Granite State Comic Con 2023 Sunday Gallery Part 1

Sunday at Granite State Comic Con 2023 started out like most Sundays at a pre-pandemic convention — a slow build to a moderately busy day. Until the convention dropped onto its social media the fact the Peter Laird, co-creator of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, was going to be a surprise guest, starting mid-morning. The other co-creator, Kevin Eastman, is a pretty frequent guest at cons. But Laird has hardly done any convention appearances since 2018. How the top brass at Double Midnight Comics convinced him to make GraniteCon one of his very few in many years, I have no idea. But man did it work.

They didn’t have any room for his table and the space needed for what would be a long line in the main Expo Center, so they set him up on the opposite wall from where I was, but also pretty close to the back of the Armory. By 11 a.m. he had a line that stretched to the front of the Armory and crossed the entry (but it never blocked access to the Armory — GraniteCon Red Shirt volunteers did a great job with line management).

One-upping its record-setting attendance on Saturday with a rare guest appearance Sunday made this year’s GraniteCon one of its most successful. I’m looking forward to what the top staff pull out of their hats next year.

One other positive about this year’s GraniteCon is specific to me. Most of the cosplayers in these galleries are either people I know and who seek me out, people entering one of the cosplay contests, or someone whose cosplay catches my eye and I ask if I can take their photo. This year I had many more people than usual just come up to the studio and ask if I could take their picture. Case in point, the Rainbow Dash and Link cosplayers about 2/3 through the gallery. I was doing something when I turned and saw them looking at the info on our table. I asked if they were here to get their photos taken, and after the usual questions of “Does it cost anything?” (Nope) they were excited to step onto the backdrop.

Among the cosplayers in this first of two galleries from Sunday are the_namaslay_cosplay, mreebee3coats, colossal.manatee, sinnabon_cosplay, _lady_guinevere_, lasombrs, drewdasheppard_indangered1s, atticus._.cos, touganloo, Magic and Pop Culture, Riddley Nicks Piratanical Cosplays, fictitiousveronicamarie, korekiyoville, daddyspookums, lily0fthedawn, haile_the_creator, stephanie11.25, arty_cado, and many more.

We now use Smugmug to present cosplay photo galleries and will post all photos there, with a link to each gallery in its own gallery article. This will allow us to give you higher resolution images to download — still for free.

To view the entire gallery, just click on the image below. If you are pictured in any of our galleries, feel free to download the images and use them non-commercially on social media, with appropriate credit.

If you like our work and want to show your appreciation, feel free to tip us at Ko-fi or become a patron on Patreon.

Also, High-res images for sale is back!

If you are pictured in any of our galleries and want the high-resolution (3200 pixels at its widest by 300dpi) download for yourself, we can make it available via a private Smugmug link, for $10 per image. Just send an email to editor AT nerdcaliber.com. Currently limited to only photos taken by FirstPerson Shooter (aka Rodney Brown).

This was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, many of the characters being cosplayed here wouldn’t exist. Please consider donating to the Entertainment Community Fund here.