Since I’ve started my own costume blog, I felt it only right to research the other costuming blogs that are out there in cyberland. I stumbled across one yesterday that both impressed and annoyed me. I was impressed because the person who writes it is incredibly talented, both in creating costumes (they have a business where people commission mascot costumes from them, so they’d better be good) and in special effects makeup and masks. I admire a lot of people’s work, and this person definitely ranked up there near the top.

The reason I was annoyed was, in some ways, trivial. The person had posted a number of photos from a large costume convention. The majority of the costumes were quite obvious: a number of Supermen, some X-Men, a bunch of different comic book superheroes, etc. Preceding each set of photos was a caption listing the characters appearing in said photos. I was excited by one caption in particular. According to the blog author, one of the people they photographed was dressed as Angel, from X-Men. I thought I wonder which look they went for? Are they following the film? The comic? Will it be a really hot, shirtless guy, showing off his rock-hard six-pack abs and a massive wingspan?

Truth be told, I was really hoping for a hot, drool-worthy, half-naked guy with giant, feathery wings.

I was a little let down. Not that the guy wasn’t hot. He was kind of cute. He was wearing a shirt, but that was okay. The wings weren’t the disappointment, either. Honestly? They were the best wings I’ve EVER seen. They looked real. My father studied ornithology in college, so I’ve seen my share of bird wings. Believe me when I say these were amazing. I think, if I had seen this man walking the halls of a con, I would have run up to him and expected him to be able to fly me up high above the city.

What disappointed me was that the man in the picture was not, in fact, dressed as Angel from X-Men. He was, instead, one of the angels from Kevin Smith’s “Dogma.” The costume was pretty good. Metal breastplate, chainmail yoke, afore-mentioned kick-ass wings. Blood smear gotten while smiting humans. It was great. And it was mislabeled.

I figure, if you are going to have a costume blog, and you are going to post pictures that you took of the work of other costumers, the least you can do is make sure that you are correct about who the person is supposed to be. It’s easy, really. When you take the picture, just make sure you say “You’re blah-blah, right?” It’s okay if you get it wrong when asking them, in my mind. I’ve yet to meet someone at a con who has gotten snippy or violent when someone mistakes their costume for something else. But when you present yourself as a costumer who is “in the know,” and then get the name of the character being cosplayed wrong, you just end up looking like a jackass.

That’s just my opinion. Take it or leave it.