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SFX Blogger Steven Ellis puffs his chest up proudly
I love my T-shirts; they tell the world that I’m proud to be geek!
I have an album on Facebook full of my Geekshirts . (Although I should warn people that I’m pulling some funny faces in that album – who knew my face would be in those shots, I thought it was all about the shirt? Why didn’t I crop my silly grinning mug out of the shots I hear you say? Well, I didn’t think of it until I just typed this…)
The advent of the internet has made it much easier to get hold of sci-fi related T-shirts, and for people to design their own. I remember a time when you could only get sci-fi related Tees at Forbidden Planet or similar independent comic shops, and most of the stuff available was simply the logo of the show/film or photos of characters. You used to have to really hunt around, and your choices were limited, but these days there are many available out there. All sorts of great designs can be found; some funny; some serious and others that are subtle and very clever. From Qwertee through to Last Exit To Nowhere and on to Zazzle there are so many great sites out there, with some brilliant T-shirts. Even SFX has a T-shirt shop on the website. I’m sure I’ll never run out of designs I want to buy.
Of course now you can also get comic and sci-fi film-themed shirts from Next and the like (even Asda has been known to stock them, God bless George!) and it’s funny to see people wearing them sometimes, even when you can tell the wearer doesn’t know anything about the character they have on their chest. But ho hum, that’s what happens when your niche goes a little main-stream. I’m rubbish aren’t I, the old ,“I liked them before they were cool” idea. Heh, I’m such a geek snob sometimes, I should really just be happy that I can get my hands on more lovely T-shirts, and at the end of the day it’s always nice to see more geekiness out there on the streets.
Geek clothing is also one of the fun things about meeting up with likeminded friends or SFX forumers or going to Conventions. Everyone wears their favourite geek clothes and we all show off our latest T-shirt finds. I know quite a few of us hunt round for a new shirt to wear for the next meet-up just to show it off for an audience that you know will appreciate what you’re wearing. It was at one of these meets (It was the second Weekender I think) that I saw someone wearing a fabulous T-shirt – it was such a brilliant design that I wanted to get for myself.
The shirt was being worn by SFX forumer, letters page legend and dodgy fancy dress costume wearer The Llama God. I wanted his shirt. But he wouldn’t give it to me, even for sexual favours, damn him.
When I heard where he’d bought it from my heart sank. It was a Qwertee shirt; they only ever make a certain number of each design and when they run out they move on to the next design. It makes the shirts a little more unique, and as such I didn’t think I’d ever get the shirt. Llama taunted me with his T-shirt, this gorgeous funny T-shirt; knowing I’d probably never get it. And after a hunt on the interweb I thought he was right. So I moved on, the T-shirt became the one that got away. This was half a year ago and I found other T-shirts I loved and wanted to buy and I kind of forgot about the one Llama was wearing that day.
So, I recently had a birthday and part of my present haul was a few sci-fi shirts. A Lego Star Wars one, Eeyor as an ATAT, an Expendable Red Shirt shirt and a Clone Trooper-related design. Two of those were bought from a website I hadn’t heard of before, a place called Redbubble . I was told that the site had hundreds of T- shirts that would be right up my street and I should have a look see. So that’s what I did, and as I explored this new site I began to wonder just how much money I was going to end up giving these people… It was full of great ideas and great designs. And there, on page 47, was The T-shirt . The one Llama had that I didn’t. The one he taunted me with. The one that got away. I’m not ashamed to say I actual did a bit of a girly squeal when I saw it.
Buy it? You bet I did! And so, yes Llama God, I finally found somewhere to buy that brilliant Admiral Ackbar/Ghostbusters/It’s a trap T-shirt. And boy does it look good…
So, do you out there like sci-fi T-shirts? Are you as big a fan of them as I am? What geeky shirts do you own? Do you wear your shirts with pride? Do you have a favourite? Do you have one that you saw someone else wearing but couldn’t find yourself? Tell me tales of sci-fi T-shirts…
And there’s a prize to anyone with the best T-shirt I’ve never seen before.*
(*There is no prize really, but if I like your shirt I might come round and nick it off the washing line!)
