The Best Costumes From Melbourne’s Oz Comic-Con
The desire to spend excessive amounts of money and time turning yourself into your favourite character is one of the purest expressions of fandom. We spoke to the people behind some of our favourite costumes.
It’s a moment I am likely to remember for the rest of my life: offered the chance to play against a Legendary Hearthstone champ, I sit down at the Hearthstone booth at Oz Comic-Con in Melbourne… and promptly forget my Battle.net password.
“Oh, bummer,” cries the booth attendant after four successive unsuccessful attempts to log in; the Legendary dude is too busy stacking his deck to notice. Horrified that anyone would see me as Just Another Fake Hearthstone Girl, I slink away in my costume (Disgust from Inside Out), and pump some tokens into the Episode I Pod Racer arcade game across the aisle to take my worries out on Sebulba and co.
This is what I love about Comic-Con: not the crushing disappointment of being unable to log in and wreck a Legendary player with my sweet rogue murloc deck (a girl can dream), but the intoxicating blending of the hordes that means cosplayers sit down with tabletop gamers, and 501st members test out the Wii U dance games alongside po-faced zombie fanatics who are only here for Bruce Campbell.
Having moved to the much larger Melbourne Convention & Entertainment Centre to reflect its growing stature in the local pop culture convention market, Oz Comic-Con this year saw thousands of comic nuts, cosplayers, super fans, gamers and intrigued rubberneckers (“That’s interesting”) through the doors over the weekend.
Stars including Jason Momoa and the aforementioned Campbell held court during panels and photoshoots with paying fans (“This is the worst photo ever!” my friend cried when he finally clapped eyes on his school-photo-esque smile alongside Campbell), but for me, the true heart of any convention is always the costumers and cosplayers.
Find me at a con and I am inevitably doing endless circles of the main hall floor (with regular “foyer breaks”), and little else. I love to see what people have come up with, and what characters are deemed worthy of bringing to life.
To me, the desire to spend excessive amounts of money and time attempting to turn yourself into your favourite character is one of the purest expressions of fandom, and in an era when conventions are increasingly commercialised (I mean really, they’re basically trade shows at this point), there’s something about catching the train in while covered in face paint, latex or EVA foam that just feels real.
So, I scurried around the floor and snapped up as many of my favourites as I could, before the green greasepaint I’d spent an hour and a half applying that morning drifted from my arms onto my fingertips and I could no longer operate my camera. Still, a mum later contacted me to tell me that getting a photo alongside Disgust had made her daughter’s day — so Hearthstone disgrace be damned, it was all worth it in the end. And it always is.
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Humans Of Oz-Comic Con
“I chose this because it looked really cool and I wanted a big project from World Of Warcraft.”
“And I’m from League Of Legends, I’m Thresh. I always play Support and it looks really cool in a female version.”
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“I love Up, and I love balloons. But the best thing that happened was I got photos with Captain Patch-It*, who is my senpai.”
Did senpai notice you??
“Senpai noticed me!”
(*Captain Patch-It is a deadset legend who aids cosplayers experiencing costume malfunctions on the convention floor.)
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“I have Iconic Studio Creations, the official licensee to make props from BBC, and possibly the upcoming Star Wars movie.”
What’s your favourite thing about Comic-Con?
“Just the people. It’s as simple as that. I just love seeing them have a good time.” “[excited beep]”
“This took three months to make. Everything lights up, although today it’s a little broken.”
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Why did you decide to premiere your Hunter S. Thompson costume today?
“‘Cause everyone’s crazy as shit at Comic-Con.”
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“You see a lot of Marios and Luigis walking around, but not too many Waluigis.”
“He’s very underrepresented.”
If you run into any other Mario characters will you start something?
“Oh, absolutely.”
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Is that dragonscale made of spoons?!
“It is spoons! There’s just under a thousand. I saw someone use spoons to do a chainmaille piece for a wristband, so I thought I could apply that to a larger costume. There was one joke about whether I could spare a spoon when I first walked in; I just nodded and smiled.”
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“LeBeouf.”
“LeBuff.”
“LeBoof.”
“He dragged me into it.”
“I made him do it, because you have to do it. Just do it.”
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“I love X-Men, and I love costumes where you can mix the hair and makeup with the outfit, so it was the challenge of trying to get the facets of the diamond.”
Have you been leaving a trail of rhinestones in your wake?
“I haven’t lost one, so I’m quite impressed!”
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Anna seems like a brave Frozen choice; there are a lot of Elsas here today. You weren’t tempted to go for her?
“The [Elsa] wig didn’t suit my skin tone. My favourite thing is getting recognised in a really unknown cosplay; I’ve done a few musical theatre [cosplays] and they’re rare. I did Elphaba from Wicked, and Eponine from Les Mis, so getting recognised in them was great.”
“Ahh, this is just so fun!”
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“I love Planet Of The Apes, and I’m the only one in Australia, or so they tell me. I wore this on Free Comic Book day; I was walking around the city, stopping at traffic lights and all that, and nobody cared!”
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Clem Bastow is an award-winning writer and critic with a focus on popular culture, gender politics, mental health, and weird internet humour. She’s on Twitter at @clembastow