Part 2 of my cosplayers of LA Comic Con 2019, with this I can finally say that I’m caught up with the giant backlog of convention content I’ve been sitting on. I had stories from other conventions I originally wanted to put up but a mix of poor planning, observations, and a somewhat lackluster experience at those events  made me rethink trying to tell those stories. I won’t say what those events were but I will say that I still learned something from those conventions and that is even if the convention isn’t that great a good writer would still try to make the most of it and figure out how to get a story out of them.

It’s really crazy right now with the COVID-19 pandemic basically having the entire world shut down since March, making all these events and activities I usually turn to unavailable. Events such as WonderCon, E3, SXSW, and San Diego Comic Con have all been canceled. I remember hearing how Emerald City Comic Con as well as the Coachella and Stagecoach Festivals announced that they would be posting for later in the year before straight up canceling. At this point, with the way things are I highly doubt there will be any conventions or big events until 2021. I’ve mentioned in previous posts I saw the COVID-19 pandemic as a blessing because it gave me the opportunity to get caught up on things. It was like I was bailing water out of a sinking boat, water was coming in faster than I could get it out but then COVID came in and it became the plug in the hole I needed to get caught up.

Aside from being able to get caught up on my backlog of content COVID-19 has also allowed me to take the time to take a good look at what I need to do to finish my site as well as what I need to grow it. This site originally started as a personal blog where I could express myself before also becoming a portfolio I could use to help to find new job opportunities. Then somewhere down the line I got in my head that I might be able to use it to become an online influencer or a media outlet and use it to get into cool events and parties or maybe get free stuff.

Obviously to be considered an online influencer or be considered a legitimate media outlet I need a buttload of followers and web traffic. I’m not going to go into details about how abysmal my web traffic is but between my zero presence on YouTube and Twitter, my presence on Facebook being a single personal profile, and an Instagram account with a little over 600 followers I have a long long way to go.

Out of curiosity, I looked at the requirements for a few conventions and events to see what kind of requirements they want out of those applying for pro, credentials and the requirements are crazy. I remember one of them said that in order to be considered an online influencer you have at least 2,500 followers/subscribers—and that’s from one of the smaller conventions, I’m pretty sure I saw some of the larger, more well-known conventions requiring that you have somewhere between 10-25,000 followers/subscribers to be an influencer. These numbers for social media influencers might seem a bit crazy but between how easily it is for people to buy ghost followers and bot accounts and also how so many “influencers” are running around demanding free stuff it’s a bit understandable that they’re making it harder for people to roll up and demand to be let in on the grounds that “they’re a social media influencer.”

As for the press and media credentials, obviously it depends on your outlet. If I was applying from a big media company no problem—in fact I’ve actually done that before using my day job credentials and it worked. However, when using personal websites the requirements can be tricky. A few places I looked at said that they would require Google Analytics data or some other web metrics stating your site gets at least 50,000 page views in a calendar month. Some places like trade shows are a bit more lax, instead of looking at page numbers most of them will just look at the design of the website, the content being posted, and the frequency and timing of when stuff was posted (just to make sure you didn’t throw it together the night before) and then go off that to decide if you’re from a legitimate media site or not.

If I want to raise both my traffic and social media numbers I really need to step up my game both with my website and online presence, although I feel that those are somewhat connected and that if I were able to start getting boosts in on, boosts in the other will follow.

At this point I just realized I babbled for about 800 words or so about COVID and how it’s helped me get caught up, but I haven’t really spoken so much about the cosplayers of LA Comic Con 2019. Honestly, I think subconsciously I let myself babble because I just didn’t know what to say. This is the problem I have with segmenting my content, segmenting my content makes it easier for the audience to digest but honestly it’s hard to come up with something to say for part 2 when you’ve pretty much already said everything you had to say in part 1. A good writer though I feel wouldn’t have this problem and I guess this just means I need more practice.

Anyway, you’ve heard me go on long enough. Please enjoy the remaining photos I have of cosplayers from LA Comic Con 2019.

The Fantastic Four’s Invisible Woman. Looking at this I’m pretty sure this is the first time I’ve ran into someone who tried to do a Fantastic Four cosplay. I’m not sure if it’s because they’re not one of the more popular Marvel properties. Although I think most people don’t want to do the Fantastic Four because it would be too hard to put together costumes representing their powers. The Human Torch is obviously out because he’d be a walking fire hazard, unless you want to cheap out and walk around in a red body suit with flames attached. Sculpting a full-body Thing suit would take too much work and I’m also thinking a pain to move around in unless somebody could figure out the best kind of material to carve it out of. Mr. Fantastic, I feel would be too hard to pull off because it would be difficult to portray his stretchiness power? As for the Invisible Woman, same thing? How do you pull her off? Stand a few feet over and throw your voice? A lot of things attached to strings? I think people forget that some superheroes like the FF do have de-powered, civilian looks which is what makes this woman’s FF jumpsuit simple but effective. I’m wondering if the cleavage was a creative choice on her end or a nod to the Invisible Woman’s boob-window swim suit costume from the ’90s.

Dead Girl from the reimagined X-Force comics from 2001 by Peter Milligan and Mike Allred and the short-lived X-Statix series. As a kid I was really into X-Men comics, but Allred’s art style on X-Force/X-Statix really turned me off of them, and also Milligan’s writing really sent them down a really dark and gritty direction than what I was used to reading in superhero comicbooks at the time. Looking back at it now, I’d be tempted to pick it up just because I’m a big fan of the type of writing that Milligan puts out but I’d still be pretty turned off by Allred’s art style.

The Grady Twins from The Shining. I really love it when parents let their kids do really creepy shit like this.

In case you need trouble sleeping at night here’s the Grady Twins scene from The Shining.

Here’s a Dark Magician Girl from Yu-Gi-Oh and Sophitia from Soul Calibur/Soul Edge.

A Tiny Tina/Crunk Bunny from Borderlands. As I said in my previous post I really love it when Borderlands cosplayers go the extra mile to replicate the hand-drawn comicbook look that Borderlands is known for in their cosplays.

A group of Street Fighters. Chun Li in 1 of her Street Fighter IV alternate costumes. Cammy White as she looked in the main Street Fighter series, another Chun Li in the blue outfit that she’s more known for in the main series, and Ryu whose look is pretty much the same in every version of Street Fighter.

Here’s a really good Pennywise from the recent It movies.

A bandito version of Spiderman. The costume is obviously store-bought but he is a little kid so you have to give him points for trying to be different.

A Uma Thurman-inspired Poison Ivy from Joel Schumacher’s 1997’s Batman & Robin. I know a lot of people call Batman & Robin the worst Batman movie ever but I thought the design of the movie was pretty cool. I mean the nipples on the batsuits was a dumb idea but Gotham City looked cool with all the crazy art deco style architecture.

Here’s Amber Arden, one of the professional cosplayers who was on site as Tinkerbelle.

Anastasia August, another professional cosplayer dressed as Red Sonja. Good job on her end with the leather choker, as well as the dagger strapped to her thigh. Most people would have just gone with the chainmail bikini and bear skin cape and call it a day, but leave it to a professional cosplayer to make sure she has the right accessories for the costume.

Here’s Nicole Marie Jean dressed in Bulma’s bunny outfit from the original Dragon Ball series. Unfortunately, I never saw this episode of Dragon Ball so I always wondered the story of how Bulma came to wear what is essentially a Playboy Bunny costume and the story is that Oolong, the little perverted anthropomorphic pig man had it in his possession and Bulma was forced to wear it because it was the only clean outfit that was available.

A Psylocke from X-Men in her iconic ninja swimsuit costume. Good touch with the sword.

Morrigan from Darkstalkers. With Morrigan being such an icon for Darkstalkers I’m surprised I don’t see more people cosplaying as her at conventions. Although I’m sure this is mostly due to Darkstalkers not quite becoming as popular as its sister series Street Fighter.

A Belle and the Beast in human from Beauty and the Beast.

This is a first for me and also one of the more impressive cosplays I’ve seen, it’s JanuaryCosplay aka @thegirlwithagreatsmile as the XXXG-01W Wing Gundam complete with the gun and shield. While cool I can’t imagine what a pain in the ass it must have been trying to get around the convention with those giant wings.

Along with JanuaryCosplay I also ran into Cammie Duvall aka Camislyce who did a unique take on Charizard. The really cool part about Cammie’s costume is that they make wings foldable but they also made them remote controlled so they could easily fold by themselves with just a push of a button.

Morpheus and Niobe from the Matrix trilogy. Niobe kinda bugs me though because even though she did get the hair style right the costume is way off. If you watch the movie Jada Pinkett Smith never wore a black trench coat instead she wore this read alligator leather jacket and pants ensemble.

Luke Cage in his iconic yellow shirt and black pants combo.

Here is my favorite cosplayer from LA Comic Con and probably the craziest costume I’ve ever seen, it is Amy Byte as Samus Aran from Metroid wearing a full suit of armor made of perler beads. The thing I really like about her costume is that because it’s made out of perler beads it gives it a pixelated look just like how the graphics on the old 8-bit Nintendo and 16-bit Nintendo looked.

I cannot imagine how much planning and time she had to put into making this.

Jill Valentine from Resident Evil. This is a bit of a mismatch. You have the tube top, mini skirt and sweater from Resident Evil 3: Nemesis, combined with the beret from Resident Evil 1 and a T-Virus vial from the movies.

A Camp Crystal Lake Counselor and Jason as he looked in the 2009 remake of Friday the 13th. Really good job on Jason but the Counselor needed a little more work. Maybe some more blood or a fake a stab wound.

Here’s a twist on Lock, Shock, and Barrel, the Boogie’s Boys from Nightmare Before Christmas. Another simple but effective costume.

A horror-take on Alice from Alice in Wonderland that is not inspired by American McGee’s Alice.

Another super crazy costume, it’s a Voltron on stilts made out of rubber balloons. Like Amy Byte with her perler beaded costume I can’t imagine how much planning and time it took to make this, especially since the nature of balloons this had to have been put together no earlier than the day before. I also can’t imagine how difficult it was to get around without popping any balloons.

Thor as he looked in Endgame after he got fat and stopped giving a shit about things.

Static as he looked in the Young Justice cartoon. The glowing eyes is a good touch.

Sally Jupiter/Laurie Juspeczyk, the first Silk Spectre from Watchman. The original Silk Spectre is basically was basically a walking version of this ’40s pinup girl artwork and this woman did a really good job replicating that style including the victory rolls hairstyle.

This is why I’m really kicking myself being so late on this. I remember when I first saw this woman I was like “Oh shit, I know what you’re supposed to be,” but looking back at it now I can’t remember what she’s from. I remember it’s from the box cover of some crappy b-horror movie or some recent indie movie that paid homage to the crappy b-horror movies. I just can’t remember what it was and it’s really killing me trying to remember it.

Here’s a girl dressed as like a walking version of the Chicano/Latino clown girl art.

Cosplayer, Thetineygeek and his SO, Daideelion as Spartan Master Chief Petty Officer John-117 and Cortana. I’ve seen my fair share of Halo cosplayers over the years and I have to say this is one of the most impressive. Also, I know this is unintentional given the nature of genetics but I feel the height difference between these two really emphasizes the larger than life presence that players were supposed to get when playing through Halo’s campaign as the Master Chief.

https://www.instagram.com/p/B97kVCzHvow/

If you want to see how much more amazing this costume is check out this quick video I found on Daideelion’s Instagram of the suiting up process Thetinygeek has to go through to put this costume on.

Milo James Thatch and Princess Kidagakash Nedakh from Atlantis: The Lost Empire. I remember the first time I ran into a princess Kidagakash Nedakh cosplayer was about two years ago and I emphasized how much I loved the fact she decided to do a character from a less-successful Disney property. I won’t be surprised now that we have Disney+ with their massive library of old Disney, Marvel, and Fox content that we’ll start seeing a lot more obscure characters at conventions which means there’s even more stuff I’ll need to catch up on.

Professional cosplayers Utahime as Ashe from Overwatch complete with her Viper Rifle.

Here’s a guy dressed as a COV Bandit from Borderlands 3 recreating the pose from the Borderlands 2 box art.

When I got the picture of the Bandit we were standing in front of Alicia Marie Body’s table and since she was dressed as Tyreen, the main antagonist from Borderlands 3 she decided to get in on the fun.

A Mandalorian. With the Mandalorian being such a big hit on Disney+ I won’t be surprised to see more Mandalorians at future conventions.

Here is Therisabella as the Arkhamverse version of Catwoman. You can tell this is the version of Catwoman from Batman: Arkham Knight by the red lensed night vision goggles and the Riddler lock on her choker. In Arkham Knight Catwoman is being held captive by the Riddler and in order to save her Batman needs to find all of Riddler’s Trophies, solve all of his riddles, break all of Riddler’s breakable objects, and defuse his bombs before fighting the Riddler who is piloting a giant robot suit. I actually have Arkham Knight and I did beat the main story, however I never did do all the Riddler’s stuff because it wasn’t actually required. I tried because I wanted to see if I could get 100% completion. I got all the riddles, bombs, and breakable objects, however the trophies are what made me quit. There are like 250 trophies and I think I got about half of them, but there was one trophy that in order to get you have to shoot a bunch of targets with the Batmobile’s autocannons in a certain amount of time which I could never beat and it made me quit that game entirely. I’m really tempted to try again between all the other stuff I’ve been wanting to watch or play it just fell towards the back burner.

I really thought this little girl dressed as Mothra with her Godzilla plushie looked so adorable.

One of the ghosts from Diseny’s Haunted Mansion.

And I’ll close this post out with Jack Skellington and Sally from Nightmare Before Christmas.

With this post I’m finally caught up on all my convention stuff. Like I said earlier with the way the COVID-19 pandemic is going it’ll probably be awhile until another convention or blog-worthy event takes place. This is a bit of a bummer because I was really looking forward to getting more practice when it came to handling event coverage stories as well as I feel I could have taken advantage of social media trends and spikes from those events to hopefully raise my following and traffic numbers a bit, but that’s life for you, sometimes things just don’t work out in your favor. With the lack of events going on I’m not worried though, I knew realistically that building a site based entirely on just going to conventions would be hard and that’s why I have all those other sections, and even though they don’t quite give me the practice that events do I still learn a few things from generating content or those sections.