I went to Manchester Comicon today with laurajade221b (the friend I dragged to see Amanda Palmer, and who is more than willingly being dragged to see Neil Gaiman), my other half, his sister, a friend of his, and her brother. It was the first time any of us had been to a comicon, so whilst Manchester may be far from the biggest con going (although next year it’s going to be two days instead of just one) it was certainly a big deal for us. It was even more of a big deal because, being the all-out people we are, we decided we were going to cosplay as well.

Yep. First time at a convention and we also do our first time cosplaying.

People on my f-list may have seen me chatting about getting a costume sorted. I wanted to go as a circus version of Natasha Romanoff, preferably a Night Circus version, so my theme was black and white with a hint of red. It didn’t turn out anything like I’d hoped – not very steampunk and kind of goth – but I don’t think it was bad for a first cosplay attempt.

Here’s me as a (Night) Circus Black Widow with our (comics) Sif:



I’m wearing: a military steampunk dress, stripy tights, black boots, a red wig tied back with lace (because we have a heatwave!), a black velvet choker with a spider on it that I painted a red hourglass on, a belt with a circus style hourglass fascinator thingy I made, belt pouches I made (badly - one fell off before the end of the day, meh), spider lacey fingerless gloves, bullet bracelets, and black and white face paint.

This is nothing like what I’d usually wear and the last time I did any kind of fancy dress was at university, so in a university city where people are used to students being students. I was a bit nervous about wandering around like this! It turned out that being in Manchester was fine, because there were loads of people dressed up, but the part where I got the train to and from my little local station, and then the bus, and then walked…well, I got some odd looks. People who looked like they were embarrassed on my behalf or something. But I also got some kids waving to me, some smiles, some questions about what was going on, and on the bus home loads of people talking to me, telling me about their daughter who’d done a race with some Storm Troopers and things, and the whole bus waved goodbye when I got off, which was just hilarious and fantastic.

(People seem to think you’re…public property? It’s a little odd, because I get a degree of that anyway being female. I get the looks, the kids throwing ‘b*tch’ in my face at a bus station for no reason, the comments on my appearance. Just because. But this was more…blatant. More like because I’d made myself noticeable they were allowed to openly notice me and make a deal of it, be that positive or negative. It was interesting.)

There were so many people dressed up at the con and so many amazing outfits! It was worth the price of admission just for the people watching, the photos, and the people we got to talk to. I don’t know if there’s any kind of etiquette about chatting to people in costume and asking for their photo? I figured complimenting and asking was okay. It’s what other people seemed to doing; Lady Loki was popular for photographs!

Here’s our Lady Loki (laurajade221b) and our Sif with a Captain America:




A brilliant one of our Lady Loki and an Iron Man:




And our Bellatrix Lestrange (right) found a Narcissa:




Warwick Davis (Return of the Jedi, Willow, Harry Potter, Doctor Who…) did a Q&A session. He was brilliant with the crowd, and even gave us a Charms lesson. Kai Owen (Torchwood’s Rhys Williams) did a great Q&A, and laurajade221b and me joined his signing queue for a chat and photo:



And there were lots and lots of things to look at and buy. I limited myself to a budget, a budget per item, and things that would be hard to find elsewhere.

My swag:




The little badges are SHIELD, Hawkeye, and Black Widow. This is a close up of the Stark Expo card on the sellers website. I also loved this Star Trek one and a lot of their Walking Dead ones. They had them as posters as well, and invitations to The Game of Throne’s red wedding! I also discovered an artist called destiny blue - these are the two signed prints from them: this and this.


At the end of the day when we found out Manchester Comicon is going to be two days next year instead of one laurajde221b summed up the mood by asking not ‘are we going to go again?’ or ‘are we going to attempt both days?’ but ‘does this mean we need two cosplay outfits?’ Much fun was had by all. Would comicon again and would cosplay again! Although Cosplay Mark II needs to be either a different character or a better version. Hmm, maybe a lot more circus-y...