Unnecessary Cosplay

 I've only been to 2 comic conventions in my entire life. Both in San Francisco and both have been wonderful  experiences. Part of the great experience is seeing all the people that come out of the woodwork and  parade around in costumes. The second wonderful part is seeing the aging celebrities signing autographs at the booths and finding out whether they've aged well. Most of the time, they have not. One of the celebrities I encountered at my first show was Erin Gray, who played Wilma on Buck Rogers (aged well). Recently, I started watching Buck Rogers on Netflix and was horrified. I have fond memories as a child of watching Buck on Sunday mornings and loving every second of it. Now when I watch it, the scripts are terrible, the acting is terrible, the special effects are laughable, and since the show came out in the time of disco, all the actors wear disco outfits! Please don't Google Gil Gerard, who played Buck (did not age well). Remember him as he was. (Pictured left)

I had come up with an idea a few months ago to do a "people waiting in line to see a celebrity at a comic convention" illustration and had sketched out some ideas. When I was asked to sign copies of my comic Sanctuary by SLG for Free Comic Book Day, I was excited. I try to do a brand new illustration for every themed show (see previous posts) and decided to dust off this idea and make it work. I had to have a Lord of the Rings person in there. I had to have inappropriate cosplayer and an old guy wearing glasses over his costume. By the way, Cosplayer is a term used to describe someone that dresses up for comic conventions. 

   

Of course, there are some Cosplayers with no shame. Some that do not have access to a mirror or anyone that can tell them that what they're wearing is not appropriate. That was when the idea came to me. The illustration would be "people that should not dress up for comic conventions" or "Unnecessary Cosplay". 

 

The gentlemen above must not have anyone in their lives that can tell them to stay indoors, when dressed up. They can't possibly. This is what it would look like if Spiderman's worst enemy was all-you-can-eat-shrimp-night at Hometown Buffet. When I started sketching out ideas, I drew a fat man in a wonder woman costume first as a tribute to Lynda Carter (aged well) and went on from there. The poster in the back is clearly an homage to actors and TV shows of the 80's. Although the actor on the poster looks like Chuck Norris, it was more of a reference to Gil Gerard or Tom Selleck. The Viking woman in the background was inspired by a book I recently purchased that was about the art of Jack Cole, who was an artist for Playboy magazine back in the 60s.   

Below is the completed version. Sorry, I didn't put in any thumbnail sketches. I think it turned out pretty well and many of the people that purchased copies of Sanctuary on Free Comic Book Day received a postcard-sized version of this. If you're interested in a print, contact SLGcomic.com. 

While searching for suitable images for this blog post, I saw this unsuitable image of Buck and couldn't resist.  Can you?