40th Anniversary Special Series – Part 1

American popular culture in the 1980s was filled with landmark works that have defined many of Dragon Con’s fandoms. The original Star Wars trilogy concluded, Star Trek was well into its era of major motion pictures and Next Generation launched, Aliens made its way onto the big screen, and Doctor Who was in its 23^rd season. By 1984, Dungeons & Dragons (created by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson) was selling 750,000 copies of its gaming rules and guides per year. Richard Garriott’s Ultima established the basic parameters for computer-based role-playing games. Names like Frank Miller, Alan Moore, Dave Gibbons, and Art Spiegelman were launching genre-defining titles like Watchmen, The Dark Knight Returns, and Maus. Science fiction and Fantasy publication in the form of mass market paperbacks was an industry of its own. Atlanta in the 80s enjoyed a rich and vibrant pop culture landscape, with bookstores, comic shops, fan and gaming clubs, and (of course) conventions. According to Dave Merrill, Chairman Emeritus of Anime Weekend Atlanta, the mid 80s in Atlanta was “an exciting time to be a nerd.”

The convention scene in Atlanta really developed an identity of its own when the Atlanta Comics and Fantasy Fair launched in 1975. A convention trying to bring fans “together under one roof,” for more than two decades it was a mainstay of Atlanta convention culture. According to Merrill, “it had all the ingredients … we’d recognize as a con – costumes, vendors, a movie room, guest lineup of artists, writers, editors, and it all took place over a weekend in one place which allowed late night parties.” In 1979 the convention became the Atlanta Fantasy Fair (AFF) and began publishing Visions, a literary and art magazine that doubled as the convention’s program book.

With the turn of the decade, the AFF continued to grow, and Atlanta Comic Con launched. In 1981 the Atlanta Star Trek Society launched Dixie Trek on the campus of Oglethorpe University. According to Merrill, 1982 saw the AFF “step up to the big leagues” with a guest list that included (among others) Frank Miller and Philip Jose Farmer. In 1984, the AFF moved into the Omni/World Congress Center, the Atlanta Comics Festival filled the space left by the demise of Atlanta Comic Con, and over at Oglethorpe, Dixie Trek welcomed Guest of Honor Mark Lenard (Sarek).

The 1986 AFF was large, robust, well attended, and had a dedicated gaming hall. In that hall, not only was TSR (Tactical Studies Rules)—then publisher of Dungeons & Dragons—hosting gaming tournaments but a local gaming club was as well. That club was the Dragon Alliance of Gamers and Role Players (DAGR), the founders of Dragon Con. They described themselves in the very first Dragon Con Program this way:

DAGR…is the largest gaming group in the Southeast. Based in Atlanta, DAGR is associated with the RPGA (Role Playing Game Association) and the AADA. Along with gaming and playtesting, DAGR also aids gaming at regional conventions including Chattacon, Magnum Opus Con, Phenxcon, Deep South Con 25, the Atlanta Fantasy Fair, and World Con ’86, Confederation. DAGR is honored to be recognized as the host of Dragon Con ’87. (Dragon Con Program, 1987, p.2)

In a 2001 article written by Jim Lovel for the Atlanta Business Chronicle, co-founder David Cody said that Dragon Con had “evolved” out of the AFF. While the Atlanta Fantasy Fair had many of the elements of a multi-genre convention, it had yet to pull all the components together. That step was imagined when Pat Henry, John Bunnell, Cody, Robert Dennis, along with two other DAGR leaders, developed the concept of Dragon Con. The idea, conceived over pizza at a restaurant in Gwinnett County, was to convene a truly (and fully) multi-genre convention that would combine fandoms, genres, gaming, and entertainment (including rock ‘n roll) in one place. Pat Henry described the scene in this way: “we sat at the table—some of us more interested in gaming, but all of us into comic books—and decided to put together a show that would incorporate our interests horizontally rather than vertically. No convention was doing that.” Dennis, in Four Days at Dragon Con summed it up this way. “We decided you could kind of combine all those things (science fiction, literature, or gaming) …everybody said, ‘you can’t do that it will never work’.” But the group was committed. Each “founder” chipped in $300 and the journey to make their idea a reality began.

With their concept, a little money, experience and expertise across the various genres, as well as contacts they could use to recruit guests and build out the logistics of a convention, they were almost ready to move forward. What they still had to settle on was a name, and for that they focused on “Dragon.” An important tool used by the DAGR’s leadership was a Dragon 64 computer. Produced in Wales by Dragon Data, Ltd., it was based upon Radio Shack’s TRS-80 Color Computer (CoCo), and sold across Europe (yes, the “64” refers to 64 kilobytes of memory… it was 40 years ago). More than the club though, as Henry pointed out, Dragons could be found across all the genres the convention sought to embrace (gaming, comics, literature) and because they sought to be truly multi-genre, they wanted to avoid titles like “comic con or science fiction convention.” And so, this convention would be known as Dragon Con.

For the first Dragon Con, the team assembled a rock star list of guests that included Gygax, Garriott, Thieves’ World authors Robert Asprin and Lynn Abbey, Brian Herbert, and the creator of the Elric of Melnibone heroic fantasy series, Michael Moorcock. They produced fliers and headed out to promote their con, scheduled for October 2-4, 1987, at the Pierremont Plaza Hotel and Convention Center in Atlanta. World Con hit Atlanta in the summer of 1986 (with its Hugo Award winner Orson Scott Card for his book Ender’s Game), and the Dragon Con founders were there promoting the show with a flyer that became page 1 of the 1987 program.

The very sensibility of Dragon Con, and the founder’s intention, can be seen in the graphic that dominates the top half of the flier. A fire breathing dragon’s widespread wings encompass characters from different genres. When Dragon Con launched in October 1987, Ed Kramer was chairman, John Bunnell was Director of Strategic Gaming, Cody directed Role-Playing Gaming, Dennis handled Administration, and Henry directed the Dealer’s Room.

AFF and Dixie Trek carried on, enjoying especially good years in 1986 and 1987, (Leonard Nimoy appeared at Dixie Trek in 1987) but the writing was soon to be on the wall. Dragon Con quickly matched, then exceeded attendance at AFF.

Merrill attended both AFF and Dragon Con in the late 1980s and thinking back, he sees several “threads” of continuity that existed between the two. In many ways, he wrote, “they were similar shows.” They occurred “in the same city, sometimes happening in the same venues. There was a lot of crossover in attendees and staff.” When AFF senior staff moved over to director positions at Dragon Con “their contacts and expertise went with them.” Couple that “generational” change with venue and date changes and it didn’t take long for both the AFF and Dixie Trek to experience decline. Merrill saw more, however. At the very same time the older conventions were running into difficulties of various sorts, Dragon Con, anchored in downtown Atlanta, was “actively working to involve all the fan groups and fans across the entire spectrum of fantasy, science fiction, comics, and gaming.” The idea, born among a group of passionate and ambitious “nerds,” had become reality. By its eleventh anniversary in 1998, Dragon Con was the “last one standing.” The rest, as they say, is history.

Click here for notes and acknowledgements from the author.