My first Cosplay experience...

No, it's not smutty, that's just your mind. Cosplay is...(as Wiki so succintly says) 'Cosplay (コスプレ kosupure^?), a portmanteau of the words costume play, is a performance art in which participants called cosplayers wear costumes and fashion accessories to represent a specific character.'  So there.

Anyway, today York hosted its inaugural Comicon...oh, for heaven's sake, here is what Wiki has to say about that.. 'the MCM London Comic Con^[1] (formerly known as the London MCM Expo) is a multi-genre fan convention held in the London Borough of Newham twice yearly, usually on the last weekend in May and October. The convention mainly focuses on anime, manga, video games, sci-fi, cosplay & popular media from the United Kingdom, United States and Japan'.

Are you with me now?  Because I can't keep telling you these things... Right. York, Comicon, have we all caught up? So, since my eldest son is an inveterate CosPlayer, with quite a following in his own right, and one who makes his own costumes (a lot of people buy costumes complete on Ebay, but, for the purist, this is frowned on), we were invited along.  Tom made his own costume - only it was less of a costume and more of a body - and also mine and his sister's.

This is Tom. His 'costume' was a hand painted skeleton on his own body, topped by a leather coat and 'skeleton' boots. It was most impressive (the picture doesn't really do it justice) and a lot of people stopped him to photograph him.

Vienna, in her 'steam punk Plague Doctor' costume. Tom made all of it, including the hat, which looks exactly like bits of metal rivetted together.

Me, with bazooka and mask.

A lovely chap dressed as Zod from the Superman movies, inviting everyone to 'bow down before Zod'. Tom is right at the back on the left, paying homage. And yes, Superman is right in the front. Don't know what he was thinking, frankly.

Me and my bazooka, with Darth Vader. And that's not a sentence I ever intend to write again...

It was all fabulous, with loads of people dressed up, Game of Thrones was well represented, as was Harry Potter (plus real owl), and I can't wait to do it all again! Whitby in October, I think...