Comic-Con International(SAN DIEGO) — (NOTE LANGUAGE) Like last year, San Diego Comic-Con will be virtual again, in light of the coronavirus pandemic, the event’s organizers have announced.

In a posting on its official website, the organizers noted, “While we are buoyed by the…growing number of individuals being inoculated, it appears that July will still be too early to safely hold an in-person event of the magnitude of Comic-Con.”

The organizers continue to say they’re postponing the convention as an in-person gathering until 2022.

They also noted that, “the challenges of this past year and the multiple postponements of our two largest events have left us with limited financial resources,” which have reduced the normally four-day, in person event to a three-day online one, spanning July 23-25, 2021.

For those who have never been, comic conventions — particularly major ones like San Diego’s and New York’s — combine many no-no’s of the “new normal”: Hundreds of thousands of people crammed in close proximity, sweaty cosplayers, and celebrities pressing flesh with autograph seekers. 

“I think those are going to be one of the last things to come back full force,” Spawn creator Todd McFarlane tells ABC Audio.

McFarlane, one of the most famous comic artists in the world, adds, “I don’t know if I’m going to the first convention [after COVID]. Who’s going to that? People vaccinated and people don’t give a sh**. I don’t know if I want to be in that room,” he admits. 

“Think about a [movie] theater: like everybody’s stationary, even at a football game or something like that. For the most part…they’re pretty stationary. But man, convention is just mosh pit going by. It’s like a packed airport.”

McFarlane also sympathizes with fans, saying “it must be super frustrating.” The die-hard baseball fan notes, “[I]f I don’t go see the Arizona Cardinals and with my own two eyes, I feel pretty satisfied watching them on TV… But I think a lot of people go to the conventions for the interaction with some of their peers. And other people will come for the TV and movie celebrities to see them with their own two eyes up close. You can see them on a screen, and Zoom, but it’s not like, ‘Oh, my God, I went to the bathroom, I guess who was there!'”

By Stephen Iervolino
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