Posted in: Comics | Tagged: cosplay, entertainment, san diego

San Diego Reader Returns To Cosplay Outrage

Published Sat, 26 Apr 2014 22:00:18 -0500

Last month, Bleeding Cool ran an article on the San Diego Reader's collection of cosplay photos with caption by comedian Jay Allen Stanford that received the ire of the cosplay community for being overly sexually insulting.

Captions were taken down, apologies made, lessons learnt.

Until this week, when again the San Diego Reader posted cosplay photos with more captions, this time from Anime Conji. And, again, there are problems…

The comments raged,

Nadine Nitemare-Cosplay Sorry but none of these comments are funny. In fact some are offensive. I would have not known about this unless you did not upset some of my friends and the cosplay community. Did you not do any research? If you are going to make comedic jokes at least make it tasteful and in line with the character. I mean come on," Lil reds in the hood" I am sure if she was of a light skin you would not have said that. And you called dead pool an anime character. Yeah Deadpool is from a comic. Marvel ring a bell. Smh, please if you are doing this for san diego comic con at least take the time to learn about some of the characters and not just make poorly base 'comical caption' on them.

RedYume Sutcliff Poor humor and poor taste. To ridicule the people posted here is really bad form. You clearly know nothing of the community, the series, or of how much time, skill, and money goes into these costumes. When ComicCon rolls around, I really hope they pick someone else to cover the event. Your lack of knowledge and class just reflects poorly on The Reader. A tip… rule number one about journalism- RESEARCH AND GET YOUR FACTS STRAIGHT.

Voo Doo "Lil Red's in the hood" really? You need to be punched in the face for that comment alone!

Steven Rayborn Honestly I don't see how this behavior could be seen as anything but juvenile. This is now how a professional should act, and some of his captions could even be seen as borderline racist.

Even the photographer backed these up, saying,

I don't think Jay Allen Sanford should have made the "Lil Red's in the hood" joke. I took all the photos but I did not notice until now how Jay used the caption. I hope if the woman sees the photo that she does not feel hurt by it. There are times when Jay uses politically incorrect humor and does not consider enough the inappropriateness of doing certain jokes in this type of photo gallery. People expect Howard Stern to say politically incorrect things so they therefore know what to expect. This is a different situation then the Howard Stern show.

Jay Allen Stanford replied saying,

RE all the Facebook commentators seen above complaining about the comedic photo captions – you're clearly arriving at the Anime Conji Gallery with an unreasonable attitude and agenda if you can cast such MOR photo caps as mean or unfair. I actually write the caps very stream-of-consciousness as I look at reduced thumbnails, rather than opening the whole photo in large format, so I didn't even realize Red Riding Hood was black! I was sure she was Asian, and Red Riding Hood/Red's in the Hood is a natural thematic and linguistic progression from pic to cap, a funny one at that, so shame on fools who'd assume racist intent. And for commentators to accuse ME of not researching or knowing enough about COMICS for my upcoming Comic-Con photo report (for my ninth consecutive year – it's a very popular feature!) is hysterical, given the COMMENTATORs' lack of research – like simply Googling "Jay Allen Sanford" to see I'm one of the most successful indie comic book publishers in the history of the field, with hundreds of credits as a comic creator as well. I assure no offense was intended, and I remain baffled that anyone would TAKE offense at ANY of these captions – all I can do from this point is promise more of the same for Comic-Con 2014!

And more of the same comments no doubt…

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