Skip to content
Answering Your Questions About Reactor: Right here.
Sign up for our weekly newsletter. Everything in one handy email.
When one looks in the box, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the cat.

Reactor

SDCC is geekdom’s largest showcase, so it’s no wonder that cosplayers prepare elaborate costumes all year so that they can bring their “A” games to Comic-Con. That said, this being my first-ever SDCC, I was surprised by how few costumes there were. Cosplay round-ups past have made it seem like there’d be costumes galore, so I was surprised by how few and far between the costumes seemed as I walked around the convention center and San Diego. Perhaps someone else who went can comment below and tell me how this year compared to previous years as far as number of costumes at the con? In any case, there was still plenty to catch my eye. This was Comic-Con after all, and tons of people arrived ready to make a splash!

Group Cosplay

I love group cosplay. What could be better than one person painstakingly recreating a character in real life? That’s right—a group of people doing it! By far, the best group effort I saw was this father/son Silver Surfer duo:

I was impressed that this kid had the patience to be covered in silver paint and pose so much. Clearly, he’s a little comic geek in training! Father-son bonding at its best!

I have to give props to the group of ladies doing Lost cosplay:

While conventions are inevitably rife with costumes from the latest hot property, it’s always cool to see what stories withstand the test of time and continue to inspire their fans to pay homage to their favorite fandoms by dressing up. Thanks, Lost ladies! WE HAVE TO GO BAAAAACK!

Then there was the Sleeping Beauty cosplay:

All three fairies were in tow along with Sleeping Beauty and Maleficent, but the princess and the evil queen were where it was at as far as personality. Still, all of the costumes were really well made, and true to the look and feel of the original Disney film.

Hey, and did you know that Friendship is Magic?:

With all the focus on Bronies, it’s hard to believe that My Little Pony was originally designed with little girls in mind! Well, these two haven’t forgotten, and while they didn’t exactly create ponies, I admire their commitment to performance. They’re not just putting on the mane, they’re embodying it.

 

Kid Cosplay

I love seeing kids at cons. It always amazes me, and slightly freaks me out, that the comic book community has become so overwhelmingly adult. It’s become more about adults recapturing their youth rather than about the youth themselves—you know, comics’ original intended audience? Thankfully, there were plenty of kids in attendance showing their stuff and having a great time. In addition to the awesome Silver Surfer kid up top, there was—

Adorable little Dalek girl eating her weapon!:

Cute, smiley anime girl!:

Tiny Amidala!:

 

Doing Their Own Thing

There are those who cosplay in groups, there are those who cosplay the latest characters, and then there are those who do their own thing and are wonderfully, sometimes hilariously random.

I’ve often wondered how one could cosplay Ursula from The Little Mermaid. Well, now I need wonder no more:

With The Hobbit coming out at the end of this year, I guess Gandalf isn’t exactly a random costume choice, but here’s a particularly good one:

And then I’ve just got two words for you. Lemon. Pledge.

 

Superheroes

Despite SDCC becoming an increasingly Hollywood event, there’s thankfully always those who stay true to the con’s comic-book roots.

I loved this woman’s Scarlet Witch costume:

Catwoman and Red Skull also made an appearance:

And here’s a fabulous Batgirl:

I love that she did old-school TV series Batgirl, don’t you?

 

G.I. Joe Cosplay

There seemed to be several odes to G.I. Joe at SDCC. Or, rather, to those devoted to taking them down. COBRA was well-represented at Comic-Con:

 

Star Wars Cosplay

Of course, Star Wars represented at SDCC, and in some pretty unexpected and awesome ways!

Check out this awesome Ewok mother and child:

And who says that women get to have all the fun when it comes to Leia cosplay? (Bonus points for the Star Wars/Futurama crossover!):

Chewbacca knows how to let loose!:

What’s going on behind those visors?:

And there was even a Jabba:

But surprisingly few Hans and Lukes. Huh.

Well, I hope you enjoyed that walk down cosplay lane. Now get cracking on your costumes for next year! SDCC is only 357 days away!

 

Photos by Emily Heyer.


Teresa Jusino might just engage in cosplay for the first time next year. But first, she has to learn to sew. Her Feminist Brown Person take on pop culture has been featured on websites like ChinaShopMag.com, PinkRaygun.com, Newsarama, and PopMatters.com. 2012 will see Teresa’s work in two upcoming non-fiction anthologies, and her “Moffat’s Women” panel will be featured at Geek Girl Con in August! For more on her writing, Get Twitterpated with Teresa, “like” her on Facebook, or visit her at The Teresa Jusino Experience.

About the Author

About Author Mobile

Teresa Jusino

Author

Teresa Jusino was born the day Skylab fell. Coincidence? She doesn't think so. A native New Yorker, Jusino has been telling stories since she was three years old, and she wrote a picture book in crayon in nursery school. However, nursery school also found her playing the angel Gabriel in a Christmas pageant, and so her competing love of performing existed from an early age. Her two great loves competed all the way through early adulthood. She attended NYU's Tisch School of the Arts where she majored in Drama and English Literature, after which she focused on acting, performing in countless plays and musicals in and around New York City, as well as short films, feature length independent films, and the one time she got to play an FBI agent in a PBS thing, which she thought was really cool, because she got to wear sunglasses and a dark suit and look badass. Eventually, producing was thrown into the mix. For four years, she was a company member and associate producer for a theater company called Stone Soup Theater Arts. She also produced a musical in which she also performed at Theater For the New City called Emergency Contraception: The Musical! by Sara Cooper, during which she ended every performance covered in fake blood. Don't ask. After eight years of acting, Jusino decided that she missed her first love – writing – and in 2008 decided to devote herself wholly to that pursuit. She has since brought her "feminist brown person" perspective to pop culture criticism at such diverse sites as Tor.com, ChinaShop Magazine, PopMatters, Newsarama, Pink Raygun, as well as her own blog, The Teresa Jusino Experience (teresajusino.wordpress.com), and her Tumblr for feminist criticism, The Gender Blender (tumblwithteresa.tumblr.com). She is also the editor of a Caprica fan fiction site called Beginning of Line (beginningofline.weebly.com), because dammit, that was a good show, and if SyFy won't tell any more of those characters' stories, she'll do it herself. Her travel-writer alter ego is Geek Girl Traveler, and her travel articles can be followed at ChinaShop while she herself can be followed on Twitter (@teresajusino). Her essay, "Why Joss is More Important Than His 'Verse" can be found in the book Whedonistas: A Celebration of the Worlds of Joss Whedon By the Women Who Love Them (Mad Norwegian Press). In addition to her non-fiction, Jusino is also a writer of fiction. Her short story, December, was published in Issue #24 of the sci-fi literary journal, Crossed Genres. A writer of both prose and film/television scripts, she relocated to Los Angeles in September 2011 to give the whole television thing a whirl. She'll let you know how that goes just as soon as she stops writing bios about herself in the third person.
Learn More About Teresa
Subscribe
Notify of
guest
4 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments