In the pandemic economy, face masks are like bars of gold. Hoarders are hoarding them. Governors are bartering for them. Hospital workers desperately need them. New Yorkers, ordered by Governor Cuomo last week to cover their faces in public, are repurposing bandannas and boxer shorts. In Rosie the Riveter fashion, Americans with crafting skills—among them quilters, Broadway seamstresses, sportswear manufacturers, origami artists, and grandmothers—have sprung into action. But one group has special mask-making powers: cosplayers, the superfans who specialize in making and wearing costumes. Never has the ability to whip up a Spider-Man mask or a Stormtrooper helmet been so useful.
“Cosplayers have big hearts,” Monica Paprocki, a thirty-five-year-old accountant in Chicago, said. Paprocki, who runs the fandom site Geeks A Gogo, started cosplaying in 2014 and taught herself how to sew by watching YouTube videos. She dressed as Princess Jasmine at Wizard World Chicago in 2019, the year after her Phoenix Monster costume, from the board game Rising Sun, won the Golden Needle Award at a gaming convention in Indianapolis. “It had articulated wings that I controlled with a remote control,” she said. This June, she was going to dress as Buzz Lightyear at the Origins Game Fair, in Ohio, but it had been postponed until October. When she saw a Facebook group requesting homemade medical supplies, she recruited fellow-cosplayers. “Before everything closed down, I had a stash of cotton fabric and materials here in my house,” she said. “I work my regular nine-to-five job in accounting. Right after that, I start sewing.”
One of her cosplaying friends, Bryan Martinez, said, “Cosplayers are people with a lot of anxiety. We like to always be making things.” (He mentioned “con crunch,” a term for the pre-convention costuming rush.) Martinez, an illustrator who lives in the Bronx, got into cosplaying five years ago, when he went to New York Comic Con in a store-bought Assassin’s Creed outfit. He taught himself to sew and returned, in 2018, as the Marvel villain Corvus Glaive, placing third in the FX competition. He was supposed to go to a convention in Philadelphia this month, to sell handmade “Sailor Moon” tote bags, but he repurposed the fabric to make masks for NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital. (Homemade masks can’t substitute for disposable medical masks, but they can prolong the use of medical masks if worn as a second layer.) “I am trying to get to forty or fifty,” he said. “I’ll keep going till I run out of materials.”
In Washington State, the hospital chain Providence put out a call for masks. “Cosplayers picked up on it right away and were, like, ‘Boom! Let’s do this,’ ” Brian Morris, who lives in Renton, said. Morris is the C.E.O. of KingCon Northwest, which draws some three thousand attendees, and runs a made-to-order-costume shop called Zaklabs. “Most people, when they think of cosplayers, are, like, ‘Oh, those funny people who dress up in those weird costumes,’ ” he said. “But they have this incredible set of skills.” He was planning to live-stream a mask-making tutorial that night. Fun patterns are a plus. Renee Spencer, a cosplayer from Snohomish County, had planned to attend Seattle’s Emerald City Comic Con (now postponed), where she has appeared as the Marvel heroine Jean Grey, but is now making masks with leftovers from the character’s trademark yellow sash. “I dropped two off already to my acupuncturist,” she said.
Anne Bonovich, in suburban Illinois, goes to conventions with her husband and kids. “We’re a big geek family,” she said. At Star Wars Celebration last year, in Chicago, they went as Hogwarts students with Jedi lightsabres. Bonovich has converted her basement into a mask-making shop, using “Game of Thrones” and “Star Wars” fabric, and is delivering masks to friends who work in emergency rooms. “There’s an elastic shortage everywhere, so we’re finding alternatives,” she said. “My daughter donated forty of her scrunchies.” Abi Gardner, a graphic designer and sometime Wonder Woman, had plenty of elastic, she said, “because I usually use it for bowstrings. I had a bowstring for Princess Merida, from ‘Brave.’ Cons don’t let you have real bowstrings, so elastic works really well.”
Under the circumstances, it seemed sensible to ask: Which superhero could best fight the coronavirus? Paprocki suggested the Invisible Woman, one of the Fantastic Four, whose force-field powers “can shield people from the virus.” Bonovich proposed Professor Xavier, from “X-Men,” “because he can use his mind to tell everybody to stay home, wash their hands, and chill out.” Spencer voted for the Marvel heroine Rogue, whose powers preclude her from touching people, thereby making her “the queen of social distancing.” The Atom, Morris said, could shrink himself to germ size and “fight ’em hand to hand.” Martinez chose Doctor Strange, because he’s a medical professional, and because he can turn back time. ♦
