A few years ago Graphitti Designs re-issued many of the t-shirts Marvel produced in the 1960s, most of them having original Jack Kirby art. More recently they did a Galactic Bounty Hunters shirt, still available. Now, they’re getting into some of Kirby’s DC characters:
Page 374 of the July 2010 Previews if you’re asking for it at a comic shop, no doubt soon to be added to the Graphitti website for ordering as well.
Those are nice, but I’m a bit surprised they didn’t go with a Darkseid for the initial offering.
I’m glad to see stuff like this finally coming out. Jack’s ’70s creations are long overdue for some serious merchandising applications.
Interesting choice of characters. Etrigan would make sense as a t-shirt even to someone who didn’t know the character…but Mister Miracle is a really odd pick. (Unless they’re hoping people will assume he’s a religious hero and that this impression will counterbalance having a demon from Hell on the other one?) Scott Free is my favorite Kirby costumed hero, but that image doesn’t really work for a t-shirt. Maybe if they’d reproduced the entire cover, text and blurbs and all…
RAB: It’s funny how different people can sometimes have different opinions on things. I liked your comment about counterbalancing a demon from Hell with a “religious” hero, and I thought the exact same thing myself. But I thought the opposite about the images they’re presenting on the T-shirts. In my view, the Mister Miracle image works a bit better than the Etrigan image and I think the latter, not the former, would have been more effective if they had reproduced the entire cover. Oh well…I’ll probably still buy both shirts anyway, since I really loved both those series.
I don’t know if full comic book covers, with all the trade dress and blurbs, really work as well as t-shirt designs compared to strong character drawings. It’s a format that needs some bold simplicity. Heck, search for the Metal Men on the Graphitti site to see what those t-shirts were like…