Cosplay Celebrity Guest Lineup
(And more announced soon!)
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Keone Young
Keone Young is legendary for many of his voice over credits which include Grandpa in American Dragon: Jake Long, Kaz in Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi, Mr. Sanban in Codename: Kids Next Door, the Firebending master Jeong Jeong in the Asian-influenced Avatar: The Last Airbender, Storm Shadow in the Sunbow G.I. Joe animated series, the Hard Master in G.I. Joe: Renegades, Mr. Wu on Nickelodeon's show The Mighty B!, Babaram on Surf Ninjas Marshall Kai Ti Chang in Indiana Jones and the Emperor's Tomb, Silver Samurai in X-Men: The Official Game and Wolverine and the X-Men, Sensei in Young Justice, Chen Stormstout in the World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria expansion and Heroes of the Storm by Blizzard Entertainment, and Commander Sato in Star Wars Rebels. Recently, he appeared as Kojiro Sasaki in Record of Ragnarok, Tsunetomo Yamamoto in Godzilla: Singular Point, and will be appearing in the new Anime Star Wars: Visions project playing the role of Kamahachi.
He has been prolific in his character work and has made numerous guest appearances on such varied television series as Head of the Class, Diff'rent Strokes, The Golden Girls, Murphy Brown, Mad About You, Family Matters, Futurama, The Simpsons, Alias, JAG, The Steve Harvey Show, Zeke and Luther, Shake It Up: Made In Japan and on the daytime soaps The Young and the Restless and Generations. He also portrayed the bodyguard of the Ancient One (Keye Luke) during the Asian Quarter storyline on General Hospital.
He was a semi-regular on the HBO series Deadwood as Mr. Wu and played Henry Lin's Uncle on the FX series Sons of Anarchy. He also played Mr. Wu, unrelated to the Deadwood character, in the movie Men in Black 3, played the role of Ellison Onizuka In the TV film Challenger, and HBO's True Blood as Dr. Hido Takahashi, the man responsible for inventing the titular blood substitute.
Young also has several Star Trek links: he played Buck Bokai, a famous baseball player in the 24th century in the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode "If Wishes Were Horses". He also played Hoshi Sato's father in the Star Trek: Enterprise episode "Vanishing Point". Young appeared as Governor Ho in the movie North starring Elijah Wood.
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Brenda Swan
Retro X4 is proud to present Idaho's very own Elvira Tribute / Brenda Swan!!!
Brenda Swan will be haunting Retro X4 as everyone's favorite "Mistress of the Dark"!Brenda is the first ever 208 pinup champion, six time international published tattoo model, and has graced the covers of three tattoo magazines.
Brenda LOVES cosplay and Elvira is her favorite!!! Brenda is heading over from Boise, but she is a hometown girl from Blackfoot, Idaho. -
Sam de la Rosa
Since 1982 Sam de la Rosa has finished art/inked/drawn for Marvel, DC, Image, Disney, and Dark Horse. Credits include Spider-Man, Venom, Carnage, Black Panther, The Avengers, Star Wars, X-Men and more. He worked on Superman, Batman, Green Lantern, Star Trek, Firestorm and others for DC Comics.
In 1989 at Dark Horse Comics he worked on the 1st and 2nd Predator comic books. Sam’s work on VENOM LETHAL PROTECTOR #1-6 and Venom Separation Anxiety 1-4 is the main basis for the VENOM MOVIE. VENOM: Let There Be CARNAGE Movie is based on Maximum Carnage which Sam penciled/inked its conclusion over layouts also worked on. His work on Maximum Carnage and Venom Separation Anxiety were made into video games.
So far this year he drew covers for Venom Lethal Protector II #1, The Uncanny Spider-Man #1, Predator vs Wolverine #2, Superior Spider-Man vs Doc Ock #3, Wolverine: Madripoor Knights, and Ultimate Black Panther #1.
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Samantha Newark
Samantha Newark is an English musician and actress. She is best known for her voice-over work as the speaking voice of Jem and Jerrica in the animated cartoon series Jem. In 2015 Newark appeared in the live-action feature film adaptation on Jem and the Holograms.
Guest-starring on the original Transformers cartoon as "Ariel" in the classic Transformers episode "War Dawn" and in other episodes playing Elise Presser. Newark was also cast as the voice of a young Peter Pan's mother in the Steven Spielberg feature film Hook as well as doing countless on camera and voice-over TV and radio commercials. She also played the role of Debbie in the 1987 thriller film Summer Camp Nightmare. In 2012 she was invited to contribute two characters to the Festival favorite animated short Pound Dogs, created by Mike Salva. This project won the MTV "Voice and Vision animation award for writing and animation and garnered two development deals with MTV.
Newark recorded the song "In Your Eyes" for the 1986 anime film Project A-ko and worked with Richie Zito and Joey Carbone and was hired to sing multiple songs on the soundtrack for the movie Crazy Six starring Rob Lowe, Burt Reynolds, Mario Van Peebles.
She was one of the 20 finalists out of 10,000 submissions for the Lilith Fair talent contest sponsored by Star 98.7 radio and Universal contests in 1999. And was one of 15 budding songwriters accepted into the coveted Lester Sill Ascap songwriting workshop where she met writer producer and long time collaborator composer Mike Reagan She and Mike worked together through the late 1990s writing original music performing live and contributing vocals for various PlayStation games. She sang vocals on the movie soundtrack Some Girl starring Juliette Lewis and also sang vocals in the movie Material Girls.
While living in Los Angeles she worked as a session singer for writer, producer Michele Vice Maslin. She has worked in the EDM world co-writing a song called "Deeper" for the German group Fragma. The version with her vocals was remixed by EDM producer Nick Terranova. In late 2006 she auditioned for Julian Coryell to be a backup singer for Leonard Cohen. The project was set to do a world tour and after two months of rehearsals the tour was cancelled and put on hold for two years where it started up again with a new MD and new team.
Newark made her move to Music city Nashville in Tennessee in October 2007. She released her self-titled debut album in 2008. Songs from the album have been featured in numerous television programs including Smallville, Reba, Life is Wild, and Gossip Girl, America's Next Top Model, as well as MTV's Laguna Beach, Punk'd, and My Super Sweet 16.
In 2008, Newark was invited to be a part of the documentary film "Saravia" written and directed by Joaquin Montalvan about the spiritual journey into the life of painter, writer and composer Mauricio Saravia. Newark and Saravia met in Los Angeles and worked closely together on the soundtrack for the film. Newark composed the melodies for Saravia's poetry that was featured throughout the film and she performed one of the songs live in the movie.
Newark released her second album Somethin' Good in late October 2011, with songs written and performed by Newark and produced by Dave Polich, Michael Jackson's keyboard programmer on the This Is It concerts. Her third album, Hologram described as a "love letter" to her many fans, was scheduled for release in November 2016 and final debut in 2017. A dance music version of this album, Hologram 2.0, was released in late 2021 and included remixes by musical artists Hyperbubble and Jipsta.
Newark also works in video games, providing voices for games including Twisted Metal: Black and Britney's Dance Beat, where she played the roles of the Choreographer and the Asian dancer.