New York Comic Con Will (Carefully) Return This October

New York Comic Con Will (Carefully) Return This October

Looks like you won’t need to wait until San Diego Comic-Con’s spectacularly ill-timed Thanksgiving event to get your in-person con on. ReedPop has officially announced that New York Comic Con will return as a physical event this October, along with several other conventions — as well as a lot of rules in hopes of keeping everyone safe.

Here are your returning con options and dates:

For those who can’t make it, or for those who aren’t interested in taking the risk of attending a physical con, ReedPop will simultaneously be running a virtual con for each event at FindThe Metaverse.com.

For those eager to mill about with a crowd of nerds again, here are the new health rules being enacted, as announced by ReedPop’s U.S. Comic Portfolio Director, Kristina Rogers (bold emphasis hers):

“1. We will be running all our shows with reduced capacity. With our new safety precautions in place, attendance and badges will be very limited so that we can ensure physical distancing. We’re working closely with each convention centre to determine how many people are permitted in the building every day and at a given time.

“2. We are requiring approved face coverings for all individuals attending our events, including our exhibitors and staff. They must be worn at all times within our venues. For more information, you can visit the FAQ pages on each of our show websites.

“3. Temperature screening upon entry will be required to enter our events. Anyone with an elevated temperature will not be permitted to enter the event.

“4. We will have increased sanitisation and cleaning with enforced physical distancing throughout the event.

“5. We have also adopted a firm no handshakes, no high-fives, no hugs policy. We’re all going to have to get very smooth and cool-looking at either the elbow bump or air high-fives. Please start practicing now.”

There is, tragically, no cool way to do an elbow bump, but it’s definitely the right call. Unsurprisingly, there have been no announcements yet about what guests might be coming to these conventions, but it’ll be interesting to see how many celebrities and creators will be willing to attend in person — or, more likely, how few.