a micro-manager, something that waned with me as the years went by as she—begrudgingly—started to trust me more. And yes, being a Gemini, you never quite knew which Fae you were going to encounter when you went in for a meeting, but hey … you take that chance with me every day too (but it’s okay, because I don’t do work meetings anymore).

Fae was always my boss, but she was also a mentor, and eventually, a friend. We had numerous long talks about work, but also about every aspect of our respective lives. She truly believed in a work/life balance and was genuinely concerned about the people who worked for her; in that sense she was a bit like a “mom” who happened to be your boss. She and John were two of the smartest people I’ve ever met, and certainly the smartest I’ve ever worked for. Fae’s job included having to deal with so much beyond the Board of Directors, staff and volunteers of Comic-Con; it included the city, the mayor’s office, the San Diego Convention Center and Visitors’ Bureau, the hotels, the police, the parking people, and all the similar permutations in San Francisco and Anaheim for WonderCon and APE. I honestly don’t know how she did it on any given day, let alone for almost 40 years as Comic-Con kept growing and Growing and GROWING. I feel that growth is directly attributable to her and John’s management.

Years ago, one Internet-based comics writer penned an article about how there were no women in power positions in the comics industry. Peggy Burns, the publisher of Drawn & Quarterly (a woman certainly in a power position in the comics industry), reminded that writer of Fae and the other women at Comic-Con, including Sue Lord (in charge of volunteers), Robin Donlan (VP of Events at the time, now president of the Board of Directors), and Jackie Estrada, the Eisner Awards Administrator. I think people look at comic conventions as some kind of tangent of the industry, but for at least one week out of the year, Fae was amongst the most powerful people in comics, year after year. I’m glad someone spoke up and called attention to her and that she showed up on Bleeding Cool’s (somewhat dubious) “Top 100 Power List” at #37 in 2017.

I’ve been gone from Comic-Con since February 2021, but Fae and I still talk. She called me the other day to “warn” me about the pending announcement, even though she was mystified as to why it warranted a press release. Fae was like that; both she and John Rogers were never in it for fame or fortune or the adulation of the staff or volunteers. They just always wanted to do what was best for Comic-Con and its attendees. Even when i was arguing with her about something, I knew that was true … it was never even in question. In an interview she gave to the late Bill Schelly for Comic-Con’s 2019 Souvenir Book and his long article on the history of the event, she said, “Our concern is always on how much we can offer our attendees, how well we meet our mission. We always try to be better every year—not bigger. Growing to be the biggest was never a consideration for us, just doing a better event, being the best at what we do. Our future is going to be meeting our mission 365 days a year. The new Comic-Con Museum will be a huge part of that.”

I’ve been talking about Fae in this post in the past tense and she is thankfully very much still with us. I think it’s important for someone who was there to talk about her. Fae, I hope you find the happiness I’ve found in retirement. I know it’s a big leap into the great unknown, but there is life after Comic-Con. I can attest to that. Jump in and embrace the change.

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