The shirts off my back(room).
I’ve owned a few funnybook-related shirts in my time…I had a Ralph Snart shirt, a Flaming Carrot shirt, and an It’s Science with Dr. Radium shirt, back in my college years. Oh, and if you don’t tell anyone, I may have had a Batman shirt, too, around the time of the first Burton film.
And I’m still not admitting that I owned a Howard the Duck movie shirt. That’s slander, sir, and I won’t have it!
The only comic book shirts I still own are the classic Cerebus for Dictator shirt, perfect for any election season, and several Free Comic Book Day shirts advertising FCBDs of years past, which I wear around the house when I’m doing yardwork and other chores, or just plain loafing. And I think I still have a “DC One Million” retailer promo shirt floating around here somewhere.
Recently, in an attempt to clear out some room in the back of the store, I unloaded several old t-shirts on the eBay (where I was re-introduced to the concept of “losing one’s ass,” given the prices we got on most of them, but at least they’re out of the backroom and now taking up space somewhere else). Here are just a few of those shirts, unloved at our shop, but now hopefully in the hands…or, rather, on the torsos…of folks who can give them the appreciation they deserve.
Cerebus is saying, there (and I’m doing this from memory, so I’m probably paraphrasing) “Look, kid…Cerebus is in love with your wife.” This is one of those shirts where only people in the club (i.e. Cerebus readers who read “Jaka’s Story”) will be able to fully appreciate it. And this is kind of doing a disservice to the “Jaka’s Story” segment of Cerebus, which was honestly one of the better parts of the Cerebus saga. I think a shirt that read “I survived slogging through the last 100 issues or so of Cerebus” may be more fitting.
I suppose the shape Elektra’s body is in on this shirt can be explained if the point of view is down below Elektra, looking up at her. Though the perspective would have to work kinda like this: giant thighs, giant breasts, then little tiny head way off in the distance.
I’ve put a couple of these up on the eBay so far, and, surprisingly, this was the shirt design I got the most questions about. (Mostly lots of questions along the lines of “do you have this shirt in a size other than the one you’ve listed?”) Actually, even though I’m not a Gen 13 reader and would have no reason to wear this, this isn’t a bad looking shirt. The color certainly stands out, and I like the design choice of having the logo run down the side.
Sometimes I forget that Venom used to run around and bother superheroes other than his regular arch-nemesis Spider-Man occasionally. I’m pretty sure this isn’t the only Wolverine versus Venom shirt produced, too. Speaking of Venom, you know what shirt design has been popular at our shop lately? The all-black Venom t-shirt, where the only design elements are his eyes, mouth, and slime-dripping tongue are on your chest Arnim Zola-style. We keep blowing those out the door.
This particular image (from the cover of Uncanny X-Men #251) always struck me as an odd choice for a t-shirt. I mean, it’s CRUCIFIED WOLVERINE. “Hey, I like Wolverine! Let me wear a shirt that shows him being tortured!” I suppose if you thought it was a nice, dramatic image, it’d be a shirt you’d want to wear, but still…kinda grim.
Now I bet you know what I’m going to ask you, don’t you? (And hopefully I haven’t asked it before….) Do you have any comic book t-shirts at home? Are there any you used to wear and fondly remember (or, perhaps, not so fondly remember)? Are there any shirts you can’t believe they actually produced (like the Gold of the Metal Men shirt I mentioned a while back)? Leave a comment…I’d like to know!
