Meet the FanX Cosplay Hall of Fame: How cosplay can make a difference

SALT LAKE CITY ( ABC4 ) — Meet the FanX Cosplay Hall of Fame, a group established to highlight cosplayers who use the craft to help others through charity work.

Many of them are involved with local organizations, such as HEROIC and The Legacy Initiative , which participate in fundraisers and events to help raise money for important causes and families in need. Ahead of FanX, ABC4.com met with a few members of the group to learn more about what they do and how they got started in this work.

FanX is Sept. 26 through Sept. 28 and tickets are still available online . If you want to learn more about The Cosplay Hall of Fame, they will be hosting a panel during FanX on Thursday from 3:30 p.m. to 4:20 p.m. in Room 150 G on Floor 1. At the panel, the group will discuss their projects from the past year, their plans for the future, and they will also answer attendees’ questions. They help with the cosplay competition, which will be on Saturday, Sept. 28.

Eric Allan Hall

Involved with: HEROIC, Seventh Fleet, The Rocky Mountain Muggles

Characters include: Superman, Dr. Strange, Green Lantern, Batman, Remus Lupin, Newt Scamander

Find him on: Facebook and Instagram

Q: How did you get started in cosplay?

Eric: “Growing up, my mom did a lot of community theater so I would come along as the town’s child number three. I was in ‘Carousel’, I was on ‘Fiddler on the Roof’, and other productions. I grew up around costumes, theatrical makeup, accents, getting into character, and so forth. After I graduated from college, I would get together with my friends and we would do group Halloween costumes like ‘Gilligan’s Island’ and ‘The Addams Family’, things like that. Just get everybody all together. I’ve always been a Star Trek fan, so I started my Borg cosplay and my Mr. Data cosplay in 1993, and I’ve been working on both of them ever since.”

Q: How did you get involved in the charity aspect of cosplay?

Eric: “Shortly after I moved to Utah, a friend of a friend contacted me to see if I’d be interested in being Spider-Man for a 5K fundraising race for their son who had cancer. He wasn’t able to be there, but the family recorded me and I was there in my Spider-Man outfit…. I do have a Jedi outfit. I also helped out a little bit with some of the Star Wars events around the area.”

“At one event, I met a Batman and a Catwoman when I was dressed as Spider-Man and we decided, ‘Hey, wouldn’t it be cool to have a group like this?’ So, we started HEROIC, and from there, we’ve grown and we continue to this day. I have about 200 cosplays now … My basement is full of armoires from IKEA, those kinds of collapsible ones that you can put together. I’ve got all my cosplays in those … It’s such a reward to be able to interact with little kids, to see them light it up, to be able to be their hero.”

Q: Tell me more about HEROIC

Eric: “ I’m a founding member of HEROIC. We’ve been around for about 13 years now. We have about 70 members from Logan down to about Provo and we have at least one or two events a month, usually in the summer. We go the second Saturday of the month to the Ronald McDonald House and Legacy has joined us for that recently, which has been fantastic to have extra people. Something that I like to do is set up a Toys for Tots drive in November. We go to a local game store and just wave at cars as they pass by. We get as many different folks from all the different cosplay groups to come out, even people who aren’t members of a cosplay group who just want to get to see what it’s like.”

Q: Why does this work matter to you?

Eric: “Going back to what Uncle Ben said to Peter Parker, with great power comes great responsibility. Having the ability to have the cosplay to go out and participate in cosplay competitions is fun and it’s nice to win prizes, but to be able to touch the life of somebody who needs some help and to help out little kids … just to be able to give back to the community and use our powers that we have for good.”

Marial Clark

Involved with: HEROIC, The Legacy Initiative, Mascot Miracles Association , Rebel Legion , The 501st Legion , Kids Heroes Foundation , Millie’s Princess Foundation , Ink Against Cancer , ARUP Blood Services

Characters include: Evil Queen, Jawwa, Jade from the “Green Lantern” Universe, Edna Mode, Evil Queen/Wonder Woman Mash-up

Find her on: Facebook , Instagram , TikTok

Q: How did you get started in cosplay?

Marial: “When I was getting into the Utah cosplay scene, like Eric, I grew up as a theater kid. I was making costumes for midnight movie showings with my college roommates or stuff like that, theming my Halloween costumes with my family.”

“I got started in the Utah cosplay community just going to the first FanX, and then six months later, we were going to go to Disneyland for my daughter’s first birthday because her birthday’s in October, and we were going to dress up because we were going to Mickey’s Halloween Party. We decided to give our costumes a dry run at FanX … Because she was a year old, we knew she was going to be sleeping a lot, so we wanted her costume and our coordinating costumes to be something where if she was asleep, it still made sense. That was either Sleeping Beauty or Snow White and I decided I didn’t want to paint myself green, so that ruled out Maleficent. So she was going to be Snow White, I was gonna be the Evil Queen, and my husband was going to be the Prince.”

Q: How did you get involved in the charity aspect of cosplay?

Marial: “When we went to FanX I was not expecting much of a reaction because I was one of Disney’s oldest animated characters … But we didn’t get more than two or three feet at a time on the con floor before people were stopping and asking for photos with us.”

“Toward the end of the day, a guy dressed as Nick Fury came up and was like, ‘I would like to talk to you about the HEROIC initiative.’ He said, ‘I’m part of a cosplay charity organization called HEROIC and we go out into the community and we really strive for high-quality costumes and characters … Your costume is just absolutely fantastic. I’m guessing you spent a decent chunk of change putting it together. Would you like to be able to wear it more?’ I was like, ‘Wait, that’s a thing — I can do that, really?’ He gave me a card with HEROIC’s information on it. I filled out the application, did my first event a month and some change after that, and I can’t even describe how amazing it was to go to these events and see these children’s eyes light up when a character walked through the door. I have been addicted to it ever since.”

Q: What are some of the characters you do the most?

Marial: “The Evil Queen is my most well-known one, she’s the one I have done the most. I also am a Jawwa with the 501st and Rebel Legion, and that one is so much fun because I can be a kid. So when we’re doing events with kids, I can be on their level with that same level of mischievous kind of getting into things and running around and they have a blast and I have a blast.”

Q: What does being involved in cosplay charity work mean to you?

Marial: “I grew up in a really traumatic household. I also have children who are neurodivergent as a result of genetic trauma, generational trauma, and so one of the things I love about doing charity cosplay is being able to work with kids and adults who come from trauma … and they need a safe place. In the cosplay community here in Utah, it really is a safe place … I feel like Utah especially is really good at being supporting, uplifting, and validating for people. I see that a lot. I see a lot of people who come and talk to me like ‘I wasn’t going to do this cosplay. But then you got on the FanX Facebook group and said, ‘Hey, cosplay who you want. It doesn’t matter what you look like. It doesn’t matter what gender or hair color, if this is a character that you want to cosplay, do it. That gave me the confidence to do it. Now, I feel better about myself.'”

“That’s kind of my driving reason behind why I love doing charity cosplay is just being able to help give that security or that validation, that support to other people who are broken and are working on mending and need that support … I love being able to give that support, to give that, that strength back, because it’s such a hard journey. When you realize that you’re not walking it alone, it makes such a difference. I love that I’m not alone in my journey. I’ve got thousands of people in the Utah cosplay community that are my family, and I can be part of their family, too, and we can be a healthy, safe family, which a lot of people don’t have.”

Travis Hysell

Involved with: The Legacy Initiative

Characters include: Batman, Wolverine, Peter B. Parker, Bizarro

Find him on: Instagram

Q: How did you get started in cosplay?

Travis: “I was always the kid that started planning my Halloween costume — as soon as Halloween was over, I was thinking about the next year and building my own stuff and kind of going overboard because I didn’t grow up around cons. I didn’t even know what cons were until my mid-twenties because I grew up in very rural backwoods … As soon as I learned though, that all changed.”

Q: How did you get started in cosplay charity work?

Travis: “I’m with The Legacy Initiative. We started in late 2011. Our official launch was early 2012 and we originally began doing food rescue and providing food to families in need and homeless outreach. In early 2013, late 2012, right around there, we decided we wanted to launch a separate team doing character visits. Our first visits were going to the family shelters, to The Road Home, visiting the kids there.”

Q: Do you have any memorable stories?

Travis: “I think our first visit was at The Road Home and going into the family side to go see the kids there … It was ridiculously emotional and powerful. How excited the kids and the parents were, some of the parents cried … These are families that’ll probably never see Disneyland and for characters to come rolling in and spend one one-on-one time with them, it was an incredibly emotional thing … After that, there was no turning back. It was just kind of like, ‘When’s the next thing? We’ve got to do more of this.” Now I’m, a decade into this and there’s no stopping.”

Q: What inspired you to get involved?

Travis: “I started into this for charitable purposes … 99% of my cosplay experience is charity-related. I do occasionally go to the local cosplay night, but the bulk of the time, it’s all charity stuff. Like I said, we started with our aim towards the homeless community. I have a history of homelessness and foster care, so a lot of my focus tends to go that direction, just because that’s where my personal experience was as a kid. Some of my projects are related to kids that have experienced homelessness and abuse and trauma.”

Q: Tell me more about your projects

Travis: “One is the village run. Every year I’m on the planning team for that and that fundraises for Christmas Box International . The funds raised through that event go for helping kids that are aging out of the system. There’s a lot of kids that age out of foster care and have no help, no support. They don’t have family to rely on. They’re just kind of cut loose. This is one of the rare supports that they’re going to see as they’re trying to start their adult life coming out of the system. That one’s a special one for me.”

Q: What does being involved in cosplay charity work mean to you?

Travis: “It’s the cure of being soul tired. In this world, we can get so just worn out. There’s just so much negativity constantly barraging us. To be able to go out and give back in a way that feels meaningful, to be able to bring a smile to a kid’s face when they’re going through the struggle of their life, or a lot of them literally fighting for their life, to be there for just a little while to help them forget about what they’re experiencing and just to be a kid for a little while, there’s something powerful about that … I’m supposed to go out there and serve somebody else and it feels like I’m the one that receives the blessings from that. It’s like the hero’s journey the great heroes go out to save the world and is going to do these great deeds. But in the end, it’s the hero that ends up saved.”

Shandra Mutchie

Involved with: The Legacy Initiative, Millie’s Princess Foundation , Make-A-Wish, The Tim Tebow Foundation , HopeKids , Forever Twilight in Forks, Volterra Mistery, and Fantasy

Characters include: Aro from “Twilight”, Queen Amidala, Mary Poppins, Princess Zelda, Gamora, Nebula, Hela, Yennefer and Ciri from “The Witcher”

Find her on: Instagram

Q: How did you get started in cosplay?

Shandra: “I loved costumes growing up … My mother was the Stake Relief Society President for a long time, so she was constantly trying to dress us up like pioneers … Every time I had an opportunity to wear a costume, it made me very excited and I got very happy about it. I was that annoying kid that would insist on dress rehearsal when it wasn’t necessary … The truth is, I just wanted to wear the costume because I was a nerd.”

“I didn’t really start true cosplay until 2014. I was asked by one of my friends I went to high school with if I would be willing to dress as a character for two hours for an event that she was doing … I said, ‘What character?’ She goes, ‘Snow White.’ I was like, I’m not really a princess kind of person, but we’ll try it. I threw together this horrible costume and I threw together this horrible wig … I didn’t really know what my job was … It turns out that it’s a really exciting royal event for kids with terminal illnesses. It was with Millie’s Princess Foundation. I showed up and got to meet a lot of kids that were in some really, really sad circumstances.”

“I met a lot of kids that were struggling with some really serious health problems and a lot of them that had lost friends. They were so excited to be at this thing. I went back up into the dressing room and looked in the mirror and looked at my ensemble, and I was so ashamed. I looked at it and I was like, ‘These kids deserve better. I started learning how to sew. I learned about wig making. I learned about millinery work, which is hat making and makeup. I really got into everything because I wanted to make this the best that I possibly could. “

Q: What are some of the characters you are known for?

Shandra: “Later in that same year, I made a trip up to Forks, Washington, with one of my friends … I put together this costume and went up there … The Forks Chamber of Commerce came back and said, ‘We’d really like it if you would be part of the official cast.’ So I’ve done that. This is my 10th anniversary of being in Forks as this vampire character [Aro] and [he] has taken me all over the world. I’ve been to Italy and France and the UK, and I’ve been to all these different places as this vampire character.”

“It’s kind of bizarre. It’s wild. It’s interesting too, because I got into the cosplay charity scene here, but I didn’t really get into, like, the cosplay scene here until I got inducted into the Hall of Fame … that was when I started to really pay attention to the community around me and realize how rich this community is with talent, with passion and people that have such great hearts and good causes and who love it for the arts and whatnot.”

Q: Do you have any memorable stories?

Shandra: “It’s particularly meaningful when we work with some of these organizations repeatedly. So, for example, working with Millie’s Princess Foundation, we have our Royal Ball that we do every year and it’s a real treat when we get to see the same kids year after year, because a lot of these kids — I’m talking 70% of these kids — don’t make it to the next year. So when you do see a kid again that you saw last year, it’s awesome. You develop a relationship with them and their family … They don’t know who I am, but they know me as whomever, like they know me as Mary Poppins. When I run into them at not just the Royal Ball, but when I run into them at these 5Ks and these fundraisers, and these exciting, fun things that they do, I have the same kids who will come up to me and they want to tell me all about the last time they were really good for their parents because Mary Poppins likes it when kids are good to their parents … You develop a relationship with these kids, and it means so much to them when they get to see you again. It means even more to their parents.”

“It’s about to get real sad right here … when that child leaves us, when they pass, it’s really meaningful to the family when we can show up … I do viewings and funerals on requests sometimes and it means a lot to them when that person who’s been with them for their entire treatment or through their child’s entire struggle can show up at the viewing in the funeral because it’s a beautiful reminder of what their life was and how meaningful it was to not just to the family, but to everyone this child’s life touched.”

Q: What does being involved in cosplay charity work mean to you?

Shandra: “I love that Travis said it feels like when we’re serving, that it serves us…because that’s definitely true for me. We’ve all come from lots of different backgrounds and lots of different environments … I grew up neurodivergent. I grew up on the autism spectrum, but I didn’t get my diagnosis until I was 25. I went through my entire life just being the odd one out and just being kind of the weird one. Even though I was really friendly and even though I was very, very smart and even though I was driven and motivated, I couldn’t make friends. I couldn’t keep friends. I couldn’t learn in a classroom. I had these these really hard struggles. I can unequivocally say that cosplay is a really big reason that I have the self-confidence that I have as an adult and also has introduced me to so many other people that have these similar types of struggles.”

Q: What does the cosplay community mean to you?

Shandra: “It means a lot to me … just knowing that I met these people who are so meaningful to me and my life is indescribable, truly. I do a panel almost every year at FanX myself, my own panel usually doing cosplay instruction to teach people how to get into beginner cosplay. It’s amazing to see the next year how many people will come back and say, ‘I attended your cosplay for beginners last year, and you really inspired me to try it for the first time. I’m so glad I did because I met my three best friends, and now we’re all going to Universal Studios together next year.’ You hear all these things that cosplay can just tie people together in some of the most profound and meaningful ways. To everyone else, it’s just a costume, to us, it’s so much more than that.”

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