SDCC ’25: I got to wear my Eisner dress again!

San Diego Comic-Con 2025 has come and gone and everyone has already posted their Instas and TikToks. I’m the last to write my con report, probably when no one cares, but in my defense, I was living in the moment. This was my 40 year anniversary of my first SDCC, when as I recall I trained down and walked to the Hotel San Diego from the train station. I was wearing my dinosaur miniskirt from Esprit and some construction workers called me “Puta!” I had no friends, only acquaintances (mostly talked to on the phone due to my work for Amazing Heroes). I might be mixing things up in my mind but I definitely met Alan Moore on his one and only trip to San Diego. We had the same overzealous fan and compared notes on that. Marvel had a party at the Westgate hotel, which had a retractable roof, and someone introduced me to Stan Lee. I had breakfast with Bob Burden while Peter Bagge and Matt Groening (way pre Simpsons) were having breakfast on the other side of the stanchion. I seem to recall Kyle Baker stopped by, who I had never met, and he introduced himself as a 19-year old phenom.

The con was then held at what is now known as Golden Hall and had an attendance of about 5,000 people. It was just for comics, but then, as now, a contingent of Science Fiction and movie guests and fans attended. According to Wikipedia, the guests that year were Ben Bova, Jack Cummings, Jack Davis, Gil Kane, Harvey Kurtzman, Alan Moore, Dan O’Bannon, Jerry Ordway, Alex Schomburg, Julius Schwartz, Jerry Siegel, Louise Simonson and Walt Simonson. I made friends with the few other women pros involved, like Cat Yronwode, Jackie Estrada, Carol Kalish and so on.

It was a good time.

Jump cut 40 years! I’ve changed and so has the con!

There’s kind of a consensus among folks that Comic-Con peaked in the 2010-14 period, as far as movie stars and camping out overnight and all that crazy stuff go. 2010 was PEAK Con for me – from Scott Pilgrim to a day long quest for food at the Wired Cafe. By 2019, the last con before COVID, I noted things had quieted down, but novelist Audrey Niffenegger gave me an observation that I still think about.

But then she brought up the thing I had been seeing all weekend — the way that we step foot in San Diego and enter an alternate world, where nothing has changed since the last time we were there a year ago.

Niffenegger had picked up on the same phenomenon. “It’s almost as if coming here is about you having a separate self, and the people here are the only ones who can see your separate self,” she told me.

As I have more and more Comic-Cons under my belt and as I get older, this phenomenon gets stronger and stronger. I wrote about it in my account of Comic-Con Special Edition, the Thanksgiving show that was the one and only time to see Christmas decor mingling with SDCC stuff.

How many times over the last 30 years I had walked from the Hyatt to the Marriott, always with a different cast of characters, but the sidewalks still the same? John [Layman] and I started talking about how every corner of the con and the city held some memory…meeting an old friend, meeting someone you had never met but always wanted to, seeing some costume or activation you never dreamed of. A hall where I remember talking to Jack Kirby for the last time, a lobby where I shared a moment with Frank Miller, the table where I met Margaret Atwood. The time traffic stopped because a Canada goose was crossing the street. Comic-Con is so intense. You can have five life-changing moments in an hour, and it happens over and over for five days.

Doing some rough maths, let’s say I’ve been to 39 SDCCs, minus the two year pandemic break, but including Special Edition. Maybe I went four days, maybe I went five days. Now I go for a week. Let’s round it out to 4.5 days. That’s 171 days at SDCC or five months of my life. No wonder I know the streets so well.

The thing is, the more Comic-Con’s I go to, the more my schedule stays the same. Traditions. If, Crom willing, I’m at SDCC ‘26, if you ask what I will be doing on Thursday night, I will probably be at the CBLDF party. Friday morning I will be at the retailer breakfast. Sunday night I’ll be having a wrap-up dinner with some of the same people I’ve been having dinner with for 30 years.

Most people have these con traditions…and it’s not just the comics folks. I know we like to keep the Comic in Comic-Con, but it must be admitted that it is now a cultural phenomenon that touches people from other tribes of the con. I’ve talked to enough folks from the toy, activation and media side of things to know that their traditions are also precious to them. They love Comic-Con, too. And so do the 135,000 fans. They have their moments and traditions and memories that are extremely meaningful to them.

Somehow it all combines in a delirious miasma. It is joyful and one of a kind, an experience like no other.

As my Wrestlemania/Super Bowl/Academy Awards, the preparation is grueling. But a kind of strange thing happened this year for me. I always plan ahead – I have a whole staff of writers and a media room video crew to take care of so details about making sure they have badges, access, meals, etc takes up a lot of time. But for me, it’s kind of ONE BIG EXPERIENCE. From the moment I walk out the door of my apartment at an ungodly early hour to catch a Lyft to the train station to get to the airport to the weary moment a cab drops me off at my door 7 or 10 days later, I am in the zone. The goal is survival. The goal is getting through the schedule.I have my marks to hit, and when I hit them it’s on to the next one 15 or 30 or 60 minutes later.

Just to give one example, for this show I bought a new, larger suitcase because I had so much stuff to lug it made more sense to just check it (I’m a carry-on woman most of the time.) From the moment I bought this larger suitcase, my mind was filled with anxious thoughts: “How am I going to get it up the three flights of stairs to my walk up apartment if it’s full of all the stuff I got at Comic-Con?”

This thought hit me several times – nay, many times – over the course of my trip, and I partially alleviated it by mailing myself a package of the books I picked up. But my suitcase still weighed 40 lbs, and in my exhausted dehydrated post-redeye flight home, getting it up the stairs was indeed a horrible experience.

Multiply that by 100 anxious thoughts and you have my con. So, it’s weird. The key to a successful Comic-Con is hitting those marks, surmounting those obstacles, but the FUN is the things you don’t expect. And you just never know what they are going to be.

But this Comic-Con was a very special one for me because I beat the final two boss levels of Comic-Con. And that will never happen again.

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BUT HOW WAS THE SHOW?

Before I get to that, how did this Comic-Con stack up? Although publishers reported that people bought a lot of books, it was obvious that Hollywood’s woes and the Diamond Bankruptcy definitely had an effect on the show. A lot of people said the show floor was less crowded….I’m not sure I noticed that but a lot of people said it. The line of people sleeping out – something they don’t have to do but it’s their own Final Boss, and I respect them for it – was very small. There was really nothing to sleep out for except George Lucas.

One post on Twitter got a lot of play. Someone named GeekyHooker said ​​”There were definite signs of the current economic situation at SDCC this year. Just a few to note: no elevator wraps, no offsite setups across from the Omni or behind the Marriott, no IMDBoat, and all those cool enamel pins that I love collecting as freebies were notably replaced with buttons. No major street teams to speak of aside from Brawl Stars, don’t recall any cool art gallery pop-ups in the Gaslamp either. It was a good time, but pretty glaring signs that things are rough right now.”

This got a sharp retort from Gary Miereanu, a name some may not know, but he is generally known as “The Mayor of Comic-Con” and someone I respect a lot.

He wrote, “Bad take from an obviously limited perspective. More promo $$$ spent on SDCC 2025 than any year in the past decade, including huge ad buys (even by studios w/out a Hall H panel), nearly 20% more panel giveaways, several elevator wraps, room key buyouts, activations & parties.”

I have to agree with Gary here. Money was spent – and inflation definitely played a part in the huge spend – but it was spent differently. Ever since COVID, the activations have gotten more and more elaborate, and 2025’s were full on theme park experiences, from Twisted Metal’s go karts to the Alien Earth activation which I heard was spectacular. I didn’t get to see it alas, but people said it was actually scary. The Paramount Lodge, another expansive experience included activities for Star Trek, Mission Impossible and Dexter and a combination fan/phone charger giveaway that doesn’t make sense but I treasure it.

It is true that the sheer sprawling spectacle of Comic-Con has shrunk a bit. When Conan O’Brien did a week’s shows from the con, his ginger visage greeted you at the airport luggage carousel. The airport is notably con-free these days, although you always run into folks on your flight. Back in the day there were occasional activations as far up as Broadway, but now they are mostly in the tight Gaslamp/Hilton area. But as noted, they are far more elaborate now.

I attribute most of this to the contraction and confusion in Hollywood these days, with streaming taking over, cable dead, and apparently, Marvel movies as well. This also has an effect on the comics publishing industry: the option-to-streamer pipeline has dried up, and this results in less money for creators and publishers and fewer books sold.

But publishing is still a profitable business at least for the moment. One of my favorite venues in San Diego is the San Diego Wine and Culinary Events Center, located right by the railroad tracks on that walk between Fifth Avenue and First Avenue. It first got on my radar in 2011 (peak Comic-Con!) as the home of TR!CKSTER, an indie comics event. In subsequent years Hollywood discovered it and it was the home base for South Park and many other activations every year, for a LOT of money. Until this year when it was the site of the party for 23rd Street, First Second’s adult imprint. And a swell party it was! That a prime venue stood mostly empty except for a book launch was definitely a sign of the times.

As for comics, the dearth of major news is most likely the fallout from the Diamond Situation. Even if it wasn’t an extinction level event for most publishers, it’s still been a huge distraction. At least, I hope that’s all it is.

There were some oddities on the show floor that were attributable to Diamond. DSTLRY’s booth was a big empty space on the floor – a shocking sight. My understanding is that another publisher was going to take it over, but the short time frame proved to be too much. DSTLRY, which has a lot of inventory tied up in the liquidation mess, also skipped their traditional dead dog party, leaving a gaping hole in the schedule for some enterprising souls to take over. Nobody did this time, so we just lingered at dinner and then went out for gelato.

As I reported, the Diamond booth itself was just a showcase for some other businesses owned by Ad Populum. No business was done and it was just a weird monument to this whole strange affair. It’s sad because SDCC has a huge waiting list for booths – maybe next year we’ll see fresh faces.

The oddest booth of all was in the spot long held by New England Comics, right in the front of the hall where you walk in, and previously in front of the long ago DC booth. I made jokes about the NEC booth for years, because they had obviously stored their 90s booth in a local warehouse and as the years went on it became more and more of an anachronistic throwback. I don’t exactly recall what was there in years past but in 2025 it was just a table selling stickers for $3 each. Not special stickers, either just lots and lots of stickers. The table was run by some folks from Colombia, and they said they were there to make money and have fun, just like everyone else. I have no idea what was really going on but it was weird.

But if these booths were odd, the show floor still held two of the most wondrous sights that Comic-Con has ever beheld. As we noted in our Winners and Losers post, the Galactus cosplay was breathtaking and made for an unforgettable sight.

Even more city in a bottle was the Lego Comic-Con, which even included a Lego model of the Lego booth with an even tinier model of Comic-Con. I didn’t think my “SDCC is a magical world we only travel to once a year” take could be made manifest but Lego did it.

I’m sure there were other things that happened, and other gossip and observations that will filter down to me as everyone recovers and starts chatting again, but this seemed to me to be a Comic-Con that stripped things down to basics again, although on an elevated scale. That George Lucas talking about his future museum of comics and science fiction was the biggest event in Hall H seemed very fitting.

But I missed all of that because, as mentioned, I had my own agenda.

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FINAL BOSS #1

My first final boss was taking the stage in Hall H on Thursday as the moderator for the Mechanical Cake panel. This is the comic book company that has involvement from Ridley Scott. I was asked to do it and said yes – Ridley Scott! – before I knew about Johnny Depp’s involvement in the company’s Hyde project. I decided to proceed with the plan, although with a lot of misgivings, for several reasons, but for the purpose of this con report, I’ll leave it at this: Hall H, Final Boss. As a lifelong scholar of comic-cons and comics culture, I had to pierce the veil. When they tell you never to cross the streams, you have to find out what happens when you cross the streams.

I was understandably apprehensive about getting on stage in front of a room that holds 6500 people. (Neither Scott nor Depp was on the panel. Thank god.) I moderated a panel in one of the big halls once before – the Legendary Comics panel in the Sapphire Ballroom at the Hilton. I think it was 2011 (peak Comic-Con!) and the prep for this event was arduous to say the least. The reason I was nervous this time wasn’t necessarily being in front of a Hall H crowd – I’m a ham and crowds don’t frighten me – it was that a) it’s a big stage with lots of A/V and moving parts, and b) people in Hall H expect some kind of spectacle. Would I be able to play my part?

I’m not going to give a blow by blow account of the process because you need to preserve some mystique, i.e. security, honestly. But the whole thing went off like clockwork, security was very smooth and alert, handlers handled, and we all had our notes for the panel. It was a cold open, so I had to walk across the stage, go to the mic and introduce myself and the panel, and yeah, my heart was pounding as I took that walk and it seemed endless. But after I introduced the panel and looked at my notes I realized…hey it’s just another panel about a comic book company. Suddenly my concerns were just hitting the timing marks, making sure everyone got a chance to speak, making sure audience questions flowed smoothly…the usual. Just a bigger audience.

I do have to mention one thing: on this occasion, the legendary Hall H Green Room was bereft of everything but the barest of catering: water and coffee. One of the helpers went to get me a convention center pretzel while we waited to go on stage and that is my food of last resort. I’m sure when the casts of Thunderbolts and Fantastic Four went on last year, there was more of a spread.

One Final Boss was down.

I think there are three Final Bosses at Comic-Con: being on stage in Hall H is one and the EW party on Saturday night is another. I went to that twice back in the day (peak Comic-Con!) when it was the EW/SciFi party and there were a lot more movie stars. Even that party has calmed down a lot over the years, and folks who went in 2025 told me the food was not great: pretzels. I’m sure there was more food than that but you get the point.

Okay, so two Final Boses down.

The third Final Boss was winning an Eisner Award, and spoiler, I did. I wrote about the Eisners last year when the Best Journalistic Presentation Award was going to be eliminated. The judges decided to keep it around long enough for me to win.

When the nominees were announced, the Beat staff felt certain that Zdarsky Comics News would win because, hey he’s a star, and it’s also print, which the awards favor. As the months went by, so many people told me they had voted for me that I began to think we had a chance. But I still didn’t want to jinx it. I was nominated before, in 2011 and 2012 (Peak Comic-Con!) but I didn’t think I had a shot either time and I was right. This time, I knew I was the favorite, and yes, going up to accept an Eisner Award is definitely something you think about over the years. So you think I would have had a speech written or ready. But I didn’t want to jinx it, so I just jotted down some notes, especially the names of the editorial staff who really have been doing the heavy lifting for a few years now.

But in the moment, you never know what is going to happen. My table was far from the stage and I’d noticed that it took a long time for people to get up there – the music would keep playing but the applause would die and then have to start again. It was a little awkward. If I did win, I was determined to get up there as quickly as possible so people wouldn’t feel weird.

So when Bob Burden, of all people, announced “The Beat!”, in the heat of the moment I jogged up to the stage. I would like to say I ran, but that would have been dangerous. They say in intense moments time stands still, and as I made my jog or run or whatever that’s exactly what happened. It’s all kind of hazy but I think the Beat’s win got a pretty good pop, and as I ran people were giving me high fives. It’s still surreal when I think about it. Being on stage in front of a few thousand people in Hall H hadn’t really made me nervous, but talking in a room full of my peers? Terrifying.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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I don’t remember much of what happened on stage, because I was so happy. I was happy for me, of course, but I was also happy for all the editors and writers at the Beat because…we really love comics. We do.

And there was my whole life in that room. It wasn’t just Bob Burden and Eddie Campbell – who I met at my first Comic-Con – standing there, and Jackie being nearby and Karen Green greeting me as I came off stage, it was the whole world, the whole cosmos, the whole community, the whole tribe, all the people and creations I’ve spent my entire adult life surrounded by. To be recognized by them was a feeling like nothing I have ever experienced.

I was so happy that Zack Quaintance and Ollie Kaplan and Ricky Serrano and Taimur Dar were also there to share the moment (and Johanna Draper Carlson and Brigid Alverson, also Beat contributors and my Four Women in a Hotel Room podcast comrades.) And then seeing so many people afterwards…too many to name. So yeah, I was just happy. I still am.

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And now a flashback. I looked up the previous winners of the Best Comics-Related Periodical/Journalism award, and crossed out those no longer around or on hiatus.

· 1992 Comics Buyer’s Guide (Krause)

· 1993 Comics Buyer’s Guide (Krause Publications)

· 1995 Hero Illustrated (Warrior Publications)

· 1996 The Comics Journal (Fantagraphics)

· 1997 The Comics Journal (Fantagraphics)

· 1998 The Comics Journal (Fantagraphics)

· 1999 The Comics Journal (Fantagraphics)

· 2000 Comic Book Artist (TwoMorrows)

· 2002 Comic Book Artist (TwoMorrows)

· 2004 Comic Book Artist, edited by Jon B. Cooke (Top Shelf)

· 2005 Comic Book Artist, edited by Jon B. Cooke (Top Shelf)

· 2006 Comic Book Artist, edited by Jon B. Cooke (Top Shelf)

· 2007 Alter Ego, edited by Roy Thomas (TwoMorrows)

· 2008 Newsarama, produced by Matt Brady and Michael Doran

· 2009 Comic Book Resources, produced by Jonah Weiland

· 2010 The Comics Reporter, produced by Tom Spurgeon

· 2011 Comic Book Resources, www.cbr.com

· 2012 The Comics Reporter, produced by Tom Spurgeon, www.comicsreporter.com

· 2013 The Comics Reporter, edited by Tom Spurgeon, www.comicsreporter.com

· 2014 Comic Book Resources, www.cbr.com

· 2015 ComicsAlliance, edited by Andy Khouri, Caleb Goellner, Andrew Wheeler, and Joe Hughes, www.comicsalliance.com

· 2016 Hogan’s Alley, edited by Tom Heintjes, cartoonician.com

· 2017 The A.V. Club comics coverage, (Comics Panel, Back Issues, and Big Issues, by Oliver Sava et al.), www.avclub.com

· 2018 The Comics Journal,edited by Dan Nadel, Timothy Hodler, and Tucker Stone, tcj.com (Fantagraphics)

· 2019 (tie)

· Back Issue, edited by Michael Eury (TwoMorrows)

· PanelxPanel magazine, edited by Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou, panelxpanel.com

· 2020 Women Write About Comics, edited by Nola Pfau and Wendy Browne, www.womenwriteaboutcomics.com

· 2021 Women Write About Comics, edited by Nola Pfau and Wendy Browne, www.womenwriteaboutcomics.com

· 2022 Women Write About Comics, edited by Wendy Browne and Nola Pfau, www.womenwriteaboutcomics.com

· 2023 PanelXPanel magazine, edited by Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou and Tiffany Babb (panelxpanel.com)

· 2024 The Comics Journal #309; edited by Gary Groth, Kristy Valenti, and Austin English (Fantagraphics)

· 2025 The Beat, edited by Heidi MacDonald and others, https://www.comicsbeat.com

I didn’t cross out CBR, but it’s unlikely to win any awards these days. The AV Club barely has any comics coverage any more, so you could also strike that one out. That leaves me and The Comics Journal, where I got my start, and a few dogged veterans: Back Issue, Alter Ego and Hogan’s Alley. This is a sobering tally, to be sure. I think maybe I got an Eisner just for surviving and that’s good enough for me.

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THE AFTERMATH

I spent SDCC Comic-Con living in the moment, as I mentioned, because I have 40 Comic-Cons behind me but I don’t have 40 in front of me. I was determined to let the experience unfold in its own pace and to enjoy all the moments. And I did. But it was another unlikely source that kind of put it into perspective for me, AEW’s former world champion, Swerve Strickland, who came to our media room for an interview. I asked kind of the most basic question, how on earth do wrestlers tell stories while doing such dangerous things?

“It literally becomes like breathing,” he said. “It’s like Peter Parker putting on his mask to be Spider Man. He’s always Spider Man, no matter what he’s wearing, but when the red light turns on, you jump into the action of it. It’s literally speaking a universal language that only we understand as performers and wrestlers. As much as fans do the research and listen to the interviews and the documentaries, you still won’t know and grasp the true concept of it until you literally learn it and get into our world. Throw out everything that you think you know, and learn something fresh and new. And then it gets to where we’re not just going out and doing it, we’re experiencing it. Sometimes we’re getting something fresh from the crowd that we didn’t even think of. Now that story changes. Now the jokes change. Now the characters evolve in front of you.”

Swerve didn’t know it, but he was describing my own attempt to be in the moment. That was my Comic-Con, minus the tornado DDTs.

A couple more things: I also appeared on several other panels, and what an honor to do TWO great panels with legendary women.

The fun is the unexpected part. I mentioned my Sunday night dinner, which kind of put my Eisner win in perspective. I was waiting for our table (which was not ready despite my having paid a $50 deposit AND talked to the manager in person AND told the hostess in advance!) with Peter Kuper, Barbara Randall and Todd Klein and his brother (whose name I’ve forgotten I’m so sorry!!!). Todd is a newly inducted Hall of Famer – well deserved. As we waited I asked how many Eisner’s everyone had. None, said Barbara, one, said Peter.

“How many do you have, Todd?” I asked.

“I think nineteen.“

“So….between the five of us we have an average of FOUR Eisners each!”

As I also mentioned, we went out for gelato afterwards, and as we were leaving I ran into Bryan Lee O’Malley, who was also getting gelato. Just like that long ago breakfast at the Hotel San Diego with Bob Burden, you never know who you will run into at Comic-Con and that is the magic.

And now I must relate maybe the most weirdly surreal thing about the whole weekend. It just so happened that the New York Mets were playing the Padres the next night, and they were staying at the same hotel as me. I am a big Mets fan in case you don’t know. It was truly a bizarre experience to slowly see the comics fans replaced by people in Mets regalia. Unfortunately ESPN put the Mets Giants game on Sunday night, so they got to the hotel very late. I actually missed seeing them arrive by a few minutes when I got to my hotel….but I did see their luggage. And somehow knowing Francisco Lindor was somewhere near me and going to the same coffee shop in the morning was the perfect transition back to the “normal” world. Sports fans are a very different tribe than Comic-conners.

But I never want to go back to the normal world fully. I want to always have that magic place and that magical time. As grueling and stressful as SDCC is to pull it all off…the struggle is part of what makes it so magical.

Reddit is the front page of the internet more than ever and there were a lot of posts about Comic-Con, some of which I’m still analyzing, But there was this one in response to the question “Why do you keep going to SDCC?” that nailed it for me:

13 consecutive years going now with my wife. We love San Diego. We love the Gaslamp. We love the walkability of it all. It’s the one time of the year we feel and think about only one thing, Comic-Con. Nothing else matters while we are there. That’s why we continue to go back and will until we cannot either financially or physically.

It’s our ultimate escapism from normal life. Nothing comes close.

Nothing comes close.

Thank you for reading this, if you managed to get this far. Thank you Deanna, Zack, Hayame, Ollie, Avery, Taimur, Masha and Ricky for keeping the Beat pounding and for loving comics. Thank you to all our wonderful writers, too many to mention, for doing great award-winning work. Thank you Brigid and Johanna and Deb. Thank you all. Stay magical.

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I took many many many photos and maybe I’ll do a gallery at some point, but a few key ones.

Security was a hassle again, and they wouldn’t let retailers in to the annual retailer breakfast. I managed to dodge security and got there early enough to toast my bagel. I never did that before! Fourth final boss! 

This kitten definitely won Comic-Con

After the Eisner’s with now Hall of Famer Kyle Baker and Bob Fingerman – what a long strange trip, etc etc.

A saw signs for something called “Grandma’s Pizza” and saw people eating it in the convention center and it looked kinda good and I was hungry but it was not good. Just a huge piece of bread with a little sauce on it. And it cost $15. Never again. The whole Grandma branding definitely sucked me in – and I was told that was just for Comic-Con 

The key to staying hydrated at SDCC is doing a lot of panels because they give you a bottle of water at each one. 

Ourhotel was across from the Predator activation which had a constant “BOOM! DOOM! BOOM!” sound coming from it. Ratcheted up the tension very well. 

 

My penultimate morning at Comic-Con I finally had the pumpkin waffles at Cafe 222. Worth the wait. 

And that’s a wrap SDCC 2025!