Afronauts - Black Cosplay

This article is so on point!! written by my good friend Sheldon Williams (Owner of Afronauts radioshow) https://m.facebook.com/Afronauts-317110978500115/

Agentafronaut@instagram

Black Cosplay goes back like Ancient Egypt and Pyramids.

Seriously it does! So I went to my first Con (convention) this year, the BCAF (Black Comix Arts Festival) in San Francisco and I had such a great time that I had to write about it and tell others how great it was. It was awesome seeing all of those great black comic book writers and artists. All those awesome black heroes and heroienes growing up I collected comics so I was like a kid in a candy store.  This experience was so awesome that I decided to travel to more Cons.  So since January I’ve been traveling around to different Con’s to get a feel for them. As a fan of sci-fi and comics I have seen the popularity of Cons grow exponentially over the past few years. With the success of Marvel and their MCU and the rising DC cinematic universe; the popularity of movies based on comics and Sci-fi books has gone mainstream.  An ancillary result from the success of comics and sci-fi has been a growth in the popularity of Cosplay.

 Cosplay is the practice of dressing up as a character from a movie, book, video game or popular lore.  So Cosplay has been going on literally since the time of ancient Egypt. The Egyptian mythos is notable amongst furries for their gods being represented in artwork as anthropomorphic animals. While animal worship in religion was certainly not a new concept by the time of Ancient Egyptian culture, and may have had a leading factor in the creation of these new anthropomorphic animal gods, some furry spiritualists consider this to be one of the earliest forms of furry.

When I went to BCAF I didn’t notice anyone in Cosplay so  but I did have a discussion with the Wonderful Afua Richardson and another convention goer about how serious cosplayers take their costumes and how long it might take to make them, but I didn’t realize exactly how big a phenomenon it had become in “pop/mainstream culture” until I set out for for my next Con.  It was when I arrived at Wondercon that I zoned in on cosplay as a really cool story.

On assignment for Blerds, I had agreed to submit and article on Wondercon like I had done for BCAF.  As I walked around the one of the things that stood out besides the vast amount of comics and artist stationary at their booths was the numerous animated costumes of the fans. It seemed that just about everyone there was decked out in some sort of Superhero or fantasy garb.  Whether they were elaborate and intricate costumes to store bought or sometimes even just a tee shirt everyone there was Cosplaying in their own way.  The second thing that stood out was how diverse the crowd was. I have to be honest and say I didn’t think the black experience would be well represented at Wondercon; that was part of the reason I had resigned myself to write a story.  While I didn’t see a lot of the artists and comics I had hoped to see at Wondercon that I saw at BCAF I did see some and also discovered new ones. Such as Erika Alexander from Concrete Park; Wally fresh and kid code by the Lange brothers and The legend of Mantanjami by Eric Dean Seaton.  Wondercon is one of the biggest comic conventions in North America so while I went with a positive attitude I was under no illusion that it would be just like BCAF. However the crowd was just about as diverse as NYC or LA which only makes sense since it was held in Anaheim outside of LA.  \\\

From my perspective everyone was friendly and helpful and caught up in the atmosphere of the convention.  In fact the harmony was surreal. I don’t know if it was because we were so close to Disney or that Comics and Sci-fi tend to make people think of a future that is more pleasant than everyday mundaneness of society,  but It was a veritable Kumbaya of pageantry. At first I couldn’t quite explain the mood or energy I felt there. Then, I got it! It was a sense of unity that I picked up on. It was as if the cosplayers had gained superpowers there. By donning their costumes they gained the power of harmony. Here the monotony of western society didn’t matter, all that mattered was your costume. The details of your costume and how good you made it look or how unique it was.  So it was this energy and experience that I wanted to expound upon from the afronauts perspective. I didn’t want to rush it though, like an afronaut exploring in a new world I had come across a sublime and uncanny landscape that I didn’t want to disturb just yet. I wanted to view this place in its pristine form. So I decided to see how this phenomenon played out in other conventions as well.

People where dressed in an array of different costumes that spanned all genres. I was happy to see that  a lot of black people who cosplayed actually utilized a character that represented them and their culture. The lack of black characters and the rise of black characters also played a part. There were cosplayer representing the more popluar Nick Fury, Black panther to Some of the lesser known such as static shock, lana from Archer. I was even happy to see a group of friends show up as all the black characters from The Walking Dead. . /////

 Here it is 2 months later and I’m just now submitting my article. Blerds probably thought I had forgotten or that I was on CP time. Non cipher, It was just that I had found what I thought was a way better way to express the black experience at these conventions rather than the customary rundown of the convention. Much props to the Blerds team for their patience with this. So anyway back to the cosplay.