Rose City Comic Con in Portland, Oregon has announced that they have banned cosplay depicting Marvel’s Red Skull and other members of the HYDRA organization.
The comic book event released the following statement:
“Hateful symbols aren’t welcome at Rose City Comic Con. Historical costumes can be great, but reminders of unspeakable atrocities are not appropriate – this goes for Old School Hydra and Red Skull or any other Nazis from entertainment properties. Those figures, while comic-related, are still very much Nazis. As a result, they are 100% banned, always. This includes any sort of “ironic” or satirical costumes that re-appropriate Nazi paraphernalia or gear.”
They went into further detail on their Twitter:
Cosplayers associated with SS gear; we first thought it was offensive, but permissible. That was wrong & we won’t allow it again.
— Rose City Comic Con (@RoseCityCC) September 14, 2017
I would consider Red Skull to be an iconic Marvel character and character in general, so this seems a bit silly to me. Then again, it is 2017 and I wasn’t exactly surprised when I first heard of the ban.
This isn’t the craziest story related to cosplay that I’ve heard this year, though.
In fact there were quite a few. There was the one where police shot unarmed Batman cosplayers at an Australian sex party and the one where a California man claiming to be Mad Max was arrested for illegal weapons.
And who could forget the story where the man claiming to be The Punisher tried to kill Jason David Frank?
People sure are strange these days.