Raymond Briggs

been an artist at comic cons for three years. I started by selling models of well-known characters that I sculpted from clay. Increasingly worried by licensing laws (perhaps unnecessarily, given the sheer volume of knock-off Chinese merchandise and appropriated intellectual property that abounds at every convention), I now make custom creations: the attendees’ own fictional characters, or models of them in ‘cosplay’ – the costumes they wear to the event.

Cosplay (verb and noun) is an essential part of the comic con. It’s a portmanteau of ‘costume’ and ‘play’ but all it really means is ‘fancy dress’. About eighty per cent of attendees have donned a costume for the occasion, some of which are truly spectacular affairs that wouldn’t look out of place on a film set.

The best cosplays have a touch of Cosplay: Spock, but not as we know him

creative irony about them: themed family costumes with children dressed as face-hugging larval aliens, with their parents as doomed astronauts; or satirical interpretations of Scottish Disney princesses decked out in woad and weaponry, looking like members of the Braveheart army.

Cosplayers are never paid to be there; it’s simply a comic-con tradition. There are cosplay competitions, but the real badge of pride is how many strangers want their photo taken with you.

The net effect of a comic con is something between a literary festival, a shopping centre and an enormous fan club. The weekend largely consists of queueing and spending, but the trade-off is complete escapism; a chance to live, eat and breathe your favourite obsession, and a sense of belonging that comes from shared fanaticism. It’s a heady mixture and comic cons only look set to grow further in number and size.