Dork Storm 2026: Dorkrooms

Comic-Con begins today. I knew it was coming but at the same time, it took me a little bit by surprise, in part because it seems like July has just flown by, but also because the run up to Comic-Con feels…muted, compared to what it was a decade ago. I would like to talk about that, because Comic-Con used to be a big red circle on the calendar.

Some of it could be just plain getting older and losing interest in things that entertained me 20 years ago. Which is fair and how it should be! Some things you like forever, others you pick and put down throughout different phases of your life. That’s just how time and maturity and interests wax and wane. But I used to take Comic-Con Friday off work, no matter how great or not my personal interest was, because I knew Friday would be a steady stream of news, trailers, and photos to cover for the site. Then, I would write all weekend, keeping up with the news from Saturday and Sunday.

But I haven’t taken Comic-Con Friday off work since before the pandemic, and I don’t feel as much pressure to cover every little bit of news coming out of San Diego. Don’t get me wrong, there will be news this weekend. Marvel will be doing their once perennial, now semi-annual Saturday evening presentation in Hall H, which should bring some updates on the state of the MCU. Though I wonder what kind of footage they will have, given that they already released a new trailer for Avengers: Doomsday, and the final trailer for Spider-Man: Brand New Day, earlier this week.

Comic-Con was big in the 2000s when I was going every year, and then it exploded in the late 2000s, driven by a trifecta of major contributors: the popularity of Twilight, which had a fanatical reception at the 2008 convention, the rise of superhero cinema, and the explosion of social media. By the 2010s, when I was covering Comic-Con for this site, Hall H had become an extravaganza, and trailers and footage were regularly released online, fueled by likes and shares on social media. It was a natural evolution that, as social media became integrated into digital communication, studios started directly feeding with Comic-Con-branded exclusives.

But then, the bubble popped. Twilight tricked everyone into thinking there was a “Comic-Con bump” at the box office, only for a series of films that were well received in San Diego to go on to disappoint, or outright flop, at the box office. Man of Steel is a prime example of this, but that phenomenon also includes Scott Pilgrim vs. the World and Tron: Legacy (I stand by that soundtrack, though).

By the late 2010s, the people behind Comic-Con started approaching Comic-Con differently. They re-emphasized the in-person event, even before we got a reminder of how special that is via the pandemic. Comic-Con became so huge and expensive, Hall H so hard to get into, that they wanted to prioritize the in-person experience, to make it special and exclusive and not something that someone sitting at home could easily replicate. And that’s totally fair! I actually agree with that decision!

As for Hollywood, once they had enough data to prove that there is no “Comic-Con bump” (in fact, Hall H enthusiasm can be a trap that makes you think you have a hit when you, in fact, do NOT), they started pulling back on Hall H presentations. Marvel skipped in 2018, then came back in 2019 to announce a bunch of new projects, including Black Widow, which was hamstrung by the pandemic, and Mahershala Ali’s Blade, which is seemingly never happening. They also skipped in 2023 and 2025. DC Studios, preoccupied with filming Man of Tomorrow right now, is skipping this year (though there are several DC television/animated panels).

Marvel is returning this year, with Spider-Man: Brand New Day opening just a week later, and Doomsday on the horizon, and they are going BIG. But Page Six ran a piece this week stating that despite Marvel’s big return, “insiders are lukewarm on Comic-Con”. I mean, yeah, it’s a marketing event that costs an enormous amount of money and only pays off 50% of the time, at best.

But this is what I’m talking about—Comic-Con doesn’t actually help box office, not enough to make the marketing spend worth it. And in a time when audiences are antsy and losing interest in superheroes, it looks like an even bigger risk. It might be worth it to Apple to bring Widow’s Bay to Hall H and celebrate the show’s breakout success and nurture the fanbase as we settle in to wait for season two, but even that is a calculated risk, though it makes more sense to me than Marvel dropping seven figures to advertise a movie that already has full market saturation.

I do understand that they’re trying to recapture interest and dominate the cultural conversation the way they did in the early 2010s, when I was taking Comic-Con Friday off work and writing through the weekend. I just don’t think they can do it. There is no more awareness to be raised, and social media has evolved to the point that we are past being wowed by marketing stunts. It’s not special to see a bunch of actors unite on stage anymore. We’re too used to it.

None of this is to say Comic-Con will not be absolutely huge on the ground. It WILL. Literally hundreds of thousands of people will be there, and most of them will have a good time. If I still lived in LA, I would absolutely go myself, to wander artist’s alley if nothing else (it’s a great place to find unique gifts for the geeks in your life.) But the online pandemonium Comic-Con once caused is over, and I don’t think anything can recapture it, not even Marvel stunting big in Hall H. Much like blockbuster cinema, we’re in something of a holding pattern, waiting for the Next Thing to emerge to entertain us.

Lucie asked a question for the Squawk mailbag that I think fits here better: What are you most looking forward to at Comic-Con? Any predictions?

I am looking forward to any news, particularly a timeline, about Widow’s Bay season two. Spaceballs: The New One has a panel on Friday, I expect a trailer, it’s just a question of whether or not it gets released online (I think it will because they sent out the teaser poster earlier this week, a sure sign that something bigger and shareable is coming soon). There is also a panel for Buddy, a feature film from Casper Kelly, who made Too Many Cooks. WTF is this? I would love to know more, but again, they’ve already dropped the trailer this week, so I’m not sure we’ll get much else, footage-wise.

Yaga, the series co-starring Hudson Williams as his follow-up to Heated Rivalry, also has a panel, but currently Williams is not confirmed to attend. Noah Reid is, though, so let me just say here that my only Heated Rivalry casting opinion is that he should play Coach Wiebe. Finally, Marc Maron is appearing in the Hilton Bayfront’s Indigo Ballroom today for a panel looking back at his seminal podcast, WTF, and the very idea of Marc Maron trying to cope with Comic-Con, even from across the street, is inherently funny to me. And my only prediction is that everything about Spaceballs will be calculated for maximum online effect, but I remain leery of comedy sequels, in general. Fool me twice, and all that.