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| James Van Hise and Mark Hamill at MidAmeriCon in the Star Wars Display Room 1976 (Photo by James Van Hise) |
Danny writes:
Some might not recognize the name James Van Hise, but comic book and sci-fi fans who were around in the '70s and '80s will remember his publications. Jim published several different fanzines covering everything from Tarzaan to Star Wars. During the Original Trilogy era, Jim was the editor and publisher for the Rocket Blast Comics Collector. RBCC’s articles on Golden Age books and their creators did for comic collectors what the SWCA does for Star Wars collectors today. In 1983, he published The Art of Al Williamson, which won an Inkpot Award at San Diego Comic-Con. Van Hise also created and edited the Star Trek fan magazine Enterprise Incidents and wrote reference guides for Star Trek: The Next Generation.
Star Wars fans most likely have heard of James Van Hise because when he attended the World Science Fiction Convention in Kansas City in 1976, MidAmeriCon, he interviewed a little known actor named Mark Hamill about his upcoming science fiction movie. That interview would eventually be published in a special Star Wars issue of RBCC in 1977.
In my last article, I covered Charley Lippincott’s Star Wars presentations at three science fiction conventions in the summer of 1976. For this article, I interview James Van Hise and hear his recollections about what it was like to see those presentations. Jim was gracious enough to let me speak with him for over thirty minutes to talk about comics, fanzines and MidAmeriCon.
Danny Katzel: Tell me about yourself growing up and how you got involved in the world of comics and fanzines in the early '70s.
James Van Hise: I started buying comics in the early 1960s. My father brought home a comic book when I was sick, which I still have. It was an old Showcase Comic with characters called The Sea Devils. And I started slowly buying comics after that and then bought them regularly.
DK: I'm sure you went through them many, many times till they fell apart. Were there any particular comic books that you really focused on? Were you more of a Marvel guy or a DC guy?
JVH: I liked books from both companies. For Marvel, I liked books from Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, Doctor Strange. DC – I liked The Flash, and Adams Strange in Mystery In Space.
DK: How did you get involved with the fanzine Rocket Blast Comic Collector? Eventually working your way up to editor/publisher?
JVH: Well first, I started out as a subscriber, it must have been in ‘64 or ‘65. Then I moved to Florida and got to meet the publisher, G.B. Love. Then, I moved to Miami and I got a job working for him. I worked for him for four years and then I took over as editor in 1974.
DK: In the summer of 1976 before you attended MidAmeriCon in Kansas City, you and Don Rosa, who was also working on RBCC at the time, put on your own comic convention, OmniCon, in Louisville, Kentucky.
JVH: It was just something we talked about and decided to do.
DK: Were you still living in Florida at the time? Why did you choose Louisville for the location of your convention?
JVH: I was still in Florida. I had to fly to Louisville to work on the convention with him. That was where [Don Rosa] lived at the time. In fact he still lives in Louisville. You can find interviews with him on YouTube where he talks about collecting comics. He still has comics from many years ago. Of course, then he started drawing comics.
DK: Right.
JVH: Mostly Uncle Scrooge comics.
DK: Exactly. I met Don several times at various conventions and I have some sketches that he did where he made homages to famous comic book covers, but with the Duck Tales characters.
JVH: Well, that's great that you got those, because I know he doesn't draw like he used to, because he developed eye problems.
DK: Yeah, this was probably in the '90s.
Looking at the guest list for OmniCon, there were some great artists there like Frank Brunner and Michael Kaluta, and actor DeForest Kelley who played Dr. McCoy on Star Trek. How were you able to wrangle those guests?
JVH: Well, as I recall, we paid the artists like traveling expenses. And DeForest Kelley had a flat fee that he charged, because that's mostly what he was doing in the early '70s, was going to conventions. They didn't start up Star Trek again until 1979. He only had minimal acting work over those years.
DK: After OmniCon, you attended MidAmeriCon in Kansas City. Did you attend as a fan or was it strictly business for RBCC?
JVH: I attended as a fan. Well, first I went to San Diego Comic-Con. I attended that first in '75 and then again in '76, which is when Charley Lippincott gave his first presentation. And then I went to the World Science Fiction Convention.
DK: So you went to both! You saw the Star Wars presentation twice!?
JVH: And it was interesting, I remember at MidAmeriCon, he told the whole plot of the movie, because they were trying to get the word out to fans to tell people what it was. So they didn't want to hold anything back. Of course, five months before the movie came out, they released the novelization, so people knew what the story was going to be anyway.
DK: I remember listening to your interview with Mark Hamill, and you were talking about Owen and Beru being killed, and rescuing the princess from the Death Star - just spoiling the entire movie. It's a completely different world these days.
JVH: They were just trying to get as much information out as they could. Nobody had any idea; there had never been a hit science fiction movie before. I mean, there had been science fiction movies like Planet of the Apes and 2001 [A Space Odyssey]; 2001 took seven years to break even, so studios were still leery. It was only after Star Wars was a big hit that suddenly it was important to make science fiction movies.
DK: So you didn't know anything about Star Wars until, I guess, the San Diego Comic-Con.
JVH: Right.
DK: What did you think about it at that point?
JVH: Oh, well, it sounded interesting. I was looking forward to it. At San Diego Comic-Con, it was still almost a year away. That's when they gave out those posters that Howard Chaykin did.
DK: I know that you had Mark sign your poster at MidAmeriCon. Did you buy a second poster, or did you take your San Diego poster to Kansas City?
JVH: I must have taken it to Kansas City, because that was where I first met Mark, was in Kansas City.
DK: He wasn't at San Diego, because they were still filming principal photography.
JVH: Yeah. Charley Lippincott was in San Diego, but the WorldCon is where Mark Hamill was, and they had the Star Wars room that people could go to.
DK: Was that open during the whole convention? So attendees could go and look at the displays?
JVH: It was basically open all day long. Once in a while, it would be closed, because the people running would need to go to lunch and stuff like that. But other than that, it was open every day during convention hours.
DK: Do you remember what other people, or you yourself, felt when you were seeing the displays or watching the presentation?
JVH: Well, I mean, they had all the posters of Ralph McQuarrie artwork, and thought, wow, this looks terrific. I hope the movie's as good as all this artwork. And, of course, they had the mannequins of Darth Vader, C-3PO and R2-D2, so when Charley described the film, we would understand who these characters were.
[Editor's note - According to Craig Miller's book Star Wars Memories, these were actually production-made, and likely screen-used costumes and props on display. "There were signs posted indicating the costumes and props were replicas but all of these items were actually used in the film...Gary Kurtz was concerned someone might try to steal something if they thought it was screen used at the time" (p. 18) - DK]
DK: Did they give the presentation in the same room as the display?
JVH: No, the presentation was in one the auditoriums where the convention would have panels. Charley and the other people with him were basically panelists.
DK: For that panel, it was Charley, Mark Hamill and Gary Kurtz.
JVH: Yeah.
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| Screen used Darth Vader costume and Ralph McQuarrie concept art prints on display in the Star Wars Room. The sign says "Test mock-up" but it was the real costume. (Photo by James Van Hise) |
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| Screen used R2-D2 and C-3PO on display in the Star Wars Room.The sign says "Test mock-up" but they were real. (Photo by James Van Hise) |
DK: Do you remember how well attended the Star Wars presentation was?
JVH: Well, I mean, this was in '76. This was before conventions became gigantic, so, there were probably a couple hundred people in there.
DK: Did you think, wow, this is a packed room?
JVH: I think it was a standard panel attendance where people come to the convention to go to panels and see pros. And, oh, here, they're promoting this movie that we started hearing about. The whole reason they were doing these convention appearances was to get the word out to fandom so they would tell people who weren't at the convention what they saw.
Of course, it was in early '77 when they had the first trailer for Star Wars that they started showing at conventions.
DK: At no point in time were you watching this presentation thinking, "This is going to be the next Forbidden Planet and 2001 put together," right?
JVH: No, no, it was just like, "This looks good. I hope it's good." I was living in Miami then. And in Miami, the movie opened about three weeks after it opened in other parts of the country. And by then, they were doing reports on the evening news about Star Wars. And they showed that famous first scene in the movie. That would show that this was something new.
DK: You interviewed Mark Hamill for Rocket Blast. Was that planned ahead of time? How did you work that out?
JVH: No, I don't think I knew he was going to be at the convention. When I saw that he was, you know, he knew who I was. So I just set up an interview with him, which we did in the Star Wars Room.
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| Mark Hamill in front of Star Wars Banner in the Star Wars Room at MidAmeriCon 1976. This banner is now on display at Rancho Obi-Wan. (Photo by James Van Hise) |
DK: How did he know who you were?
JVH: Oh, because he's a fan. He collected comics. He was collecting comics before then. Even now, people talk about, "Oh yeah, I sold this Golden Age comic to Mark Hamill in San Diego."
DK: Wow! I remember going through your interview with Mark and you're asking lots of questions about the special effects. Was it clear from the presentation that Star Wars was going to have these revolutionary special effects?
JVH: No. They had stills and, of course, the Ralph McQuarrie artwork. But, I mean, if you've seen, like, behind the scenes retrospectives about Star Wars, most of the special effects were done in late '76 and early '77.
DK: Yeah, I think at that point, ILM only had two shots finished out of 365 or so. But [the panelists] didn't mention that a new camera system was being invented in order to do all these never-before-seen special effects?
JVH: No, I mean, George Lucas was making the movie overseas in Tunisia and in England. Finally, he got back to the United States and discovered they had almost nothing done on special effects. And he said, "This movie's coming out in six months. We have to get all of this done." I mean, he was close to a nervous breakdown. I think he had to be hospitalized once for exhaustion.
DK: You interviewed Mark in September of '76, but your special Star Wars issue of RBCC with that interview didn't come out until a year later in the fall of '77. Why did you withhold publication of that interview for so long?
JVH: Well, I was waiting to see the movie. Artists had to see the movie before they could draw anything for the issue.
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| Luke Skywalker portrait in RBCC #137 (Art by Monica Miller) |
DK: So, you knew when you were at MidAmeriCon that you would make a special Star Wars issue?
JVH: I wasn't sure yet. I interviewed him, and I probably decided, well, let's wait until the movie opens so they know who this Mark Hamill guy is. You know, that kind of thing.
DK: How did you rope all the other contributors into that special Star Wars issue, and were they all regular contributors?
JVH: Well, a lot of them were people I had already been doing work with, and once the movie came out, we were able to plan things like, you know, doing the parody of Star Wars.
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| First page of "Star Woes" parody comic in RBCC #137 (Art and story by Ronald Wilber) |
DK: As the editor and publisher, how much say did you have to direct each person on what to write or were they pretty much free to do whatever they wanted?
JVH: Well, they pretty much would do the drawings they wanted to. Ralph Fowler did that center spread of the X-Wing, and in order to do that, he saw the movie several times, and he would do sketches when he was in the theater. Because there were no photos of the X-Wing in the trench at that time, that was months later before they started releasing important scenes from the film as photos.
[There was a] nostalgia film magazine they were doing in the '70s, when Star Wars came out, the editor … who was also an artist, swiped Ralph's drawing and kind of tilted it to try to make it look different. And when Ralph saw it, he said, “That's my artwork! He stole my artwork! He just tried to change it a little.” He says, “Nobody has reference like that. Only I did, because I saw the movie ten times and made drawings.”
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| Trench climax center spread in RBCC #137 (Art by Ralph Fowler) |
DK: I love Ralph's drawing of the X-Wing in the trench. It was definitely the most detailed at the time.
JVH: Right.
DK: I have a poster with art by Robin Wood and some of the things in it, like the Death Star, just don't look right at all because they just drew by memory. Whereas other characters in the poster look great because there were reference photos available from the press kits.
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| Star Wars No. 1 poster. Note that the Death Star does not match the movie exactly because the artist was drawing from memory without a reference. (Art by Robin Wood) |
DK: I have several copies of your special Star Wars issue and it looks like there are two versions. There's the first print, and then there's a second print with extra pages including a Roy Thomas rebuttal.
JVH: Yeah, there's just stuff in there where [we critiqued] the Star Wars comic. The people who did the comic hadn't seen the movie. I think Star Wars #6 came out about the time the movie opened. So, they were all going by a script and things like that, so they had to do their own interpretation of a lot of things.
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| Roy Thomas rebuttal inserted into second print of RBCC #137 |
DK: How did you decide to do a second print of the Star Wars issue instead of just putting that rebuttal in the next issue?
JVH: Well, the first print sold out because I just did a standard printing, which was probably, I don't know, 1,500 copies or something. And when I decided to reprint it, I said, “I'll add some new pages.” And I left the price off the cover so that it was just the artwork.
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| Both prints of RBCC #137: Special Star Wars issue. The first print is easily identifiable because it has the $3 price printed on the cover and the second print does not. (Cover art by Ralph Fowler) |
DK: Do you have anything else that you want say about Star Wars?
JVH: Star Wars, I think, contributed to the rise of science fiction overall, because science fiction and conventions were not very big yet in the '70s. San Diego Comic-Con wasn't very big in the '70s. I mean, the science fiction conventions are bigger now, but I don't think any of them are as big as, say, the San Diego Comic-Con, which draws 100,000 people.
DK: You don't think Star Trek had any effect on that?
JVH: Yes, Star Trek conventions kind of were the only thing like that that did draw a lot of people. I think an early Star Trek convention in New York City drew 3,000 people. And that was the biggest convention, science fiction or comic up to that time. Because in the early '70s, San Diego Comic-Con was drawing, like, maybe 1,000 people. But the Star Trek conventions drew many times that. That's why there were so many back then. Star Trek conventions then were popping up all across the country.
DK: I guess now they had that template when Star Wars came out to do similar kinds of conventions.
JVH: Yeah, Star Trek was the only thing like that going on, then when Star Wars came out, the fandom got bigger. There were Star Trek fans and Star Wars fans and the conventions just kept growing.
DK: And you were there at the beginning. Did you imagine that 50 years later, people would be interviewing you to ask about what it was like to be at the dawn of Star Wars?
JVH: No, I just saw online today that for the 50th anniversary of Star Wars they [will release] in IMAX next February.
DK: And that's supposedly the original version, not a special edition version.
JVH: Yeah, it's supposed to be the original edition seen for the first time, I guess, since '77. Because they were already making changes in like, '78 in re-releases.
DK: Well, as Darth Vader would say, "the circle is now complete." Thank you very much for this interview, Jim.
