And with that, Comic-Con is over.
It’s been four long years since I last roamed the halls of the San Diego Convention Center. I’ve been attending Comic-Con International every summer since I graduated high school, but in 2019 my luck in acquiring tickets finally ran out and I missed out on going.
Determined to make sure that didn’t happen again, I put in extra effort to secure tickets for the 2020 convention. Nothing short of a global catastrophe was going to keep me away from the action.
I’m pretty sure you know the rest.
Thus, here I am in 2022, finally attending the convention I didn’t get to attend in 2020.
I have to admit, it was a strange experience. A lot can change in four years. I was concerned that maybe the convention wouldn’t have the same pull on me as it once did. That maybe my interests and priorities have changed in these last four years without me realizing.
And I’m not the only one that may have changed. Comic-Con President John Rogers tragically passed away in 2018 after the last convention I attended. Now under new leadership, and rusty from two years of postponements, I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect upon my return.
Fortunately, as it turns out, I worried for nothing.
Sure, there were some kinks to work out as the staff returned to peak efficiency and it took me a minute to remember how to get around the Convention Center and surrounding hotels, but before I knew it I was navigating the halls and conversing with my fellow convention goers as though it hadn’t been more than a thousand days since I’d last visited.
I was honestly shocked at how quickly I was able to get back into the swing of things. The convention ran smoothly and if not the mask policy for the exhibit hall floor you’d never know we were coming off of a global pandemic.
Which is not to say things were entirely the same. Everything seemed lighter this year. The crowds were lighter. The exhibitors weren’t quite as elaborate. The lines, with the exception of Hall H, weren’t that extreme. A lot of the convention quality of life features seemed absent.
All of this is to be expected, I suppose. It’s going to take some time to work the kinks out.
That’s fine, I can wait. Over the last 20 years I’ve watched Comic-Con grow and change and grow some more. This post-pandemic convention is simply the next era. I’m excited to see what happens next year.
And I absolutely will be back next year.
Travis Fischer is a news writer for Mid-America Publishing and hopes the future of Comic-Con includes being able to get into Hall H without spending 14 hours in line and getting two hours of sleep.
