Martha Thomases: Cosplay Around The Clock?

Martha Thomases

Martha Thomases brought more comics to the attention of more people than anyone else in the industry. Her work promoting The Death of Superman made an entire nation share in the tragedy of one of our most iconic American heroes. As a freelance journalist, she has been published in the Village Voice, High Times, Spy, the National Lampoon, Metropolitan Home, and more. For Marvel comics she created the series Dakota North. Martha worked as a researcher and assistant for the author Norman Mailer on several of his books, including the Pulitzer-Prize-winning Executioner's Song, On Women and Their Elegance, Ancient Evenings, and Harlot's Ghost.

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2 Responses

  1. Ali T. Kokmen says:

    I don’t quite have it in me to parse fandom’s sub-genres to theorize or attempt to explain all the ways that, say, cosplayers and anime/J-pop fans often differ from western comic convention-goers, but I’ll just say a few things:

    The presence of anime fan cosplayers at Brooklyn Botanic Gardens’ Sakura Matsuri festival isn’t anything particularly new, and has part of that event for several years. In fact, I imagine it’s because BBG noticed years back that the Sakura Matsuri event attracted cosplayers and anime fans that they increased their programming specifically for that audience. So now the BBG Sakura Matsuri festival includes taiko drummers and manga artists alike. It’s all good.

    I do suspect that the earnest, unmediated passion anime cosplayers have for all things Japanese is often a little different than that of western comics/pop culture fans. I can’t quite describe what that factor is, but I know it’s there, and it probably helps explain why you’d see folks cosplaying their favorite anime characters at a botanic festival of Japanese culture more than you might see folks dressing up like their favorite authors at a book event. Nice as that might be…

  2. mike weber says:

    Public cosplay?

    Not 100% sure where this photo was shot, but the sign on the window in the BG on the right side appears to be Japanese.

    I find i cannot disagree with the image title.