User:Wendell/Atlanta Fantasy Fair

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AFF was mostly a comic book trade show, with a few SF&F writers and artists, and a few guests from the SF media thrown in to attract the non-comic book fan.

The Atlanta market has been dominated by the 4-day annual 'Dragon con' for the last decade. They put the 'Atlanta Fantasy Fair' out of business and d-con has grown into an unmanageable behemoth of a con that is sorely lacking in a comics presence. Marvel and DC (among others) have not been at the con in full force for several years now (though various writers and artists do show). The con is ill-managed and over sold and is mainly known for its numerous lines of folks waiting for tickets or events.

Lamar Waldron: Lamar Waldron @ Dragon*Con comix writer, founded original Atlanta Fantasy Fair convention [1]

• [2]
• [3] Visions AFF mags
  • [4] another cover
• [5] Ed Krammer Arrest & History
• [6] The Magazine of the Atlanta Fantasy Fair. Copies of this magazine were mainly given out to the convention attendees. Miller does a Batman pinup. The magazine also has a Miller checklist. Other features: Lightrunner-s by Whigham; Harryhausen; Forest J. Ackerman article written by Robert Bloch; Will Eisner; 4th appearance of [FLAMING CARROT] by [Bob Burden].
• [7] June 17-19, 1994 (Georgia)

  ATLANTA FANTASY FAIR.  Holiday Inn Crowne Plaze, Atlanta GA.  Featuring
  Sarah Douglas, Bruce Campbell, Jeff Rector, Geraint Wyn Davies, John Russo,
  Ted V. Mikels.  Memb: $27 until June 5, $30 at door for 3 days.  Rooms $79
  sngl/dbl, $99 tpl/quad.  1-800-554-0055 for motel, INFO: Atlanta Fantasy
  Fair, 4175 Eliza Ct. Lithonia, GA 30058  (404) 985-1230

• [8] August 3 - 5 1984:

ATLANTA FANTASY FAIR 10 located at the Omni Hotel & World Congress Center, Atlanta, GA. GOH: Larry Niven. With: Forrest J Ackerman, Robert Bloch, Sharon Webb, Richard Pini &    others. Membership: $25. Write to: Atlanta Fantasy Fair. P.O. Box 566, Marietta, GA 30061

• [9] August 5 - 7 1985:

Atlanta Fantasy Fair IX Omni Hotel & Georgia World Congress Center, Atlanta GA; Rooms: $44.00. Guests: Theodore & Jayne Sturgeon, Gerald Page, WSFAns Ted White & Forrest J Ackerman, & more. Memb.: $19.00. Info: Atlanta Fantasy Fair, P. O. Box 566, Marietta GA 30061

• Lamar Waldorn is the author of an graphic novel called Light Runner. He also created and now writes for the comic book Micra. He was the founder of the once great Atlanta Fantasy Fair. THIS IS THE GUY WHO FIRST BANNED WEAPONS FROM A SOUTHERN CON! He likes weapons, yes... ...he says. He has collected knives, rifles, steel tip arrows. But he had to give in to a hotel's bougise demands of no weapons because of a small incident involving a battle ax.

• What comes immediately to mind are my memories of the first science fiction convention that I went to -- the 1989 Atlanta Fantasy Fair. I had gotten all hyped up about it, thinking that I was really going to be in my element, hobnobbing with people who would know exactly what I was saying as I tried to capture what it is about science fiction and fantasy that I love. But when I got there, I felt this awful sense of barrenness all around me. The first group of people that I met just started questioning me about what films I had seen and what films I hadn't seen. Then, when they found something I hadn't seen, this condescending leer would run across their faces and they would say, "Dark Star? You haven't seen Dark Star? Jeez, man, where have you been?" Then, the second group I met seemed to want to spend most of their time doing whatever their adolescent-anarchist leader told them to do -- from crashing parties, to embarrassing the other hotel guests, to unscrewing the light bulbs in the elevators. They seemed to get off on being "radical," but I didn't think there was anything particularly interesting about them -- maybe they felt the same lack and they had decided to make themselves interesting.

[edit] Anime Hell

But people ask me sometimes how Anime Hell got started. Actually they don't, but I'm bored at work, so I'm going to tell you anyway.

Way back in the 1980s there were no anime conventions, and there was barely any anime programming at the SF conventions. Because SF convention organizers regarded Japanese cartoons as lame and juvenile.

I used to go to various local SF cons, and in order to promote our Atlanta anime club, we'd throw a party in our hotel room. We'd put out flyers to advertise these parties, and I don't know why, but I started advertising these parties as "Japanese Animation Hell". We'd show different anime shows and drink soda and eat chips and usually I'd show the SubGenius movie ARISE and the Pinesalad DIRTY PAIR dubs and the Corn Pone Flicks STAR DIPWADS and whatever new stuff I had that was goofy and fun. We're talking 1987-1989 here. The conventions were places like CHATTACON in Chattanooga and MOC in Greenville and even a few A-KONs in Dallas.

In the early 1990s there were two big SF conventions in Atlanta; Dragoncon and the Atlanta Fantasy Fair. Since you've heard of Dragoncon and have never heard of the Atlanta Fantasy Fair, it's safe to assume which one survived and which one didn't. I was running the anime room at the AFF and my anime club cohort Lloyd Carter was running the anime room at Dragoncon. As the Atlanta Fantasy Fair died a slow convention death, I found myself wanting to be more active in the anime room thing, so I suggested to Lloyd that I just take the Saturday night shift from midnight to whenever and I'd show parody films and comedy anime and whatever crazy stuff I could find, and I'd call that Japanese Anime Hell.

The early Hells at Dragoncon were advertised with crazy cut-and-paste flyers. They ran six hours -from midnight until 6:00am -

By 1995 the Atlanta Fantasy Fair was on its last legs and we'd started Anime Weekend Atlanta. Hell was continuing at Dragoncon, but several things were beginning to piss me off about the screenings there: Dragon kept shunting the anime room to a smaller and smaller room each year, the audiences were annoying, the Dragon attendees were smelly and annoying, etc. At AWA 2 I made up a tape of Hell material and let it run in a video room in an event called "Trailer Park". It was stupidly popular, and finally I realized that I could do Anime Hell at my own convention.

So at AWA 3 in 1997 what I like to think of as the first "real" Japanese Anime Hell was born; Friday night in the main events room, a four-hour set of Hell that was again, stupidly popular. After a few years of AWA Hell being awesome and Dragoncon Hell being lame and annoying, I quit doing Hell at Dragoncon. I believe my first out-of-town Hell was in 1998 at Animazement, or whenever the first Animazement was.