 |
| By Stefan Blitz |
There’s no doubt that the boldest and most personal fashion statement anyone can make is in one’s selection of t-shirt. Personally, I love them. It’s an opportunity to show the world what pop culture I care about, a wonderful flashback to the past and a fantastic way to initiate any nerd discussion.
For this inaugural Cool Shirts, I took a look at some of the shirts from NeatoShop, the online store of Neatorama, which features the web’s neatest stories (Seriously, they do).
Neatorama used to offer a wider line of merchandise, but in the past year, they have changed much of their focus to t-shirts, which is great, since they offer some fantastic stuff.
These are a few of my recent favorites.
Finally, a shirt that celebrates the magic that is George Miller’s The Road Warrior.
Sure, the tee says “Mad Max”, but there’s no way you’d fit “Max Rockatansky” easily onto a shirt.
This design from artist leea1968 features Max, Dog, Wez and Lord Humungus, The Ayatollah of Rock and Roll-a! It’s a must have to sport before this new generation of kids think they discovered Mad Max with the release of the upcoming Fury Road starring Tom Hardy.
There was always something magical about the Universal Studios monster films.
First you had these terrific character actors like Bela Lugosi, Boris Karloff, Lon Chaney, Jr., John Carradine, Colin Clive, Elsa Lancaster, Maria Ouspenskaya, Glenn Strange, Edward Van Sloan, Claude Rains, Julia Adams, and Ernest Thesiger.
Second, amazing atmosphere and makeup (by the legendary Jack Pierce).
And third, the characters broke ground by becoming the first group of movie characters to become part of a “shared” universe. After the initial films, it wasn’t unusual for characters and actors to show up in other franchises. (House of Frankenstein is pretty good, but your can’t get better than Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein which features the comedy team encountering Dracula, The Wolfman and Frankenstein with a cameo by another monster icon).
Now take a look at this amazing shirt which has artist leea1968 adding some Andy Warhol-esque color to the images of Frankenstein, Dracula, The Wolfman, The Creature From the Black Lagoon, The Mummy, The Bride of Frankenstein, The Phantom of the Opera, The Invisible Man and The Metaluna Mutant from This Island Earth.
A shirt this amazing belongs on your back.
The finale of Ghostbusters reimagined as an old Fifties horror comic cover? Yes, please!
This wonderful image of the silhouettes of Venkman, Stantz, Spengler and Zeddemore facing off against the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man invokes all kinds of nostalgia as well as a hankering to strap on a proton pack and ecto-containment system and join the quartet up on the roof to face off against Zuul.
The Ben-Day dots only fuel the retro goodness in this awesome design by artist Manny Peters.
A John Romita inspired Peter Parker that pays homage to the Thin White Duke himself, David Bowie in his Ziggy Stardust persona.
Artist Butcher Billy captures the Seventies-era Wall Crawler while acknowledging Stardust and his band The Spiders From Mars as well as invoking the visual cue designed to show off Parker’s spider-sense.
He could leave ’em to hang.
Truly an Amazing and Spectacular shirt. Excelsior!
Another amazing shirt from artist leea1968 showcases The King of Monsters likely on his way to trample Tokyo.
What makes this shirt really stand out are the colors which really pop. The big guy is in green and the logo (Gojira for all of you Japanese speaking folks) is in bright red with a crisp white border.
Over the years virtually every monster this side of the Pacific Rim (Ghidorah, Mechagodzilla, Biollante, Mothra, Gigan for example) has tried to take the title, but Godzilla remains as the biggest and baddest of all.
Wear this one, go out for sushi and let your inner kaiju flag fly.
