Comic-Con Delivers Sci-Fi Magic Without Marvel

Comic-Con officially opened Thursday in San Diego, welcoming tens of thousands of fandom followers from all over the world—and there’s a special attendee this year that’s having lifelong fans particularly starry-eyed.

Sci-fi legend George Lucas will attend Comic-Con for the very first time this year, a historic moment for the pop culture convention that he’s never made it to in the past and that has a deep-rooted relationship with his franchises Star Wars and Indiana Jones.

The 2023 San Diego Comic-Con officially opened with Lucas, celebrating a 50-year legacy between his work in “storytelling, world-building, and visual effects” in a panel moderated by Queen Latifah. He will be joined by Mexican director Guillermo del Toro and Academy Award-winning artist Doug Chiang, who has been responsible for conceptualizing elements of the Star Wars Universe for more than 30 years.

The Sunday panel will be focused on Lucas’s new Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, which will open in Los Angeles next year. Lucas and his fellow panelists will be discussing the new museum’s focus on film, comics, and visual concept art to “pay homage to illustrated narrative and story.” The museum will also house an archive of Lucas’s collection.

Comic-Con by the Numbers

Comic-Con started as a fan-friendly convention for comic books and first showed up in 1970 with a small audience in San Diego. The first convention in the now century-old series, then called Comic Art Convention, was in New York.

The 1970 San Diego iteration had just 300 attendees and no official programming. The following year, 1971, saw 600 show up in Baltimore, with 700 attendees in 1972’s Boston Comic Convention. This was the first year the convention had volunteers and was free to attend.

It wasn’t until 1974 that Comic-Con officially opened, with 1,300 attendees in San Diego and the first attendee badges being distributed. Comic-Con saw just over 3,000 in 1975, and that number ballooned to 5,000 in 1976.

By 1978, Comic-Con was officially San Diego’s first big weekend in July, and in 1982, it moved to the San Diego Convention Center. Comic-Con saw around 2,000 attendees in 1980, and 5,000 in 1982.

This number has grown over the decades, and by the 2000s, Comic-Con typically sees about 130,000 people attend its annual programming each July.

Alien: Earth Makes a Splash, But Predator’s Out for Blood

In other programming news, the world premiere of Alien: Earth will hit the San Diego stage tomorrow. The series is a prequel to Ridley Scott’s Alien, and takes place a few years before the 1979 film. The new series is set to premiere streaming in August, and director Noah Hawley will premiere the first episode in Hall H.

It will also introduce Hawley’s take on the Alien mythos and universe, which will get the first glimpse tomorrow at the San Diego Convention Center.

On deck as well is Predator: Badlands, the next chapter in the storied franchise. The film will turn the tables on the immortal Predator race for the first time, putting them in the crosshairs of an alien “scientist on the lam.” The human-versus-alien story will be directed by Dan Trachtenberg, the same director who rebooted the franchise in 2022 with Prey.

In addition to giving fans a first look at the film, Trachtenberg and stars Elle Fanning and Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi (the alien Dek) will be at the Comic-Con panel to chat about the new approach to the Predator film series.

Marvel Dials It Back, Sci-Fi Steps In

Marvel Studios will not have the same significant presence it has had at Comic-Con in recent years, according to Variety. With no specific panel or time in Hall H’s spotlights this year, Marvel has opted not to attend SDCC 2023 in the same capacity it has in previous years. The creative differences with its next Avengers installment have led to the Comic-Con absence.

Production on Avengers: Phase 5 has been ongoing in the UK for the past several months, and continued work there has made it difficult for Marvel to sync production with a typical Hall H debut.

Sci-Fi filmmakers and productions have jumped at the opportunity to make up the difference in programming this year, with shows including The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel set to fill Hall H time slots.

A separate panel will cover the DC series Peacemaker and season 2 of the hit series, with behind-the-scenes clips, footage, and a conversation with creator James Gunn (also stepping into the Superman reboot within DC’s broader cinematic revival).

Walk the Line

But as Comic-Con has grown to become a behemoth of entertainment previews, movie fandoms, panel discussions, and world premieres, the heart of the San Diego convention is still found in the simple act of getting excited over comics. Fans will turn out in droves on the streets and around the convention hall in cosplay.

Some will take a few years to create their precise replica of a favorite character, or to sculpt their take on a villain. Others will show up in existing gear, and all will find kindred spirits in the crowds of princesses, warriors, aliens, and monsters.