Thousands of comic book fans got decked out in their best fancy dress in London on Sunday (March 15) for one of the UK’s biggest celebrations of sci-fi culture.
The London Super Comic Book convention saw fans donning hugely elaborate costume in homage to their favorite comic, sci-fi and Disney characters.
The annual event is now in its fourth year and is the biggest comic themed event in the UK.
Fans call the dressing up ‘cosplay’ (a mix of the words ‘costume’ and ‘play’) and see it as form of performance art.
One man, Paul Labelle, dressed convincingly as a zombie said it was an ordinary way to spend the afternoon.
“Well, what else is there to do on a Sunday really other than dress up like a zombie?” he asked, tongue firmly in cheek, amid grunts and growls.
Many cosplayers highlighted the social element of their preferred pastime.
“Once you’re into it you make so many friends and so many interesting people that every time there’s a convention and you don’t go and you see all your friends having fun and you’re not there you kind of miss out,” said Holly Allen, dressed as Sara Pezzini from Witchblade.
“I have made lots of friends through cosplay and dressing up and it’s been fantastic. Everyone has all the same interests. Everyone is geeky and it’s one place where we can all be geeky together,” added cosplayer Neil Hancock, who dressed as the Captain America villain Crossbones.
The climax of the event at London’s Excel centre was the London Super Costume championship, billed as the biggest independent cosplay competition in Europe.
It saw 52 entries from fans hoping to be judged as having the best costume and on-stage performance for a panel of judges chaired by professional American cosplayer Ya Ya Han.
The eventual winner was Ross Cobbold, a 25-year-old retail worker from Portsmouth in southern England, also known as ‘Ursula’ from the Broadway version of The Little Mermaid.
His prize is a trip to Dragon Con, the world’s premiere cosplay convention in Atlanta.
Speaking after his win he said: “I don’t think it’s sunk in yet. I was backstage and everyone was clapping and I was looking to see who they were clapping for and it was me. This year I set myself some challenges, things I wouldn’t do in cosplay normally and this was one of them to enter a masquerade competition. And this is the really big one and people really go out and this costume, I saw the show on Broadway and when I saw it was the first time I got into Disney and costuming. It was this character and this costume that got me into both those things; they are both huge parts of my life now.”
(Reuters)
