T-shirt #96 - The House of Secrets

T-shirt #96 - The House of Secrets or why my T-shirt is cooler than yours


Another short post as the hammer time for Grading Robot continues.

I bought this shirt because I thought it was cool. Unlike the normal purchase process, my initial reaction for this shirt was not one of "oooooh, I MUST have that shirt to wear with the pride of my fan love" but rather "that's a cool shirt even though I am not reading that book."

I am not going to go into depth about House of Secrets, but here's a quick primer. The Silver Age House of Secrets ran originally from 1956-1966. After a three year hiatus, it returned in 1969 and ran until 1978 with great artists like Neal Adams (mentioned in T-shirt #43 and T-shirt #83), Bernie Wrightson, and Michael Kaluta working on stories for the comic. I was not a huge fan of this run, but I do own many issues and enjoy the work of all three of these great artists and many others who worked on the comic back then. The series was revived in 1996 by DC's Vertigo imprint written by Steven T. Seagle and art (mostly) by Teddy Kristiansen. I read some of it, but I did not keep up with it religiously. It's good stuff and on my list to read in trade paperbacks when I have time.

But that's not why I bought the T-shirt. I just bought the T-shirt because I liked the image and the text, and I liked the "cool" the shirt provides as if I am part of a secret brain trust (which I am). I also love the shirt as a well-made piece of clothing. I consider this one of my "dressy" T-shirts as this one is still in mint condition after 17 years (I bought it in 1996), and the collar is still tight.

I have written about why we wear T-shirts before on this blog (most notably in T-shirt #83, T-shirt #77, and T-shirt #87). I have realized that this blog will continue to explore this idea throughout the remaining 269 days. Why? Why do we wear the shirts we wear?

Or maybe a more interesting question is this one: "Do other people select T-shirts for the reasons that I select T-shirts?"

I will explore this question more in the weeks and months to come.

- chris tower - 1306.25 - 8:30