If you hold an internet fan convention and there’s no one there to talk about it, does it make a noise?
That was the overwhelming experience with Comic-Con @ Home, the virtual fan convention that took place July 22-26. It was intended to replace San Diego Comic-Con, the massive annual gathering of fans that it was forced to cancel due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite the A-list panels for “The Walking Dead,” the Star Trek Universe and two Keanu Reeves movies, Comic-Con @ Home casts a pale shadow compared to Comic-Con in recent years, perhaps the best example of what we have seen. we lose when we lose the live experience.
According to data from social media analytics firm ListenFirst, tweets mentioning Comic-Con @ Home have decreased 95% since the 2019 live convention: only 93,681 tweets vs. 1,719,000 tweets in 2019. Tweets out of 10 Top TV events also decreased 93%, and Tweets about the top 5 movie panels fell a shocking 99%.
The views on YouTube, which hosted the vast majority of Comic-Con panels, were only slightly better. Average views for Thursday, which have had the longest period for people to see, are around 15,000 per panel. On the one hand, that’s more than double the capacity for Comic-Con’s largest live venue, the famous Hall H. On the other hand, 😬.
By far the best performing panel for Comic-Con @ Home was for “The New Mutants,” the 20th century Studios adaptation of Marvel Comics, which has had its release date four times since April 2018. To date, The film’s panel has logged more than 208,000 views on YouTube since July 23, thanks in large part to the decision to debut for the first time in the film’s opening scene within the panel.
Still, the success here is relative: The 50-second ad promoting the Comic-Con @ Home panel for “The New Mutants” has logged more than 303,000 visits in 11 days.
AMC’s “The Walking Dead” panel, which included the announcement that season 11 would be delayed due to the pandemic, was the strongest actor on television, recording more than 84,000 views on YouTube and generating nearly 11,900 tweets. The panels for the derivative shows “Fear the Walking Dead” and “The Walking Dead: World Beyond” were not so good, getting just over 66,000 visits and 21,000 visits respectively.
More importantly, none of the “Walking Dead” pre-recorded panels – in fact, none of the Comic-Con @ Home panels included any kind of interaction with fans – the most important reason for Comic’s 50-year success- With. Even the comment sections have been disabled for Comic-Con @ Home YouTube panels.
“Fans couldn’t talk to creators,” says ListenFirst marketing director Tracy David. “[It] it really deflated interest around the Comic-Con @ Home experiment. “
The lack of panels for Marvel Studios, Lucasfilm, and DC Films, events that have practically become synonymous with Comic-Con, certainly did not help increase general interest in Comic-Con @ Home. But there were also several weird missed opportunities to generate the kind of promotional buzz that made Comic-Con an essential pop culture event. The only major Marvel panel at Comic-Con @ Home, for Disney Plus “Marvel’s 616” docuseries on the company’s history, featured two clips from the show, which had already been released to YouTube the day before. Similarly, the new release date for “Bill & Ted Face the Music”, which will now open in premium video on demand and in select theaters on September 1, was announced two days before its eye-catching panel on Saturday.
And the massive Star Trek Universe panel spent 20 minutes on a live read of the teaser and the first act of the season 2 finale of “Star Trek: Discovery,” but found no time to announce genuine news that season three The show will premiere on October 15. Instead, that was done Monday through a press release.
Comic-Con @ Home didn’t even spawn the busiest fan event of the weekend. On Saturday, director Zack Snyder appeared at the independent JusticeCon fan convention to debut a short clip of his upcoming “Justice League” “Snyder Cut” that revealed Superman’s black suit. It should be noted that the panel, which registered more than 260,000 visits in less than 48 hours, I was live, allowing Snyder to spend nearly an hour interacting with the same fans that caused Snyder’s cut in the first place.
To be fair, with just a few months to prepare, the fact that Comic-Con @ Home has happened is a remarkable feat, and its organizers certainly tried to bring some of the Comic-Con experience to the computer screens of the fans. One of the core events of the convention, the annual masquerade ball, where hardcore cosplayers can showcase their lavishly creative costumes, moved into their natural online habitat, Tumblr. And organizers created an interactive map of the vast convention floor with links to exhibitors who have used the convention for decades as a vital source of income.
But a cold list of links is a hollow substitute for Comic-Con’s sensory overload on the floor, with thousands of convention goers passing everything from elaborate Superman and Batman costume displays to unassuming kiosks for publishers of independent comics. And if you can’t wander the San Diego Convention Center counting the number of Princess Leias, Black Panthers, and Wonder Women you see in one day, is it really Comic-Con?
In the past five months (has it really only been five months?), The entertainment industry has struggled to replicate live events within virtual space. But if Comic-Con @ Home accomplished anything, it was to reveal the abiding truth that there is no substitute for the live experience.
