Comments on: Steel Cage Deathmatch Go!

By: Fleen: Written by bitter, haggard wordbeasts » Back From The Internetless Wastes

Fri, 30 Jun 2006 20:40:29 +0000

[...] Gary … and tired as hell. Which is probably why, in the context of this, I find this far funnier than I should. After all, we here at Fleen are all about webcomics community, and not interested in provoking shitstorms or internet fights to the bloody death. That being said, Bunny is owning all over those birds (start here and keep clicking on “next”, through the ten updates that Lem managed in one day). [...]

By: Sam Logan

Sam Logan — Sun, 23 Apr 2006 09:15:41 +0000

Like John says, the numbers issue is a big deal. 10 shirts — that was the minimum number I was required to print for my first design. You don’t need to have many readers to sell 10 tshirts.

My books sell about as well, or perhaps a bit better, than my shirts do. But I couldn’t crack into the book market until I was sure I could sell a few hundred of them relatively quickly. Printing is expensive unless you are getting a lot of pages printed at once! If you want to sell your books at a reasonable price you need to print them in fairly sizeable numbers.

By: Paul Southworth

Paul Southworth — Sat, 22 Apr 2006 17:38:00 +0000

Right, I mean, everyone wears shirts, but not everyone hangs prints of comic strips in their house. T-shirts are a much more common and accesible item.

Any way a comic strip artist can make a living without infringing on the source material is a-okay in my book.

By: John Allison

John Allison — Sat, 22 Apr 2006 11:25:16 +0000

It’s not really all that strange. You can print tshirts in very small numbers and sell them at a profit. Colour printing is very expensive and it’s harder to be sure of a return on your investment. Postcards, posters and prints are hard things to get right and hard things to sell!

By: Josh

Josh — Sat, 22 Apr 2006 10:59:29 +0000

It seems slightly strange to me that in a medium so connected with art and aesthetics as webcomics that t-shirts are the first step in merchandise rather, than say, prints, posters or postcards.
It seems a little wrong-way-’round is all.

By: John Allison

John Allison — Sat, 22 Apr 2006 09:55:43 +0000

Webcomics’ dirty little secret is that most of the people who “make a living from their comic” don’t really make a living from their comic at all, they make it selling t-shirts that perhaps have some tenuous link to their strip (but not really). It’s not really something to feel guilty about, it’s just patronage in one way or another - a democratised, utilitarian form of “micropayment” far more acceptable to my mind than a Paypal begging bucket on your site.

That these tshirts have ceased to be so closely linked to their parent comics is a matter (I think) in part of natural selection - in a crowded field (and it gets more crowded every day) you need more options than your strip might provide. And if you’ve proved successful in an area, you want to develop it. The alternative is, after all, eating sawdust and drinking puddle water.

Personally, I would much rather make shirts that have nothing to do with the comic than attempt to shoehorn t-ready zingers into the strip or extract vest-centric mottos from complex source material.

As for Lore’s assertion that a backlash is on the way, I don’t think people will tire of owning short-run, attractive garments that their friends probably don’t have. I believe that’s the central tenet on which fashion is founded.

The only way to kill it stone dead would be to sell your designs to Hot Topic and have them printed in the thousands. And I believe that kind of suicide can only take place on an artist by artist basis.

By: j.jacques

j.jacques — Fri, 21 Apr 2006 21:38:54 +0000

I feel like as long as you’re not putting capitalism ahead of the comic, you’re doing okay. Making money is nice but making comics is way better.

By: Paul Southworth

Paul Southworth — Fri, 21 Apr 2006 20:33:30 +0000

Mr. Rowland, I think Stephen Colbert would like to have a word with you.

By: T Campbell

T Campbell — Fri, 21 Apr 2006 20:28:53 +0000

Is this more of that “murderer/webcomics fan” crossover demo?

By: Sam Logan

Sam Logan — Fri, 21 Apr 2006 19:40:30 +0000

One thing you can definitely say about Rich’s tshirts is that, even when they don’t share the same content as his comic, they definitely share the same style and sense of humour. It’s not surprising that a fan of one would also be a fan of the other.

So, there is definitely a little more synchronization going on than there would be if he just ran ad banners on his webcomic site for a totally unrelated tshirt store that he happens to run.