Becoming Batman: Cosplay, Performance, and Ludic Transformation at Comic-Con

In author's dual consciousness of researcher and DC Comics character Captain Marvel, he attracted unexpected amounts of attention from fans wanting pictures with him in heroic poses and journalists hoping to deploy his image as representative of the convention experience. Cosplay constitutes ephemeral performances for one weekend a year at Comic-Con, but such ephemerality paradoxically stems exclusively from materiality. Some cosplayers abandon their everyday identities to become specific reproductions of character. Others bring to life their own analogues of Batman. Even though cosplayers and other fans of particular cultural properties celebrate these objects fervently, the lucrative popularity of characters like Batman or the Terminator suggests those on the mainstream enjoys and buys into these products as well. Often the mainstream news media frame fandom negatively by selectively deploying stories of Comic-Con cosplayers wearing their notable costumes. As fantasy somewhat imposes over reality at Comic-Con, thanks in part to fictional characters walking in the material world, new possibilities become recognizable.