Events like New York Comic-Con bring out the cosplayers in droves and the costumes are typically eye-catching, fun, and imaginative, as you can see from our NYCC photo gallery. And it’s not only adults who pack the convention floor in colorful attire — it’s the children, too! Some of these kids would be the envy of all of their friends on Halloween, that’s for sure.

One such child we found was 6-year-old Samantha Fraczek Murray, who made her convention cosplay debut as “Little Thor” at this year’s NYCC. The blonde-haired, blue-eyed little girl from Long Island, NY, not only rocked out a perfect costume, complete with the mighty Mjolnir, her Nordic features made her the perfect little Thor clone.

Check out our full photo gallery of Samantha in action at the Con — including being part of a massive Marvel cosplay group photo — as well as more on the story of how she came to be Little Thor, courtesy of her dad, who spoke with us about the whole experience.

Samantha attended this year’s convention with her dad, Billy, who influenced his young daughter regarding all things geek. When describing to us his love of superheroes and science fictions properties, he confessed that he “never quite grew up.” Raised in the 1970s in a household in Brooklyn, NY, where The Avengers and the “Big Three” superheroes — Iron Man, Captain America, and Thor — (along with Star Trek‘s Enterprise) were huge, Billy is thrilled about the new creation of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. “The Marvel movies are a dream come true,” he said, “especially after years and years of the same re-boots of the Pop Big Three (Batman, Supes, and Spider Man).”

Billy and his wife, Monica (who he outed as a “repressed comic book geek”), had Samantha in 2008, the same year of the release of the first Iron Man movie (which launched the MCU). His love of the movie (“It blew me away,” he said) gave the first-time dad a reason to start collecting action figures again, which he could now share with his daughter.

Billy felt like now that his daughter was a little bit older, perhaps she’d want to attend her first comics convention. He went online and showed her images of previous years’ cons, and she said “Yes!” she’d love to go. Knowing how young ones can be, he checked in again with her a few weeks later just to make sure. “I already told you ‘yes,’ Daddy,” he recalls his little girl saying. After that, he thought maybe she’d want to try her hand at cosplay. “Would you like to dress up?,” he asked her (“Like I had to ask!,” he said.) Now they just had to figure out what her costume would be. Considering that the mantle of Thor was recently taken up by a women in Marvel’s comic book universe, Billy figured it might be a good fit for Samantha.

But with cosplay typically comes attention and photo ops. “I told her that some of the girls there would probably like to take pictures with her, and she was fine with it,” he recalled to us. “She is a bit of a ham, after all.”

Once the NYCC tickets were acquired, Billy set out to get Samantha’s costume created. He turned first to Samantha’s grandmothers for help.

A week or so before the convention, which ran this year from October 9-12 at the Jacob K. Javits Center in New York City, Billy began work on the helmet and the hammer, which he created with some personalization just for his daughter.

On that Saturday, father and daughter set out to the Manhattan convention center via the Long Island Railroad, where Billy said it was clear that the city was hosting Comic-Con and fellow passengers were also similarly attired (they sat next to Super Mario). Once they arrived to the Javits Center, they met up with friends and plotted a course through the ultra-crowded, wildly busy main convention floor, where “Little Thor” received plenty of attention.

Near the end of the day, Samantha took part in a large group photo consisting of other Marvel character cosplayers. How did the tiny little Goddess of Thunder end up assembling with her fellow superheroes?

While discussing their exit strategy at the Batman exhibit, Samantha noticed people outside getting their photos taken. Once she spotted Scarlet Witch, she began to pull her dad towards the area, which turned out to be where photos were being taken for all the contest cosplayers. Though Samantha was there just as an onlooker, it wasn’t long before she was being asked to pose for more photos.

But that wasn’t the end of their day. Something bigger was about to happen.

After the group photo and some more solo shots, Little Thor and her daddy got ready to depart.

Now that Little Thor not only was a hit at the convention, but also a wonderful experience for both daddy and daughter, it looks like they plan to attend New York Comic-Con again next year… and maybe next time, Mommy will come, too!

Photo Gallery

[Photos by William Murray, provided exclusively to Geeks Of Doom. Used with permission.]