San Diego Comic-Con President John Rogers has died. Via the event’s Twitter page, San Diego Comic-Con released a statement yesterday detailing the cause of death as “a result of complications from glioblastoma, an aggressive form of brain cancer.”
Rogers who was a software engineer at a local telecommunications company, began working for San Diego Comic-Con in 1978, fulfilling roles as both Technical Coordinator and Films Coordinator. His tenure as president began in 1986, and it was a job he took seriously, patiently listening to each visitor that stopped by SDCC and WonderCon’s “Annual Talk Back Panel” to complain about what needed to be fixed, earnestly offering accountability and insight. Rogers sheperded the convention through exponential growth over the last thirty years, taking Comic-Con from a mere gathering of like-minded, Californian comic book enthusiasts, to a worldwide cultural phenomenon of more than 130,000 attendees that sells out every year, with books booksand documentaries dissecting the event and its societal significance.
Rogers — affectionately dubbed “The Mayor of SDCC” — is survived by his wife, author and former Comic-Con Vice President Janet Tait, as well as his sister Barbara, and his brother David. In lieu of flowers, the family has suggested donations to the American Brain Tumor Association or the American Civil Liberties Union.
The Multiversity Staff sends Rogers’s surviving family our deepest and most sincere condolences at this time.
