Bill Cosplay in Leotard Pt. 6

I've always liked Hallowe'en but I've never really gone all out for it. As a kid, I most often had the little gaudy vinyl suits with the plastic face mask, except the one year my mom made me an Emperor's Royal Guard costume, which I loved (and don't think there are any pictures of). I also remember my friend Mark and I going as Bob and Doug McKenenzie, likely because we'd just watched Strange Brew.

Later years I either ignored or scrambled some things together from what I've had in the closet for a costume. In high school and University I did the "Clark Kent" so very often, with the exception of that one year that I went as the Crow, smothering on the white makeup, wrapping myself up with black electrical tape, and wearing the all-black outfit. Then there was the Wolverine outfit (and hair) back in Y2K. I don't think I've had a costume since.

But Aden has long been a champion of the dress-up game and has the Tickle Trunk of tailor-mades to prove it. With her enthusiasm and encouragement, I decided it was time to go all out. The original intent was to make a Blue Beetle costume (whom, if you will recall, is my favourite superhero) but I decided instead to make the lady happy and go as her favourite hero: Nightwing.

For those who don't know Nightwing, he's Dick Grayson, the very first Robin (as in "Batman and..."), all grown up and fighting crime on his own. For some reason still hard to explain, Nightwing has a huge female fanbase, and, yes, Aden is one of them. I knew I'd have to build the costume, as there would certainly not be one ready-made, and I honestly didn't know where to begin. I tried enlisting some help, but time and life commitments were tight, leaving me mostly to fend for myself.

I realized at one point that I'd never be able to make a costume that looked decent or fit properly and tried to think of ways of getting a form fitting costume. Then I remembered the Blue Man Group and their blacklight performers. Unitards! I did some unitard research on-line and eventually wound up at the costume/dance store, Malabar. They had exactly what I needed, a full body unitard with hands and feet free, and no hood. There I also found the perfect face-fitting mask that I could use to trim to resemble Nightwing's.

But still I needed gloves and boots. I recalled the last time I went camping that the man called Kev had these nifty neoprene aqua boots which I said at the time "look like good superhero boots". A trip to Mountain Equipment Coop later and boots AND gloves were in posession. The costume was practically complete. All I needed was Nightwing's "emblem" so to speak, the decoration that wraps around his shoulders in bright blue.

Aden and I took a trip to a fabric shop last week and found the perfect colour material, then spent some time trying to mimic the design. Eventually we had it and cut it out and it looked like it would be perfect, all that was left was sewing it on. Problem is, I can't sew and Aden wasn't keen either. But she's a trooper and she tried, as I left the costume with her, but it was too hard to do without the body in place to stretch it out, leaving us a scrambling Friday night, the night of the big costume party, to put it together.

Some odd tugs and loose stitching and a few snippings away of material later and the Nightwing wardrobe was as ready for prime tme as it would ever be. It wasn't perfect, but it did look good...

Comments were all positive, as I was one of very, very few people to brave the Charlie Browns-exposing spandex (to which Toast was heard to comment "You know, superheroes wear cups..."). In a little tit-for-tat (no pun intended), I got Aden to pull on the fishnet stalkings. Since Black Canary would be a little more involved than she was able to pull off this year, she did an absolutely stunning Zatanna. It may not be fandom's favourite team-up, but we did look good.

more photos from the evening