LA Comic-Con 2021 Returns Big to the LA Convention Center!

LA Comic-Con 2021 returns big to the LA Convention Center! With restrictions slowly lifting, people emerge to don cosplay and buy geeky stuff!

The last few months feel like a small world tour of my old convention center stomping grounds. With DesignerCon in Anaheim, San Diego Comic-Con Special Edition in (where else?) San Diego, and now LA Comic-Con the most obvious place, the Los Angeles Convention Center, it’s been an exciting experience retracing the steps I’ve taken for decades, but what feels like I haven’t done in so many years.

Los Angeles is my home turf, making the Los Angeles Convention Center my most visited con location for the last 17 years. I hit up E3 to explore my love of video games, Anime Expo for a taste of all things anime, manga, and some of the most insane cosplay I’ve ever seen, but when it comes to the comics and general pop culture scene, it’s all about LA Comic-Con. The big bonus is I can step into that world for three days and go home to sleep in my bed each night, unlike most cons I visit around the country.

With protections in place as required by the city and state for large gatherings like this, proof of vaccination requirements and masks in tow, the show went off without a hitch. It was actually bigger than the San Diego Comic-Con Special Edition that I enjoyed the previous weekend, with some saying that there were probably close to 100,000 people in attendance.

Between all of the masked attendees and cosplayers roaming the aisles, the main stage and the autograph area played host to numerous celebrity appearances like Ming-Na Wen from the “The Mandalorian” and the upcoming “Book of Boba Fett”, Zachary Levi (Flash, Chuck), a Smallville reunion with Tom Welling, Michael Rosenbaum, and John Glover, and comic book icons Rob Liefeld (Deadpool) and Frank Miller (The Dark Knight Returns, Sin City).

The West Hall became the new gaming and anime hall, packed with crowds hoping to win prizes from the Tiltify Arena Stage or in competition in the LAN party area. Voiceover actors known for both their gaming and anime characters were on hand to meet their fans and sign autographs, scattered between the anime themed installations.

And, of course, no matter where you turned, cosplayers filled in every available space, especially in the main South Hall lobby, posing for pictures for professional photographers and fans of the characters young and old. Friends of mine even traveled from San Diego to join the fun and dress up as Moon Knight and Doctor Strange, much to the appreciation of so many Marvel fans.

Of all the return-to-con experiences I’ve had in the last few months, this felt most like the most “back to normal”, even if it was still scaled down slightly from normal levels. I’m eager to someday put the risks to personal health and the necessary restrictions behind us and stepping back into the Con Life as it was, but hopefully in brand new ways so we never have to skip another LA Comic-Con ever again. Our community needs events like this. Here’s hoping things get better by the time 2022 rolls around. Geeks who take care of each other are always welcome on my home turf con.