This year’s Comic-Con was unavoidably different, but SDCC is still SDCC

polygon.com:

For comic book — and, in recent years, film and TV — fans around the world, San Diego Comic-Con marks the ultimate pop culture pilgrimage, something akin to a celebration smashed into a trade show that also happens to be the industry’s biggest gift shop. As studios announce their immense Hollywood slates, comic creators fill artists’ alley and passionate readers, thinkers, and artists program panels, filling each and every ballroom in the San Diego Convention Center. 2022 marks the return of the full convention, after a small “Special Edition” last November, for the first time since 2019. While the city of San Diego is “operating normally,” COVID-19 and the monkeypox outbreak — which was designated a global health emergency during the weekend the convention took place — are still a real threat. So what does San Diego Comic-Con look like in 2022? And was it worth the wait? It depends on who you ask and what brought them to pop culture’s most famous gathering.

If you’ve ever been to SDCC in the last 10 years then you’ll know that just walking around the city can be a feat. That was noticeably easier this year with the usually mobbed areas of the Gaslamp Quarter like Fifth Avenue and J Street, and even the outside of the convention center itself, pretty easy to traverse. Pre-COVID, SDCC annually brought in over 130,000 people and was expected to do the same this time around, but it did feel considerably less busy than previous years. It made it a decidedly more pleasant and less stressful version of pop culture’s busiest weekend.

That doesn’t mean SDCC didn’t feel overwhelming in the face of COVID-19 and three years of social distancing. Cosplayer Brenden Keller — who’d crafted a very impressive Qrow costume including a