Fantastic Blognanza!

If you happen to read webcomics with any regularity, you probably know that many webcomics will have shops that sell t-shirts; in fact, a lucky few artists are able to support themselves from the sale of merchandise alone. A lot of times you’ll find that these webcomic shirts are based on some paricularly popular strip, printed by the artist based upon readers’ requests. This sort of close author-reader relationship you find with webcomics is really cool, and another example of why Internet is such an exciting place.

But webcomics selling t-shirts is hardly a newsworthy phenomenon. What is interesting (to me) is when the webcomics themselves explicitly discuss t-shirts. So that’s what this is about: the exceptions (all four of them), out of the webcomics that I read. (Oh, and sorry in advance for the images being too large to display completely in-frame, but displaying smaller versions would just be a waste of space, because they’d be unreadable.)

The first webcomic that I want to look at is Wondermark, by David Malki !, because he happens to discuss the kinds of t-shirts that I myself think about fairly regularly.

In Which Harvey Is a Hater

Let’s start off with Threadless; why not! I guess, um… I guess this particular one isn’t such a critical commentary (I think it’s funny, though!), but there are three things that I wouldn’t mind talking about: 1) I do kind of agree with the ‘wannabe-hipster’ sentiment. 2) It seems like Threadless might be the first (successful) implementation of a Web 2.0 t-shirt site of the sort that Harvey is complaining about, which kind of exempts it from being an overhyped knockoff (not exactly what he says, I know). 3) If the Threadless folks are to be believed, they care about fun, not $$$s.

A Moral Dilemma

Man, Hot Topic… one of my least favorite stores ever. I’m pretty sure some people buy clothes specifically trying to get things that people won’t think are from Hot Topic. I think if somebody asked me if that’s where I got a certain shirt from, I might stop wearing it. It’s really great how Hot Topic and mall punk go hand in hand… eegh…

In Which a Lost Elephant Is Easily Found

It’s true, some people do wear things just to be ironic. It’s pretty… ironic? As Malki ! points out, it is extra ironic that the design they’re discussing was turned into a shirt that is actually for sale (which presumably some people have bought)!

On to the next webcomic (xkcd)! There are three more in store.

T-Shirts

This strip of xkcd mocks one of my least favorite types of t-shirts (which are, coincidentally, available at Hot Topic). A shirt inspired by this strip is available in the xkcd store (you’ll have to scroll down), and it reads ‘Maybe if this shirt is witty enough, someone will finally love me’. Yeah… white text on a black t-shirt, not my cup of tea.

Toothpaste for Dinner actually discussess shirts (not just t-shirts) pretty frequently. Here are a couple that I think are funniest (or go here to see all of the ones with ’shirt’ in the text):

Web Cartoonists Do It Once a Day at Midnight

This seems to be a jab at the proliferation of this sort of inane t-shirt facilitated by the availability of ‘baseball shirts’ at CafePress and SpreadShirt.

I Like Squares

I just think this one is funny.

The last, but certainly not the least, webcomic that deals with t-shirts is Questionable Content. Unlike the rest of the websites above, Questionable Content doesn’t explicitly discuss t-shirts, but the characters often wear indie/nerd-type shirts that are frequently turned into shirts that are actually for sale. The characters’ shirts are often related to some sort of internet meme like I Has a Bucket, but those aren’t the ones to get printed for real people like you and me.

Well, hat just about rounds up all of the things I have to say about webcomics and t-shirts right now; I hope you’ve found something interesting or funny! Feel free to let us know about any other webcomics that feature t-shirts that I haven’t touched on.