Posted By Dan Greenfield on Jul 21, 2025 | 1 comment

MORRISON MONDAYS!

By BILL MORRISON

This week I’ll be hopping a plane bound for sunny San Diego, for the granddaddy of all comic conventions, San Diego Comic-Con! So on the occasion, I thought I’d show a painting I did for the cover of the con’s souvenir program book 35 years ago!

I drew and painted this piece while working for Willardson Associates, a three-artist illustration studio owned by legendary airbrush artist David Willardson. To aid the studio in getting work, we had artist representatives in a few cities across the country, one being San Diego. Our rep in that town was David Scroggy, who had a long association with Comic-Con International San Diego, (still known colloquially as San Diego Comic-Con) and he landed us the gig to create the program cover for 1990.

The image is based on a relic of the mid-20th century known as “large letters postcards,” which featured the name of a city or state in big, open letter forms with images from that specific locale inside the outlines. Dave Willardson brainstormed the idea to parody those classic cards with the letters of “San Diego” overflowing with comics and animation characters that were having anniversaries that year. Due to painting a string of Disney movie posters, I had become “the cartoon guy” in the studio, so the job fell to me to execute the piece. The letters were designed by a typographic designer whose name I don’t recall, and I drew and painted the characters and the background.

Many savvy 13th Dimensioneers will notice that two of the characters in the piece did not have a major anniversary in 1990. Somehow when choosing the characters, we were off by a year with the Human Torch and Namor, the Sub-Mariner. They both debuted in Marvel Mystery Comics #1 in 1939, so their 50th anniversaries had been in 1989.

Here is a list of the rest of them, with their debut dates:

The Spirit (1940)

Brenda Starr, Reporter ((1940)

Woody Woodpecker (1940)

Dagwood Bumstead (1930)

Betty Boop (1930)

The Flash (1940)

Green Lantern (1940)

Captain Marvel (1940)

Robin (1940)

Catwoman (1940)

Joker (1940)

EC’s horror hosts, the Old Witch, the Crypt Keeper, and the Vault Keeper (1950)

Mickey Mouse as the Sorcerer’s Apprentice in Fantasia (1940)

Pinocchio and Jiminy Cricket (1940)

Captain America (1940)

Bugs Bunny (1940)

Tom and Jerry (1940)

Fred and Wilma Flintstone (1960)

I’ll be back from the Coast next week with a tribute to a San Diego Comic-Con original, Dave Stevens, but until then, think of this image as my Gone Fishin’ sign!

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