I don’t want to go into the discussion on whether or not it’s a good thing that some webcomics tend to be seen as merely T-shirt factories. But I think that the ability to make merchandise is a good thing. I’ve earlier commented on a possible way to create calendars1, and it’s probably appropriate to come with a possible way to make T-shirts, too. Like it or not, they’re probably the number one webcomic merchandise out there.
Normally a webcomic T-shirt contains either a funny slogan, a picture of one of your characters in a funny pose, or a single funny frame from one of your strips. While it would be possible to put a whole strip on a T-shirt, too, that would require the frames to be so small they couldn’t really be read on a distance, so I understand why people don’t do that as much. As long as you have one really funny picture, that will do.
But would it be possible to take one strip, split it into single frames, and spread it over three or four T-shirts?
This requires some creative work as each of the frames in the comic should work as a stand-alone joke. It should also be a strip you don’t publish until after all four T-shirts are available for sale. But if you do it right, you should now have a set of T-shirts that your fans will consider buying all four of. You have a comic strip spread over four shirts, and if it’s a good comic strip, you have now given them a good reason to buy four times more merchandise than they normally would. Of course, that doesn’t mean you’ll actually sell four times the merchandise, people aren’t made from money. But since each shirt basically works as a single-frame sequel to the previous one, some people will probably buy it to complete the set, and I guess you would sell more this way than with four completely unrelated shirts in your store.
I think it would be an awesome addition to my wardrobe if one of my favorite cartoonists split up a great strip over four T-shirts. Assuming I go out in the world daily wearing T-shirts, I can share the first frame with the world on Monday, the second on Tuesday, and so on until those who meet me every day will have seen the entire strip on Thursday.
At least that’s how I think it would work.
95 down, 5 to go.
- HOLY GOSH THAT’S 78 IDEAS AGO! [back]