It's kinda dumb to wear your own shirt design, but I wanted to wear this to BotCon anyway, because it's hilarious.  Everyone else will be slummin' it with their Megatron Club Shirt while I'll be hipstering it up with this "Three Wolf Moon" parody.  Plus I hadn't actually seen any of my new shirts in person, since they're all print-to-order and handled by other folks, so this was as good an opportunity as any to try one out for myself.

Spoilers: It's a quality shirt!  I'm not selling you bum merchandise!

So, woo.  Pretty sweet.  This may be the first t-shirt ever with ... any of these guys.

There's two new Shortpacked!-themed t-shirts in the store (in that they're about caped avengers and alien robots, respectively) and one new Dumbing of Age tee.

The first one, "Lupus Luna Trion," is something I painted up a few months ago, where there are three robots, of possible canine affiliation, howling at some unearthly planet's strange moon.  People demanded a t-shirt, but I didn't do t-shirts back then, and I didn't think a design with approximately a billion colors in it would be cost effective regardless.  But these guys I've been doing t-shirts with recently do their shirts digitally, which means there can be as many colors as you want.  And so I'm totally doing it.

The second, "Medication," is one of those things where I throw an idea on the wall and see if it sticks.  I'm still new to t-shirts, experience-wise.  And these shirts are print-to-order, so I can afford to do that.  Indulge me!

The third shirt is one that Dina wears in Dumbing of Age.  It may or may not be about boners.

I stopped being a lazy shit and put up the T-Shirt FAQ I promised long, long ago.  It is, of course, just Joel Watson's T-Shirt FAQ but with some words replaced.  I am so classy.

But hey.  It's there, and it's linked from all of the t-shirt order pages.  Huzzah?  Progress?

I like to think so.

At ConnectiCon, Joel Watson was all "Hey, do some t-shirts." And I'm all "I can't I am small and weak."  So he says, "Yeah we know but do them anyway here's how."

So here I am doing tshirts again!  Some people are really great at designing tshirts.  I am not one of those people!  I am much better at doing only webcomics and starving.  But the way I have this set up works around that.  These shirts are made to order.  I don't gotta do a print run of 30 million, sell only two, and then live out of a cardboard box.  (Presumably the cardboard box that the shirts came in.)  I also don't have to mail them myself!  I get to keep drawing both my webcomics!  There is no downside.  You get shirts you hopefully want, and I don't die destitute on the street, pretending a cafeteria tray is a Cintiq.

And because these are made to order, that means I can be more experimental and throw up some shirts that people have asked for, but were ideas that I didn't think had mass appeal.  So right now this is a brainstorming session, where I throw stuff at the wall and see what sticks.

Right now, because I'm in the middle of moving, and because Joel did a comic about how my wife is unsatisfied by my small penis, I'm just gonna link you to his Sharksplode FAQ page in lieu of my own.  All of the information is the same.  It's the same t-shirt/shipping company.  When I'm done moving, I'll just plagiarize that and put it on my own site.  Because that's the kind of friend I am to Joel.  Joel's FAQ page has all sorts of information on the high quality of these shirts, the sizings, etc.  (Remember, girls sizes run a size small!  Also, I don't know what that means.  Check out the size charts.  I will be stealing those, too.)

Here's the store link! Let us do this thing, and clothe ourselves.  As time goes on, I'll let you know when I throw additional designs into the store.  I have at least two more that I'm holding back on at the moment.  They're not as strong, I feel, but that's what this experiment is for, right?  To try scary things?

Shortpacked!@TNI: Comparing notes
Shortpacked!: I'm a few weeks ahead, and so I kinda forget which one today's is.

Hey, you folks who are in the Transformers Collectors' Club.  On Friday, they finally put Punch/Counterpunch and Shattered Glass Cyclonus up for preorder, and they've already sold through 80% of P/CP and half of Cyclonus.  So if you want either of those guys, hop to it!  They'll probably be gone by tomorrow.  And I hope you like paying a lot for shipping.

EDIT: Aaaaaaaaand now he's gone.  FP is looking into whether they can increase their order last-minute. Still some Cyclonus, though.

(I get asked this a lot, and, yeah, I do believe they charge you right up front instead of in a few months when they arrive.)

Also, after some prodding from a few of you, I put up preorders for a Butt-Taco shirt.  But so far I've gotten... *drumroll* ... one preorder!  Yeah.  If I don't get a handful more by Tuesday, I'm gonna refund that dude his money and consider this a lesson in putting cartoon butts and/or tacos on shirts.

This Saturday is my birthday and Thursday is my roommate Steve-o's birthday, and due to scheduling conflicts, we ended up celebrating it last Friday!  And, woo, presents!   My buddy Ron got me a knockoff Hot Shot in awesome rally deco, Maggie, Steve-o, and Maggie's parents conspired to get me a new bike to replace the one that was stolen last year, and Graham got me the Toys"R"Us-exclusive Skeletor vs Lex Luthor two-pack.

Skeletor is my first MOTU "Classics" toy.  I have the old 2002 Skeletor, which I thought had more fun with the design than this guy, so I didn't throw $30-including-shipping at the new one.  But, dude, this one comes with Lex Luthor in Power Armor, a personal love of mine.  And I don't have him.  And it comes with a friggin' comic book.  And it's at a normal retail price.  So I was planning on picking these guys up when I saw them.  And in a rare moment of lack-of-toy-clairvoyance, I didn't even realize these dudes were out in Toys"R"Uses yet.  So, woo, great present.


These DC/MOTU teamup packs are loosely based on the original Superman/He-Man crossover that DC Comics published back in the day.  Mind, that only involved Superman on the DC side, and Lex Luthor is no where to be seen, so this two-pack is just a happy extrapolation.  If ONLY Lex Luthor teamed up with Skeletor.  The comic is some pure early-80s awesomeness.  It's drawn by Curt Swan, has some delicious comic-booky prose, and features Pimp Daddy Prince Adam.  I'm serious!  He's introduced with a hotty on each arm.  He's a slutty playboy.  And no pink and lavender tights.  (They're blue.)  It's the straightest He-Man has ever been!  And the issue ends with He-Man stabbing Skeletor.  Score!

The toys themselves are also pleasing.  Both are your typical modern-day 6" Mattel figure, articulation-wise.  Skeletor I would guess is missing some paint applications from the online-only release, possibly to more-closely match the comic book colors.  (If this was indeed the intent, I really wish they would have painted on the dark blue gloves they gave him in the issue.)  Skeletor comes with only his sword.  It stows on his back.

Lex Luthor is based on his Super Powers design!  He's the Lex Luthor I remember as a kid.  This means he's the Silver Age mad scientist Luthor, before he was revamped as an evil businessman, and the profile on the back matches.  (ha ha ha ha ha he hates Superman because he made him bald)  Weirdly, the art of him on the back is the Ed McGuinness power suit design, which is the modern Luthor.  Nerds notice these things.  The toy, again, is articulated everywhere you'd expect, though is limited by its design.  He can't move his arms up because of his big green shoulder chunks and his peripheral vision is pretty damn limited by the half-dome around his head.

He comes with four different kinds of Kryptonite.  Between the two toys in the pack, there's enough hands to hold them all, which is basically where this week's TNI strip was birthed from.