On a pleasant Sunday during Labor Day weekend in 2017, Monique Anderson sat in her Volkswagen a few blocks from a Black Geeks of Dragon Con photo shoot. At age 38, the Atlanta resident was about to make her public cosplay debut dressed as Nakia Shauku from the upcoming Marvel movie “Black Panther,” a costume she spent two weeks cobbling together.
But she was overcome with anxiety. She sat in her car for 20 minutes, then paced around it for another 15 minutes. “I almost turned around and went home,” she said.
Then an inner voice told Anderson that every cosplayer has a first time, that she needed to push through her fear and do something she really wanted to do. “I had to hype myself up,” she said. “Even if it was terrible, I tried something new.”
Fortunately, it wasn’t terrible at all. “It was amazing,” she said.
Although it was five months before “Black Panther” was set to be released, Anderson ran into another woman dressed as Nakia. “We were suddenly surrounded by eight photographers,” she said. “I felt powerful. I felt confident. It was nothing but positivity.”
She was hooked and now looks forward to returning to Dragon Con year after year, a proud self-proclaimed member of the growing Black nerd community, aka Blerds.
Credit: CONTRIBUTED
Credit: CONTRIBUTED
Dragon Con, an annual, five-day convention celebrating sci fi, horror and pop culture expected to draw more than 60,000 people to downtown Atlanta later this month, has been a bastion for nerds since it began in 1987. In stereotypical form, its participants were predominantly young, white and male. But in recent years, the convention has grown more inclusive as the worlds of animé, comics and science fiction film and TV have diversified as well.
“Nerd culture isn’t just a white guy living in his parents’ basement eating Pop Tarts and drinking Mountain Dew,” said Atlanta Anthony Michael Philips, a photographer for Mohawk Industries and a cosplay photographer at Dragon Con. “After ‘Black Panther’ came out, we had something that is our world, characters with positive Black stories. There’s Falcon from the Avengers. And Luke Cage.” He noted that acclaimed rap star Megan Thee Stallion is a self-proclaimed nerd who cosplays animé characters and includes animé references in her music.
Efforts to diversify Dragon Con’s audience and programming has come from attendees themselves who have organized groups and events to create a more welcoming space.
Channing Sherman, a 47-year-old Lake Charles, Louisiana, web content producer began coming to Dragon Con in 2008 as a tech nerd who liked the science-oriented panels. One year, he saw an attendee joke online that he was the only Black person at Dragon Con. To prove him wrong, Sherman began posting photos of other Black Dragon Con attendees online.
As a lark in 2015, he created a Facebook page called Black Geeks of Dragon Con and hosted a photo meetup at the convention that year. About 30 people showed up at Hardy Ivy Park near the Hyatt Regency, one of Dragon Con’s main hotels.
As interest grew in Black Geeks of Dragon Con, Sherman decided to make it an annual tradition. It kept growing, save for the pandemic. Last year’s photo shoot drew nearly 300 people jostling for spots on the back stairs of the downtown Hilton, another Dragon Con hang out spot.
While that is an ample number, it still represents less than 1% of everyone who attends the convention.
Credit: CONTRIBUTED
Credit: CONTRIBUTED
Credit: CONTRIBUTED
Credit: CONTRIBUTED
Jarvis Sheffield, coordinator of the Tennessee State University Media Centers in Nashville and self-described “sci-fi nerd,” first attended Dragon Con in 2008. A decade later, after noticing the relative paucity of people of color on various panels, he initiated a new diversity track focused on “speculative fiction and literature.” Last year’s panels included topics such as Why Wakanda Matters, The Artistry of Black Comics and Unleashing Minds: Neurodiversity and the Magic of Fandom.
“We just want to make sure all the different groups that have been part of Dragon Con get represented regardless of your age, sexual orientation, race or gender,” Sheffield said. “We cover comic books, cosplay, video games, movies, TV and animation.” He has organized welcome parties, paint-and-sip gatherings and game nights.
Sheffield sees no competition with the Black Geeks of Dragon Con group. “We collaborate a lot,” Sheffield said. “Channing is down to earth, very witty. He’s the life of the party without even knowing it!”
Credit: CONTRIBUTED
Credit: CONTRIBUTED
Indeed, in 2022, the two groups began marching together in the annual Dragon Con parade that draws tens of thousands of spectators who line Peachtree Street to see more than 3,000 participants dressed in costumes like Stormtroopers, Spider-Man and all variety of horror gear. The Black nerds’ theme that year was the 1998 Eddie Murphy classic “Coming to America.” Folks dressed not only as residents of the fictional country of Zumanda but also characters such as Murphy’s goofy Randy Watson of the soul group Sexual Chocolate.
Credit: CONTRIBUTED FROM ANDREW MICHAEL PHILLIPS
Credit: CONTRIBUTED FROM ANDREW MICHAEL PHILLIPS
JaBarr “Barr Foxx” Lasley, a post production supervisor at Tyler Perry Studios, discovered Dragon Con in 2006 at age 18 when he heard that people were wearing costumes. “Any excuse to put on a costume, I’m there!’ he said. He quickly fell in love. “I found my utopia, a secret bubble of things I loved I didn’t know existed.”
But he was disappointed by how few people of color were in attendance. Nevertheless, the following year, he dressed up as Jericho from his favorite animated series, “Teen Titans,” and met the creator George Perez. “Jericho is a male, blue-eyed blonde, so I put on a big blonde Afro,” Lasley said. “He loved it!”
For cosplayers, getting photographed in costume is a key part of the experience. But many Black cosplayers were “not getting fair treatment, in my opinion, at the Con from photographers,” said Lasley. “I was like, ‘Don’t sweat it! If you’re here, I’ll make an annual photo shoot.’” In 2010, he created CosNoir, which provides attendees with high-quality images of themselves in costume for free.
“I pay photographers, rent out studio space and you get treated like a superstar,” Lasley said.
In 2021 Lasley made a one-hour documentary about the experience called “Cosplay Your Way: In Color,” that’s streaming on Tubi and Amazon.
Lasley is thrilled to now be firmly enmeshed in Dragon Con. “I have a lot of presence,” he said. “I’m now a judge at costume contests. I was sitting there one time and turned to the person next to me and said, ‘Wow! I was in the audience looking in. I wondered how those people became judges. It was such a new thing to me. Now I’m one of those judges!’”
Credit: Patrick Sun
Credit: Patrick Sun
Despite a pervading sense of camaraderie, there is some division within the nerd world.
“Some people feel like you have to follow certain rules, and if you don’t have particular knowledge, you’re a fake nerd,” said Walter Dean, a Dunwoody resident who designs costumes and hasn’t missed a Dragon Con since 2006. “They get upset if a person plays a character that isn’t the race they are in the comic books or the movie.”
He recalled receiving negative feedback after dressing up as Robin of “Batman and Robin” fame one year and the comic version of Black Lightning rather than the TV one on another occasion.
When Anderson dressed up one year as Carol Danvers as Captain Marvel, she said she mostly got compliments but did overhear critics saying, “Carol isn’t Black” or “Oh! She’s the Black Captain Marvel!”
But on the whole, “race and gender melts away and you’re just another nerd,” said Sheffield. “As volunteers, the one thing we’re told is, ‘Don’t be a jerk.’”
Credit: CON
Credit: CON
Nicholas Hoo, a 44-year-old Atlanta resident who provides STEM content to school districts using graphic novels, said Black nerd culture has coalesced more in the past decade. Since self-publishing has become more economically viable, graphic novels focused on people of color have blossomed, he said. And Hoo has noticed cosplayers of color are now more apt to play not just Black characters but any characters regardless of race.
“In conjunction with social media, it’s become this big stirring pot,” Hoo said. “There are cosplay people who are serious social media influencers.”
The Black Geeks of Dragon Con and organizers of the Diversity Track will join forces again this year to walk the parade, asking cosplayers to dress either in “Coming to America” or “Black Panther” gear. About 50 people are expected to participate.
“Being part of the Dragon Con parade is absolutely exhilarating,” Sheffield said. “There is nothing quite like it. Having the excitement of the crowd of thousands cheering for you is always one of the high points of my year.”
EVENT PREVIEW
Dragon Con. Aug. 29-Sept. 2. $35 and up for day passes, $175 and up for five-day passes. Multiple hotels in downtown Atlanta. Parade: 10 a.m.-noon Aug. 31, starting at Linden Avenue and Peachtree Street, running south to the Westin, east on Andrew Young International Boulevard, north on Peachtree Center Avenue and ending at the Marriott. It will air on Dragon Con’s YouTube page and on the CW. dragoncon.org
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