Nothing brings friends together more than a shared love of music. Mix that with cosplay and an epic photo shoot, and that friendship reaches new levels.

My Chemical Romance fans and regular cosplayers MacKenzie and Erin Pillow, Jordan Bible and Emma Okichich partnered with photographer Kristi Grunden to pull off the Danger Days photo shoot of our dreams.

Taking on the roles of Party Poison, Kobra Kid, Jet Star and Fun Ghoul respectively, the foursome’s plan was sparked by a bit of a doppelganger moment coupled with five years of cosplaying experience.

“My Killjoys group realized that I awkwardly look like Frank Iero, so we started joking around that we’d cosplay MCR,” Okichich says. “We all have members of the band that we love, so we kind of just knew who we wanted to do. [We’re] really just four emo kids finding friends that like the same band as them, and our photographer knew immediately that she wanted to be a part of it.”



With the idea intact, the group started developing their costumes with less than a week to get everything completed. They studied MCR’s music videos for several hours, taking screenshots to allow themselves to get the tiniest of details such as the friendship bracelets Frank Iero and Mikey Way wear.

They ordered many of the pieces on Amazon and other retailers, but they still required alterations. MacKenzie took a Rick from Rick And Morty foam head and stripped it down before adding rugs to create Party Poison’s mouse cat head. The alterations also came with some risks as Erin was met with an interesting scenario when securing Kobra Kid’s helmet.

“Our Party Poison actually used one of those foam Rick heads from Walmart to make the mouse cat head, [and] to get the kobra helmet, our Kobra Kid literally had to drive out to the boonies to go to some private seller’s house,” Okichich reveals.

That wasn’t the only time the Texas-based group ventured into the unknown as the actual shoot was held at an abandoned incineration factory. They described it as super cool despite cicadas attacking them during production.

The friends decided to start with the Danger Days era because of Okichich’s resemblance to Iero during that time. Following the amount of fun they had during the shoot, they decided to tackle the rest of the band’s eras despite mixed reactions.

“Cosplaying MCR has been a crazy experience for us, with people bullying us, but even more people crying because they’re finding people dressed as their favorite band,” Okichich explains. “We figured since we started with end, it only makes sense to end with the beginning, with every era in between.”

It’s even Iero approved, as he stated, “Definitely scrolled past this and thought to myself, ‘Hmm I don’t remember doing that photo shoot.’”

definitely scrolled past this and thought to myself “hmm i don’t remember doing that photo shoot.” https://t.co/I5B4dlM98y — frnkiero: Party Dad (@FrankIero) August 30, 2018

So what’s next for the Killjoys? The Black Parade of course, and it’s going to be even more elaborate than Danger Days.



“Remember the black parade—like the actual parade?” Okichich asks. “Yeah, we’re planning on somehow making a float. Every MCR music video [will] be done at some point.”

Check out some more photos by Grunden below.

MacKenzie Pillow as Party Poison

Emma Okichich as Fun Ghoul

Erin Pillow as Kobra Kid

Jordan Bible as Jet Star