As it was last year, convention season is looming ever closer, and around this time of year we’d be announcing some of the places you’d find the SWC Crew in attendance—but the ongoing pandemic still has us postponing any appearances. After all, it’s hard to socially distance when you’ve got hundreds of attendees—or in the case of New York Comic Con and San Diego Comic Con, tens of thousands—crammed into one setting.
Cons in general have never had a good reputation when it comes to matters of personal hygiene (insert your own “hey, have you ever heard of soap?” joke here). Are you familiar with the term “con crud”? That’s when you come home from a show and wind up sick as a dog because you caught some virus from interacting with people who more often than not knew they were ill and attended anyway. Now, in the days of “super-spreader events,” such venues have become an even greater potential risk for infection—in fact, some of the earliest cases of the Omicron variant were traced back to last November’s Anime NYC convention.
For those of us at ’Warp Central, it wasn’t as though we’d been hitting the convention circuit very hard in past years—our last appearance was at Pow Con in February 2020, just before the lockdown. With regard to 2022’s shows…sorry, ’Warpnauts and Panatics, but with the exception of SMOL Fair—a virtual book festival for indie publishers being held March 19–26—we’re opting out for this year and hoping matters will improve for 2023. If plans should change, however, you can be sure I’ll keep you up to date on our status.
Stay safe, and stay well!
