UDHCMH

Was delighted to stumble upon this in an antique store up in Ypsilanti, MI. A comic of neglected Universal sci fi-horror pic The Mole People (1956).

Robert Agar and friends fall into an underground city of Sumerians shut-off from the outer world for millennia. The albino subterranean dwellers survive by enslaving the bizarre Mole People to do their work and harvest their food, leaving the lost civilization plenty of time for court intrigue, religious rituals, wild pagan dancing, and human sacrifice.

45 years ago this weekend was Shuttlecon II, a Central Ohio convention for Star Trek fans held in one of the buildings at the Ohio State Fairgrounds. Campus in the late 1970s and early 1980s was a hotbed of science fiction fandom. James Doohan (Scotty), Grace Lee Whitney (Yeoman Rand), Walter Koenig (Chekov), and Star Trek: The Motion Picture scribe Alan Dean Foster were the guests of honor.

Researching it, I discovered a program from the 1980 event on eBay for $3. Delighted when it got here to discover it was autographed by all four of the Star Trek notables attending the convention!! For $3!!!

Charmed by the sponsoring ads for long-gone Columbus businesses, like University Flick, Monkey’s Retreat, Deibel’s, and Bonanza (“Trek on in!”)

The convention notes were so full of hope and optimism, a certainty that we were at the dawn of a better age, that the humanistic ideals of Star Trek were about to become the guiding lights of a new world. They could have never imagined what our world of 2025 would look like.