Today is the Fan Verification Onsale date for NYCC 2021. Anyone who was “fan verified” for the 2019 con can buy tickets for this year’s con, starting at 10 AM today. The con is scheduled for October 7-10. Hopefully, it’ll be safe to hold a comic convention in NYC by then. I’d be reticent about going to something like NYCC right now. And honestly I’m not sure if we’ll be better off or worse off in October. But I’m probably going to attempt to buy tickets today.
Badges are pretty expensive this year, at $60/day with no multi-day passes, so going to all four days would be $240. Maybe I’ll just buy Thursday and Friday badges? I haven’t really decided yet. And there’s always a chance that one or more days will sell out before I get to the head of the queue, so maybe I won’t even be able to buy all four days. They’re supposed to be reducing the number of badges they’re selling this year, so the con won’t be too crowded, but I haven’t seen specific numbers on that. And there seems to be a good bit of interest in the con this year, but it might be significantly less than usual, specifically from folks who aren’t local. So, really, I have no idea what the situation will be. I guess I can buy badges today, then decide not to go if the situation in October isn’t good. Or maybe I’ll never make it out of the queue, and all this waffling won’t matter.
Meanwhile, SDCC’s Comic-Con@Home is coming soon (July 23-25). I’m looking forward to that. I’m probably going to take a PTO day on July 23rd and try to recreate a bit of the con experience at home, like I did last year. There doesn’t seem to be much excitement around this year’s virtual con, really. I think people are really looking forward to the next in-person con.
There’s a good article about the @Home con, and the upcoming in-person con in November, at Gizmodo. It sounds like most of the panels will be pre-recorded, like last year, which is a little disappointing but understandable. The panel schedule has now been released, but I haven’t had a chance to look at it yet. It can be found here. On first glance, it looked like there wasn’t much going on, but then I realized that the panel list was an iframe that scrolls separately from the rest of the page. (Sigh.) There’s actually quite a lot on the schedule, so that’s cool.
I’ve been getting into the mood for SDCC by listening to the Comic-Con Begins podcast. It’s a pretty good “oral history” podcast recounting the founding and early days of the con. It’s a fairly professional production, released by SiriusXM. I already know some of the stories they’re telling, but a good bit of it is new to me. Anyway, it’s fun.
One more comic-related (and COVID-related) note: I spent the $30 to buy access to Black Widow on Disney+ on Friday. It’s a pretty good movie, but maybe not worth $30 just for the privilege of watching it at home while it’s still in theaters. But I really wanted to see it Friday, and I didn’t want to go to a theater. I think I’m probably ready to go back and see a movie in a theater, theoretically, but I really just wanted to plop down on my sofa after work Friday and watch a new Marvel movie with my AirPod Pros in my ears, and my shades drawn, and forgot about the real world for two hours. There’s an interesting article about the business aspect of this release on CNN. And here’s an article from Wired about the timing of the release. I might watch it again tonight, though I started watching the last season of Bosch last night, so I’ll probably just watch more of that. (There’s way too much good stuff streaming right now.)
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