Promoters of the L.A. Comic Con have announced a public event for December 11-13 at the Los Angeles Convention Center. In this item here, I mentioned that they had yet to announce any guests. Well, they have now…Frank Miller on Saturday and the cast of My Hero Academia on Saturday and Sunday. Over on this page, they list all the things they're doing to try and make the event safe for attendees.
One line there says, "With input from the City, County & State, we will continue to adapt L.A. Comic Con to be both super FUN and diligently SAFE." I don't know if they've spoken to anyone at the city or county levels but we now have California Health and Human Services Secretary Dr. Mark Ghaly saying that to his knowledge, no one associated with the event has consulted with him.
The state's counties are classified via a four-tier system which decides the threat of COVID-1 is widespread (purple), substantial (red), moderate (orange) or minimal (yellow). According to this report, "…guidance for convention centers should also be out soon and that could possibly provide a road map for reopening, but they will not be in the purple tier and most likely not in the red tier where indoor and outdoor concert venues remain closed." So maybe the convention will have to move wholly online or postpone or maybe Frank Miller, properly masked and sanitized, will come to your homes to sign stuff.
A few folks wrote to ask what the odds were of me attending. They're about the same as the odds of Donald Trump getting the black vote because they agree no one since Abraham Lincoln has done as much for their people. My non-attendance is partly because of the COVID thing, partly because they won't invite me, partly because I have no interest in attending and partly because as I've been stating on this blog for years, "I've always thought the L.A. Convention Center is a real terrible place with a confusing and fragmented floor plan, horrible parking and ghastly traffic for some distance in any direction." That's a cut-and-paste from this blog post from 2015 but I said things like that many times before.
I would love to think that by the middle of December, the threat of the coronavirus will be so minimal, one could attend a public event like that without fear. I don't think it will be.