SDCC 2021 Was Another Letdown, But Here’s What You Missed

SDCC 2021 Was Another Letdown, But Here’s What You Missed

Another San Diego Comic-Con come and gone. But… did you even notice?

SDCC was instead the virtual “Comic-Con @ Home” for a second year in a row — due to the ongoing global pandemic of course. We were fairly critical about how it all played out last year but gave the con team lot of credit considering how fast the annual entertainment convention needed to adapt. But after a whole year and several other more engaging virtual cons — New York Comic Con, DC Fandome, and even a Walt Disney investors call — SDCC was a bust once more.

We spoke to the organisers prior to the show and we didn’t get the impression they were planning for that much more than last year. We thought (and hoped) the non-profit would at least take advantage of YouTube’s “premiere” option to make things feel more lively. It did not. SDCC’s communications and strategy officer, David Glanzer, told us the con didn’t have the resources to do true livestreamed panels but, again, this meant that everything was pre-recorded way in advance… which also meant having a breaking news aspect was basically out of the question. Even today you could see some news dropping that absolutely would have been part of an in-person con — a new Exorcist trilogy, a live-action Pokémon show on Netflix — had it existed.

Besides the lacklustre (and often late) drop of panels, fans seemed overall disengaged with the weekend event. Regardless of whether or not you watched, there really was a great deal of footage and news, and seeing as how it’s become harder to find what you want on our site as of late, we’ve gone ahead and collected all of our SDCC 2021 articles in this (brief) slideshow for you.

What did we learn before SDCC 2021?

What movie news did we learn at SDCC 2021?

Screenshot: Fox
Screenshot: Fox

There wasn’t a huge film studio presence at Comic-Con @ Home but a few fun projects popped up. Personally, I still can’t believe we don’t have a trailer for the Bob’s Burgers movie yet…

What TV news did we learn at SDCC 2021?

Screenshot: AMC
Screenshot: AMC

On the TV side of things, The Walking Dead universe made its traditional con appearance but we didn’t get that Wheel of Time trailer we were hoping for. Here’s what else we saw.

What comic and book news did we learn at SDCC 2021?

Image: Titan Comics
Image: Titan Comics

There were a lot of publishing panels at SDCC but we didn’t have time for all of them. Here are a few we were able to check out.

What animation news did we learn at SDCC 2021?

Screenshot: Disney
Screenshot: Disney

Animation can fall under a few categories of course, but since there was so much of it at the show this year, it gets its own!

Bonus (because it didn’t fit anywhere else):

Magic: The Gathering’s New Dungeons & Dragons Set Was Almost Not Nearly D&D Enough

Did you tune in to Comic-Con @ Home this year? What did you make of it?