During the years we worked on X-MEN:TAS, we had no idea that people all over the planet would end up walking around dressed like the characters we were writing and drawing. There was a hint of this going on at the Cons — like the Comic Con in San Diego in 1993 at which we had an X-MEN panel during the first full year of the show. This year at San Diego we could have filled an auditorium with X-MEN:TAS cosplayers. It’s truly humbling. Twenty years ago we spent our days imagining things for these fictional beings to say and do (and having to come up with a few of our own). Now here are oceans of people living out those imaginings. I once asked Len Wein, assembler of the modern X-Men comics team, creator of Wolverine and Storm (among others), if it felt weird to see bits of his thoughts walking all around him. Len, as always, just shook his head, smiled, and said: “Eric, it’s just a comic book. It’s what I do for a living.” And he’s right. All the rest of it is a mystery. Below see the Wolverine mask that Alec, my 4-year-old son, wore for Halloween 1996. Evidently cosplay begins at home…
