Dragon Con takes over a large section of downtown Atlanta ever year during the Thursday through Monday of Labor Day weekend. People come from as far as Australia, and from all fifty states, to attend and see all of the different panels, what the vendors and artists have for sale over in the (four-story!) vendor hall, to hear concerts, to see friends, to vote in the Dragon Awards, and more. You want to see George Takei thoughtfully answer questions about both his time in Star Trek and in a Japanese internment camp, see the full-on ridiculousness and awesomeness of DragonCon Wrestling, and then play an impromptu game of Werewolf with twenty strangers on a conference room floor? Dragon Con has all that and more.
The one thing, more than anything else, that Dragon Con can boast about is the cosplay. All, and I mean ALL, fandoms and non-fandoms are represented here. Below are a lot of pictures I took of various cosplayers at Dragon Con 2019, and I know that I did not even see 20% of the amazing and elaborate costumes out there. People spend months creating different cosplay outfits of everything from Disney films to video games to the Bud Knight, everyday objects and clever twists on well-recognized properties. I have attended a lot of conventions, and Dragon Con easily has one of the highest concentrations of quality cosplay that I have ever seen, year after year.
There are even people who bring cosplays that are designed to be worn for pure photograph purposes out on the show floor because they are far too complex to be walking around to see everything in (the Pyramid Head in the gallery below is an excellent example of that) and cosplay that protests things like the final Game of Thrones‘ season’s writing or that there is not a Jaws ride in the Universal theme parks outside of Japan.
So please take a look through the galleries below and see what I thought were some stunning cosplays. That said, tickets for Dragon Con 2020 are on sale now, and it is honestly worth going to if you can. If you don’t believe me when I say there is genuinely something for everyone, then please take a look at my earlier piece where I made an explicit point to visit lesser-known fandom tracks to see just what they are all about.
Did you go to Dragon Con, and if so, what was your favorite cosplay you saw?
Have you done cosplay before, and if so, what was it of?
Share your comments below!
