Do you like leather jackets? Do you want to dress like actor Eric Martsolf from Smallville? Do you have $178? If you answered yes to all three of those questions, Sky-Seller.com might be the site for you!

Or maybe you'd prefer to save $3 and order from LeatherJackets.com:

Hmm. That image looks awfully familiar. Where have I seen that before? Oh, yes, I remember now:

That's thomdave wearing the costume he had made for Comic-Con 2011. At the time, he credited the costume to Abby Polakow (of Cape & Cowl Creations).

Sky-Seller.com is registered to a private company in Panama. LeatherJackets.com is registered to an apparel company in San Francisco (B.L.K. International) which claims to have been in business for 20 years. If you look closely, you'll see that the LeatherJackets image is a poorly retouched version of the Sky-Seller image (you can clearly see the use of the clone tool to cover where the "Sky-Seller.com" watermark has been removed).

So Sky-Seller "borrowed" and retouched the image from thomdave's original forum post, and LeatherJackets "borrowed" that image and retouched it. Neither of them appear to have anything to do with Polakow, who has her own craft store on etsy.com.

The moral of today's post, boys and girls, is before you trust someone with your $175, you might want to do a bit of homework. Anyone who takes credit for someone else's work might not be the most trustworthy vendor.

Comments (1) | Add a Comment | Tags: abby polakow apparel cosplay costumes eric martsolf etsy.com leatherjackets.com sky-seller.com smallville thomdave

Time for a long Labor Day weekend. Long Labor Day weekends mean time for DragonCon. And DragonCon means time for Booster Gold cosplayers!

That's a television-inspired Booster Gold from DragonCon 2011. (Flickr.com picture by mchulin. The cosplayer is Thomdave.)

And this is a gender-bent Booster Gold enjoying some pole-dancing at DragonCon 2012. (Flickr.com picture by Paul Cory. The cosplayer is Shelley.)

What will DragonCon 2013 bring?

Comments (0) | Add a Comment | Tags: 2011 2012 conventions cosplay costumes dragoncon flickr.com mchullin paul cory shelley thomdave

Today's costume may be over a year old, but that doesn't make it any less deserving of our attention and admiration.

This is the costume that thomdave wore to Comic-Con International in 2011. Thomdave has posted several more pics of this awesome Smallville-inspired costume in the League of Heroes Yuku.com Forum. Better still, he gives us a breakdown of how it was made!

Jacket and Pants:
Custom tailored by Abby Polakow using navy blue and gold leather

Bracers:
Constructed from gold leather and Wonderflex by Abby Polakow

Gloves:
Generic leather gloves with a custom navy blue blend of Neopaque by Jacquard paint

Legion Flight Ring:
DC Direct

Wrist Blasters:
Constructed from Wonderflex and painted with Rust-Oleum metallic gold

Shoes:
Tucker synthetic leather shoes with custom Neopaque navy blue and true gold Lumiere by Jacquard paint

Glasses:
3M Tekk XF4 safety eyewear with the frame painted Rust-Oleum metallic gold

Now that we have a blueprint, Booster-philes, I expect to see a legion of Boosters at future conventions. (Thanks to Chris for correcting my oversight of this amazing costume.)

Comments (0) | Add a Comment | Tags: abby polakow chris conventions cosplay costumes theleagueofheroes.yuku.com thomdave