CHICAGO — The other night, I watched a woman in a dinosaur costume walk across River Road in Rosemont.
Police stopped cars so that she could trudge awkwardly across four lanes of traffic. It was nice to see. For the first 18 months or so of the pandemic, the once-explosive growth of the sci-fi-comic book fan convention industry cratered. Spotting a homemade Gandalf or cosplaying Black Panther near Rosemont’s Donald E. Stephens Convention Center, or McCormick Place in Chicago, once a regular occurrence, became rare. If you wanted to dress like a velociraptor and meet dragon queens and Spider-Men, you settled for virtual events — and those really, really sucked.
Like other aspects of life impacted by the pandemic, fan conventions thrive on the personal — the spectacle of thousands dressed like fictional characters under one roof, mingling with authors, actors and artists, cross-pollinating Deadpools with Doctor Whos. When a handful of fan cons attempted to relaunch in 2021, they often did with celebrities signing autographs behind plexiglass. Hugging Mark Ruffalo again would have to wait.
