Convention Fans

Over the next year, you’re going to see people wearing Watchmen costumes at every single convention (regardless of the genre the con caters to). In fact, they are already popping up. I was browsing through photos from WonderCon (which occurred just a few weekends ago), and found this photo of a Silk Spectre II cosplayer (image right).

What will be curious to see, in my opinion anyway, is the variety and quality of Watchmen costumes at these conventions. Will Watchmen fans be able to accurately recreate these Hollywood blockbuster costumes? Will they even try?

For example: the costumes for Watchmen characters Silk Spectre II and Nite Owl II are perfectly tailored, well structured, and made from high quality materials. After all, we’d expect nothing less from such a blockbuster movie. And I think that is going to prove to be one of the biggest obstacles for fans/cosplayers looking to create their own Watchmen costumes. How will they make their costume look more like a movie reproduction, and less like a cheap Halloween costume?

You can already find Watchmen costumes for sale online. One quick glance at them, however, and you can see the cheap quality of the materials and construction. Even if these weren’t made from cheap polyester Halloween costume fabrics, you still wouldn’t get that tailored and structured look that Patrick Wilson (Nite Owl II) and Malin Akerman (Silk Spectre II) have in the movie. Below is a comparison of the licensed Nite Owl II Halloween costume, next to a screen shot of Patrick Wilson’s Nite Owl II movie costume:

And here is another comparison, this time of Malin Akerman’s Silk Spectre II costume from the movie, and the licensed Halloween Silk Spectre II costume:

Fortunately for fans, not every costume from Watchmen is that tailored or complicated to make. And for that reason, I think you’ll see far more people dressed as characters like Rorschach and Dr. Manhattan, and less people dressed as Nite Owl II and Ozymandias.

I’m sure there will be a decent number of women dressed as Silk Spectre II, despite the costuming difficulties, given its sex appeal. Conventions can be a lot like Halloween, in that some women use it as an excuse to leave as little to the imagination as possible (and that costume fits the bill).

Rorschach and Dr. Manhattan costumes are fairly easy to recreate, which is why I suspect we’ll see more of them than any other characters. A Rorschach costume is mostly composed of a trench coat, hat, and mask. The mask is easy enough to sew together, and fabric paint can be used to create the signature Rorschach “ink blot” on it. There is an officially licensed Rorschach Halloween costume for sale, but your costume will probably look more authentic if you provide your own trench coat and hat. The ones that come with the Halloween costume don’t quite match the ones in the movie.

As for Dr. Manhattan, all you need is some blue paint to air brush on. However, for the sake of public decency, you should probably keep your dangly blue man-bits covered a bit more than the Dr. Manhattan in the movie.

In the end, it is obviously your call as to whether you want to attempt a screen accurate reproduction of a Watchmen costume, or buy a pre-made Halloween costume. You should fully expect to see at least a few convention attendees rocking out an expensive movie-quality Nite Owl II or Ozymandias costume. I don’t know where people get the time or money, but some do find a way.

In my experience, obvious Halloween costumes don’t go over too well with the con crowd, and you won’t be able to enter them in most costume contests. But sometimes it’s just fun to have a costume to throw on for a convention, instead of wearing that Magic the Gathering shirt you always wear, and in that case the Halloween costume may be right up your ally.

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