This was Comic-Con #52 for me and one of the most enjoyable. A lot of folks felt that way and I see some online debates on whether that was because of the dearth of Big Stars or in spite of the dearth of Big Stars. Here's my take on it…
The Big Stars didn't matter. And to most of the 130,000+ attendees each year over the last decade or two, they never really have.
Here's an excerpt from Hollywood Reporter that, I think, gets it all wrong…
This was the year that San Diego Comic-Con was supposed to collapse. After all, with Hollywood studios pulling out and stars not able to promote their work, all due to the double whammy of the actors and writers strikes, why would people even bother to attend?
Well, about 150,000 attendees did, indeed, show up. There were no mass hotel cancellations nor mass refunds issued for badges, which were purchased months in advance. And an interesting thing happened on the way to the Comic-Con apocalypse. There was a renewed focus on comics and other graphic arts, even as Hollywood showed up in a diminished capacity.
Who said this was the year the con was supposed to collapse? Answer: The Hollywood Reporter and other outlets that don't seem to understand the event they cover every year. A more correct lede to the story would have acknowledged that all the talk about the con possibly being some kind of disaster was baseless and way off-target.
Comic-Con is one of the hottest tickets in this country. Each year when badges go on sale, they're snatched up faster than you can say "Clark Kent." People fight over them. There was never going to be a flood of mass refunds and if there had been, every one of those tickets would have been resold immediately.
Why do all these people want to be there? If you think it's just the previews of new movies, you don't "get" Comic-Con. It's that but it's also about comic books and comic strips and animation and gaming (video or otherwise) and fantasy art and cosplay and Star Trek and Star Wars and all kinds of collectibles and a dozen-or-so other things. Some don't interest me in the slightest just as some don't interest you in the slightest…and the beauty of Comic-Con is that they don't have to. You can just go for one or two of those interests and there's plenty about them there to keep you interested.
The strikes that kept the TV and movie promotions away were never going to doom Comic-Con. There are too many other things there for the absence of Hollywood to leave much of a void. The confusion is easily explainable: When the mainstream press covers Comic-Con, that's all they really care about. (Well, sometimes because the cosplayers make for good photo and video opportunities, the press cares a little about them. But that's about it.)
The "Comic-Con apocalypse" was, just like John F. Kennedy Jr. turning up alive to become Donald Trump's running mate, a wild fantasy. How ironic that it was about an institution than embraces and welcomes wild fantasies. But as far as I'm concerned, the lesson to be learned from the 2023 Comic-Con International is that the movie previews and TV personalities never mattered that much. Truth to tell, I'd be more worried for the future of Comic-Con if some year, there was no one in the building selling Funko Pop figurines.