Every con you go to, you will see an incredulous amount of cosplay (costume role play i think).  Comic Con International was no exception.  In fact, this year's Comic Con was jam packed with every single type of cosplayer. Now, in my book, there are eight different types of cosplay out there.  Most people concentrate on the good or the bad, but there's much more than that.

Let's start with the good, shall we?  Here we see a good looking blonde with a slim figure cosplaying as Super Girl.  Well, Super Girl is a good looking blonde with a slim figure.  That's a simple rule for cosplaying; Knowing what it is your character looks like!  This girl had the right idea.  If you naturally look like a super hero, you would look natural dressing up as said super hero. Kudos Super Girl, you've done cosplay right.

Here is what I like to call the too much effort cosplay.  Brownie points for being the only Batman Beyond I remember seeing at SDCC.  On the surface, this appears to be a regular costume, but I don't think you can find a Batman Beyond costume on store racks.  Now, this Batman should be in a techno organic armor-like suit.  This thing looks over-padded.  You should have seen this guy.  He is really into it.  So much so that after this photo, he gave us his card and asked him to send him these pics.  He really loves himself!  This picture alone doesn't do this guy justice.

We're going from too much effort to too much money guy.  I imagine whoever this is was strolling the toy aisle in Target when they passed all the iron man masks and lights and decided to be Iron Man himself.  Look at this thing!  At first, I was astonished, then later all I couldn't help but wonder how much money he spent on that thing.  I'm almost sure this wasn't a Marvel actor paid to be there.  I like to think of this guy as some dude who quit his job and spent his wife's live savings on making an awesome Iron Man costume.

Let me make this clear.  Dressing up as a furry is NOT cosplaying!  Even if it's as a gigantic Pikachu!  I'm done with this one!

Can you guys see where I'm going with this one?  Please tell me you know where I'm going with this one.  This is bad!  Plain old bad!  For starters, when did Ms Marvel get tattoos and a color change?  Which energy did she absorb to look that way and where did her curves go?  The Black Widow doesn't look too bad.  It just looks like she spent the last couple years as a soccer mom. Finally, what the hell Cap?  It looks like you gave up on defending our freedoms and took up defending cookies.  You know how I said if you look like the character then cosplaying is a good idea?  Well, this is what happens when you don't look like the character.

Here you have the classic cross dressing cosplayer.  It's almost normal when you see a female dress as a male character nowadays, but seeing the men dress up as women is something to talk about.  This guy was walking around the floor as if he forgot he was a Sailor Scout one second, and posing like any other Sailor Scout would in another.  These are always fun to say the least.

This guy falls under the label of thoughtful.  Again, brownie points for dressing up as a character I love.  How many Wonder Women did I see at SDCC? Too many to count.  How many Booster Gold's did I see?  Just one!  That's right!  Either this guy loves Booster Gold more than I do, or he knew no one was going to dress up as Booster so he had to do it himself.  You'll see these kinds of people at every con.  I didn't want to use the Boba Phat because I see that dude at every con I go.

Finally, we have the too cute type of cosplayer.  Even if she didn't naturally looks like a chibi Chun Li, she'd be too cute to critique.  That's just it though, there really isn't much to critique.  The costume is perfect.  How the hell did this happen?

Well, there you go.  The eight types of cosplaying are good,  too much effort, too much money, furry not cosplay, plain bad, cross dress, thoughtful, and paralyzing cute.