---
title: "At Comic-Con, a nonprofit turns kids' wheelchairs into superhero cosplay"
description: "Magic Wheelchair, an all-volunteer nonprofit, builds elaborate cosplay wheelchairs, free, for children with disabilities and hands them over at San Diego Comic-Con. This year's builds included a 'Battle Cat' chair from 'He-Man.' Among the recipients was 16-year-old Isaiah Mejia of Long Beach, who said he had 'no words for how awesome this chair is.'"
category: "Los Angeles"
category_url: https://herald.la/category/los-angeles
author: "Camila Reyes"
published: 2026-07-25T09:48:00.000Z
updated: 2026-07-25T09:48:00.000Z
canonical: https://herald.la/article/at-comic-con-a-nonprofit-turns-kids-wheelchairs-into-superhero-cosplay
tags: ["comic-con", "disability", "cosplay", "nonprofit", "long-beach"]
---
# At Comic-Con, a nonprofit turns kids' wheelchairs into superhero cosplay

Magic Wheelchair, an all-volunteer nonprofit, builds elaborate cosplay wheelchairs, free, for children with disabilities and hands them over at San Diego Comic-Con. This year's builds included a 'Battle Cat' chair from 'He-Man.' Among the recipients was 16-year-old Isaiah Mejia of Long Beach, who said he had 'no words for how awesome this chair is.'

Among the elaborate costumes at San Diego Comic-Con this year were a few that their wearers could not have bought or rented anywhere, [ABC7 reports](https://abc7.com/post/san-diego-comic-con-2026-volunteers-bring-superhero-dreams-life-custom-cosplay-wheelchairs/19571010/): custom cosplay built directly onto children's wheelchairs, made and given away by a nonprofit called Magic Wheelchair.

## How it works

Magic Wheelchair, based in Oregon, designs and builds costume "skins" that transform a child's wheelchair into something out of a comic or a movie, and it does it at no cost to the family. The nonprofit covers not just the build but the practicalities that often keep families with disabled kids from events like this at all: transportation, lodging at the convention, and badges to get in.

The chairs this year included a "Battle Cat" design inspired by the "He-Man" cartoons, along with others tailored to each kid's own taste. The work is done by an all-volunteer crew that the group describes as garage builders, working professionals and educators, among them a teacher, Jeff Watamura, and the maker Shawn Thorsson.

## The point of it

The organization is explicit that this is about more than a nice costume. "We're celebrating the freedom that wheelchairs give us and helping rewrite the narrative about disability," said Christine Getman, the group's executive director. That framing, wheelchair as a source of freedom rather than an object of pity, is the whole idea: a kid rolling through the biggest pop-culture convention in the country as Battle Cat is not being accommodated so much as starring.

The recipients put it more simply. One participant, Derek Thatcher, said, "I don't think I could have expected how incredible this turned out." And Isaiah Mejia, a 16-year-old from Long Beach, was reduced to the reaction any teenager handed something extraordinary might have: "I have no words for how awesome this chair is."

## Why it is here

This is a soft story, and the Herald is running it as one, without apology. On a quiet overnight it is the kind of thing a city paper should still make room for: a Southern California teenager, from Long Beach, getting to be the coolest person in a hall of tens of thousands, because a group of volunteers decided that a wheelchair should be able to be a superhero suit.

There is a small, real point underneath the feel-good, too. Conventions like Comic-Con are enormous, crowded and physically demanding, the kind of place accessibility is often an afterthought, and an operation that not only builds the costumes but pays to get families there is doing accessibility as celebration rather than obligation. That is worth noting even in a story whose main job is simply to be a good one. Magic Wheelchair's builds will roll on to other conventions; the Herald flags this one for the Long Beach kid at the center of it.

## Sources

- [San Diego Comic-Con 2026: Volunteers bring superhero dreams to life with custom cosplay wheelchairs](https://abc7.com/post/san-diego-comic-con-2026-volunteers-bring-superhero-dreams-life-custom-cosplay-wheelchairs/19571010/)