Fanzine united fans 50 years ago

The beginning of comic book fandom -- the point when comics went from a throwaway medium for kids to an art form -- was sparked 50 years ago, when a 26-year-old science professor named Jerry Bails was invited to be a guest lecturer at what was then Adelphi College.

While no record of the topic of Bails' lecture exists, he was one of many scholars who visited the Garden City campus in the early 1960s (both the famed paleoanthropologist Louis S.B. Leakey and cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead would guest lecture there in the next few years).

Bails, a professor at Wayne State University in Detroit, had a master's in math, a doctorate in natural science and a love of comic books, which he had been reading since he was a boy growing up in Missouri.

During his visit to Long Island, in February 1961, Bails traveled into Manhattan for a meeting with Julius Schwartz, an editor at DC Comics, publishers of Superman, Batman and other major comic books. Schwartz, whom Bails had written before his trip to Adelphi, encouraged the young scientist to pursue his interest in galvanizing the comic collector community, and in publishing a newsletter for fans -- a "fanzine," as Schwartz put it.

"Bails' visit with Schwartz kicked his publishing plans into high gear," wrote Bill Schelly in his 1998 book, "The Golden Age of Comic Fandom."

"He returned to Detroit loaded with information about upcoming DC comics, fairly bursting with energy and enthusiasm."

A month later, Bails and his working partner, a young fellow Missourian named Roy Thomas, produced the debut issue of Alter Ego, the first comic book fanzine. It proved to be enormously influential, galvanizing the emerging comic collector community, and, says Schelly, helping to put the medium on the road to respectability.

Bails eventually retired from teaching and died in 2006; Thomas, now 70, became editor-in-chief at Marvel Comics and writer of the Conan the Barbarian comic book. Alter Ego is still being published.

"It was Jerry Bails' goal to bring comic book fans together," said Schelly. "Alter Ego was that rallying point."