A Quiet SDCC Still Finds a Way to Give Fans Unique Experiences | Festivals & Awards

Hall H is usually a four-day affair, with friends and family planning on camping out under the tents, but the tents were mostly empty on Saturday. There were no Hall H panels for Sunday. The convention center lobby was crowded on Saturday but not packed. The big winner was Paramount and its Star Trek properties. My friends who were Star Trek cosplayers and fans, some of who would be attending the Creation Entertainment Star Trek Las Vegas Convention at the Rio All-Suites Hotel & Casino in Nevada next month (August 3-6) were delighted, even if the Saturday panel, “William Shatner: You Can Call Me Bill” went on without Captain Kirk himself. 

Crunchyroll, which had hosted a large concert at SDCC last year, helped keep attendees fit with one-hour anime-inspired exercise sessions, Crunchyroll’s Ultimate Anime Fitness Challenge at Hardcore Fitness, a short walk from the convention center, on Friday and Saturday. Who doesn’t need more exercise?  

Even the Comic-Con Museum had a low-key presence. Last year, the main exhibit was for Spider-Man, and Spider-Man’s induction to the Comic-Con Museum Character Hall of Fame was a big bash held on preview night (July 20, 2022). This year, the museum’s special exhibits that opened with SDCC were modest displays: “Excelsior! The Live and Legacy of Stan Lee,” “Cowboy Bebop 25th Anniversary Art Exhibition,” “My Hero Academia Installation,” and the “Comic-Con Masquerade” expansion. The main exhibit, the interactive “The Animation Academy: From Pencils to Pixels,” had opened in February (running until September 10, 2023). 

Some panels still went on, but their stars were the artists, writers of books and comic strips and even scientists. Fans of the HBO TV series “The Last of Us” could learn how Hollywood and the real world differ from an expert or about fungi from expert Justin Schaffer, ecologist Earyn McGee, biomedical engineer Ana Maria Porras, forest ecologist Lindsey Rustad, public health expert Kari Sant, and science education expert Lisa Lundgren in the panel “Fear and Fungi: Science of  ‘The Last of Us'”

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