Earlier this year, ComicBook held its inaugural Halloween Cosplay Contest, which drew tremendous interest from our community of fans. The entries ran the gamut of fandoms, from Marvel to DC to Star Wars to anime, with some participants submitting their comics-accurate outfits that looked like they walked off the set of a movie production, while other cosplayers instead put their own unique and unconventional spins on iconic outfits. The ComicBook team had their work cut out for them when it came to selecting a favorite submission, and it was ultimately Taïr Hamou’s DCeased version of Batgirl that stood triumphant, not only for the craft that went into the costume, but also for the cosplay’s embrace of the spooky season.
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What made the DCeased Batgirl outfit feel all the more impressive is that Hamou revealed how it was the result of weather taking a serious toll on an entirely different costume, causing it to rot. Her ingenuity couldn’t be stopped, though, and a far more innocuous take on Barbara Gordon became much more intimidating.
ComicBook caught up with Hamou to talk her interests in cosplay, connecting with her community, her biggest challenges, and more.
ComicBook: What would you say is your biggest fandom? Is it Marvel, is it anime? What’s the thing that really gets you excited?
Taïr Hamou: I’d say comic books, in general, but more DC than Marvel. Although, I’ve been doing more Marvel this year than DC, but usually DC.
What is it about DC, either the comics or the characters themselves, that really connects with you, that really gets you excited?
I grew up on TV shows like Batman: The Animated Series and stuff like that, but you can say that DC has more of a darker feeling to it than Marvel. I love both, but I just feel more connected to DC characters and the plot in general than Marvel.
I don’t know if … I feel like Marvel got a little bit more mainstream and, I don’t want to be the one that says, “I don’t like to be in a mainstream,” but it ruins it for me when so many people are hyped about the same thing and I want to have my own little thing. I tend to cosplay, of course, very famous characters like Batgirl and Catwoman, but I also cosplay characters that nobody knows, like Liberty Belle from the JSA and other characters. I feel like me cosplaying them gets more people to know them and the comics that they are based on and I like that I can do that. I just like the characters and the plots of DC, I guess, more specifically Batman.
You mentioned Batman: The Animated Series as an important touchstone for an entire generation, was there a specific character or was there a specific storyline that you really connected with or really resonated with you?
What I loved about it was that every episode was different, it stood on its own, and it was fun because you got introduced to new characters with every episode and a new villain every episode and it was fun.
Obviously, I loved Batman as a character. I loved Barbara [Gordon]. I still do, she is my favorite character up until today. I actually like Catwoman more in the comics than in the TV show, but I don’t think I have a certain arc or a plot that I specifically like in the TV show. I really love the fact that every episode stood on its own. It was fun.
And, also, the new animated show [Batman: Caped Crusader] that they released recently, it also had that flow and I like that. And I think all of the Batman villains are great, so each and every one of them is good, I cannot really pick one of them.
What was the very first cosplay that you did and what was it about that cosplay that you thought, “I’m taking that step, I’m making this move towards exploring this outlet,”?
I actually started cosplaying in 2009. It was a very long time ago and I started cosplaying anime characters and what got me into it was the fact that all of my friends did it, so I just did it with all my friends. My first cosplay was of a character called Sheryl Nome from Macross Frontier. I just felt like I saw the similarities between the two of us. I really loved her style. She was the first cosplay that I’ve done and I’ve done more cosplays of her in different outfits since.
I took some breaks since 2009 and I had a really big break around 2015 until 2019 then, with COVID, everyone got bored. I watched a lot of television and I think, at this time, I got back to watching more TV shows and movies, comic book movies and adaptations, so I got that spark back again, and I think it was I was marathoning some CW shows. I think it was Supergirl or The Flash and I think the cosplay that got me back into cosplaying was Supergirl, actually, from The CW show.
So back then, in 2009, I didn’t have social media, we barely had Facebook back then and now when I go back to it, it was like a whole different thing. Everyone was all over social media and I was starting from scratch because I didn’t have an account. I opened my current account in 2019 and I started from the beginning. Everyone was already so famous or had so many followers. It’s all about followers today, and I really love creating and crafting.
I started the account knowing that I had a lot to catch up on, but I did it on my own pace. I just enjoyed making my costumes, I started posting more of the progress of what I’m making and some people really love the fact that I really do it elaborately. You can see on my highlights how I make certain things and I learn along the way, every time, how to make things better. That got me back to cosplaying and I took it more seriously because, today, it feels like a job you have to maintain. I do it because I love it and I enjoy crafting and I enjoy sewing and I enjoy meeting up with people that cosplay the same characters and we have fun meetings at cons, but having to maintain my social media, I’d say I would call it like a job because you have to maintain it if you don’t post. You have to keep it going. So I have my schedule of things that I want to do and things that I want to make in a certain year.
It’s funny, because I started by saying that I don’t like being mainstream, but now I have to because of social media. I do still cosplay characters that nobody knows and I enjoy it, but as I said, I cosplay more Marvel this year because X-Men got back and it also sparked something within me, because I also grew up on watching like the X-Men TV show and everyone started cosplaying X-Men and I was like, “Yeah, maybe now it’s the time to cosplay x-men, too.”
I cosplay a lot of X-Men characters this year, so I guess social media has its benefits, too. I try not to let it dictate how I cosplay, but it’s a fun way to get to know people, to show people my work, to get recognition, to get love. I started with anime, I had a little bit of a Disney characters phase, I think around 2013 or so, and then I had a little break, and then in 2019, since then, I mainly cosplay comic book characters.
Not only from your first cosplay with your friends, but also just talking about collaborating with other people, friends, fans, whoever, what do you think it is about the cosplay community that is different from just being a fan of anime, being a fan of Disney, being a fan of Marvel? What is so unique and so fulfilling and exciting about the cosplay community?
I think that being in a fandom, in general, it’s something that you can do on your own, which is fine. You can also cosplay on your own, but being in a cosplay community forces you to get along with other people, because you can cosplay on your own, but usually you don’t do that. You either cosplay and post your cosplays on social media and then you get to talk to other people on social media, or you actually go to conventions and you meet with people and you hang with people.
The community life, I think, is bolder when you’re doing cosplay. You can be in other fandoms and have a great community life, regardless of cosplay. You can be a Harry Potter fan and talk to people on forums, but I don’t think they’re doing many meetings, or actually meeting with each other and talking, conversing, and hanging out. Cosplaying forces you to be out there and to interact with people. Whether you’re the one people take photos of or you enjoy taking photos of other people and you start talking to them about their characters.
Cosplay is more than just putting on a costume. You get into the character, you play the character. It gets people to connect with you on a certain level because, if you cosplay a character and you really like this character and another person really likes this character, you click immediately and you start talking. The community life is, I feel personally, that it’s better than other fandoms when you cosplay, but I might be wrong. That’s just my own experience.
When it comes to selecting a character to cosplay, some of the appeal is just the design and the look and the aesthetics of that character, but also it’s almost like a role model, someone that you might want to emulate. How much of a balance is there? Would you ever dress up as a character that you hated but you thought had a cool costume or–
It will never happen. Even when people suggest cosplay to me, if I don’t know the character, I won’t cosplay. I might like the design enough to get to know the character and, if I like the character, I’ll cosplay it eventually. Usually, I just love a character and I love their design and then I cosplay them, because, again, I feel like cosplay is more than just putting on a costume. It’s “costume-play.” So you have to have some connection to the character in order to be cosplaying a character.
If I just wanted to model a cosplay, then sure, I can do that but I would never cosplay a character that I hate, for sure. I’ve got to cosplay characters that I did not know, but I loved their design and I got to know them through their design. Witcher cosplays that I did, I did not know The Witcher until I saw Yennefer and Ciri from The Witcher 3 and I really loved the design. I played a game and then I cosplayed them.
But no, I personally do not cosplay characters that I hate and I think that people … It’s different today because cosplay got a little bit mainstream, so people cosplay today just because it’s cool or they just love how a character looks or it’s popular. I really feel like people should cosplay characters that they love, regardless of how popular they are or how they look or if they’re Black or white or how the cosplayer looks compared to the character itself. Cosplay should be fun. It should be connecting people together.
I, unfortunately, feel like we are losing it today, a little bit, and I think it’s really important that we remember what cosplay is about, which is having fun and connecting with people and bringing those characters to life through the costumes.
For your Arkham Knight Batgirl and DCeased Batgirl costume, do you remember specific challenges that you hadn’t anticipated while bringing the costume to life? Was there a certain element of making the costume that you didn’t realize was going to be as hard as It ended up being?
The Arkham Knight Batgirl was my most complicated cosplay because it was the first time I had to 3D print a whole armor and I thought it was going to be easy. I’ve been printing parts before and I’ve been working on that before, but wearing a full, printed armor is not comfortable at all. You cannot move, you cannot bend. I need to remake that cosplay again and make it from a more flexible material because I cannot be in it for more than like two hours straight, which sucks because it looks great. I love how it looks, but it’s not comfortable enough to go around with and it also breaks very easily. It was a fun experience to make a whole cosplay with printing. I would do so much better today. I’ll remake it, I know it for sure.
But that’s the thing about cosplay. I, personally, really love to remake my cosplays when I reach a certain level, that I feel like I improved my skills and I can look back and see, “Oh, this was really good, but I know I can do it better.” I even compare the two of them. I think I’ve done my Ciri cosplay from The Witcher three times and I improved it every time. Even the photo I submitted for the DCeased Batgirl, it actually started as a regular [Batman of Burnside] Batgirl cosplay. I took it with me to a convention in Atlanta and it was so humid in Atlanta and I put it in my suitcase and it rotted there. I forgot it in my suitcase. It started to peel and I wanted to throw it away, but it was my first Batgirl cosplay and I really loved it and I didn’t want to let it go.
What I did was, “Okay, let’s turn it into something else,” and I just threw a lot of blood on it and used the parts that were getting ripped and I made the DCeased version that people really loved, but, unfortunately, didn’t survive more than one time. I had to throw it away. But since then, I made another Burnside Batgirl version and I think I’ll make another one, even, now that I feel like I’ve improved.
I think that it doesn’t matter that I’ve been cosplaying for so long, it’s always a process of learning, and every time you learn a new technique or you get better at what you do, because you’ve been doing it for so long, there’s always room to improve and I believe in remaking stuff to show yourself that you’ve improved. That’s one of the things that I really like about cosplaying.
You have gotten to bring so many different characters to life and reimagined and remixed versions of those characters, but has there been one character that is your dream to be able to pull off in cosplay that you logistically haven’t been able to figure out how to replicate their costume? Or even if it’s a matter of physics that you can’t figure out? A character you love but can’t even physically exist in the real world?
I think my dream cosplay was my Arkham Knight Batgirl and I feel like I need to remake it because I did a good job for the first time, but I know it can be a lot better. Because I’m cosplaying DC characters, usually their costumes aren’t that extreme to not be able to pull off. I guess it’s more accurate [to cosplay] the female characters, because if I would possibly be Batman, it would be different. But nothing comes to my mind right now.
I have a character that I want to cosplay, but it’s not a comic book character, I want to cosplay Angewomon from Digimon and that structure might take me forever to pull off. It will take me time, but I really want to make it a big project. Maybe that’s one, but regarding comic characters, I don’t think that I have something that I cannot pull off, it’s just a matter of a lot of time. And money, that is always a problem when you’re cosplaying.
I feel like defying the laws of physics sometimes is more feasible than having the money to actually do it. You can think of the way to do it, but you can’t actually pay for the necessary stuff.
Although I make my own costumes, I’ve also gotten more used to the idea of buying parts that I don’t know how to make myself. I would be the kind of person to make everything on my own, no matter what, but nowadays, I feel more comfortable paying for someone to make me a part if I don’t know how to do it. I don’t know how to cast cowls or stuff like that, so I pay for someone to do that. I do what I can do.
I would love to learn how to do that, but it’s too expensive for just one person to do, so it’s okay to commission parts, I think. I really enjoy the process of making, but if it’s too expensive, then I’m not fighting it, I’m just commissioning it. Maybe that’s why I didn’t have to face something that I couldn’t do, because I would just buy it if I couldn’t.
You can follow Hamou’s work on Instagram.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity. You can contact Patrick Cavanaugh directly on Twitter.
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Image courtesy of Marvel Studios
