I am a cosplayer. I used to cosplay all the time between the ages of 16 and 23, then I moved, got married, and had a child. Life happened. I stopped cosplaying. My interest sparked again recently when my son and I attended Geekfest. I knew we had to wear costumes. Since we had fun at Geekfest, we are now looking at Ikkicon and Wizard World. I am getting back into my groove. While brainstorming characters and costumes, I noticed something that I hadn't noticed before – the lack of black characters in prominent roles in comics. Think about the black comic characters that you know. Who comes to mind? Storm? Black Panther? War Machine? Those characters are the most common and most people can’t seem to think of many more. At Cons, you may see a black female dressed as Storm (along with several Slave Princess Leias). There's nothing wrong with that, but there are so many other black characters that are awesome in their own right and not just new characters either. But why, despite the copious amount of black characters, are so many not known? I started researching characters and many have good background stories. They also appear in more than one issue. It is a shame that they haven't been given more attention and no one has heard of these characters. I want to cosplay people who look like me!
So I decided to honor these characters! When I cosplay, I will only cosplay as the little known (or unknown) black superheroes.The first character is Frenzy (Joanna Cargill):
She is a mutant. She is also awesome. She developed skin hard as steel and the only thing that can penetrate her skin is Adamantium. That's hardcore. Her back story describes her as growing up bitter and angry at the world for oppressing her as a black woman and a mutant. Can anyone else out there relate? I know I can. (Not the mutant part though, ha!) Maybe it’s because this was the first unknown character I stumbled upon, but this character’s story resonated with me. She started off as a villain but made a complete change. She was even linked to Cyclops and Gambit on more than one occasion. Check her out:
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| older depiction of Frenzy |
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| well lookie who she's rollin' with! |
Now tell me that she isn't a badass? I will share with you the progress of my costume and keep you updated! I expect I will have to explain, and explain, and explain again who she is but I will do it with pride. This is only the first one and I'm so excited to keep this going!!
My name is Evon and I am a country girl from Texas! I've got a lot of hobbies, but I'm a lover of all things cooking, cosplay, and crafting! I'm just a girl trying to express myself as creatively as possible.
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