On Friday, March 12, the night before the show, we are going to be taking over Arcane Comics & More in West Seattle. We will bring some food. We will bring some cartoonists. We will bring excitement. We will even bring entertainment — in the form of a live performance by our very own smash comedy duo, Tweet Me Harder. We are bringing all of these things and the only missing ingredient is you. You are the catalyst that activates this reaction! You are the wrench that tightens our nut onto our bolt and thus holds our shelves together! Without you we are just a bunch of sheet metal and hardware, doused in noxious chemicals and reeking of shame. With you we are, like, a rocketship or something! On a mission to the moon and the future and adventure! With you we are charming. Come on! Let’s have a party!

But what is Tweet Me Harder? It is a comedy talking podcast that is performed weekly by two of our goateedest members — Kris Straub, a man of many internets, and David Malki !, who occasionally refers to himself in the third person. In TMH, Kris and David weave worlds that cannot, should not, must not exist, and then you leave the whole experience relieved to be back in the place you started from. Also it’s funny! Here’s another live show they did a while ago. And this one will be twice as fun — because you’ll be there!

DETAILS: Friday, March 12 • 3219 California Ave SW, Seattle WA 98116 • We’re getting there at 6PM, the TMH show starts at 7 • Here is a Facebook event — we’d love RSVPs (but they are not required) • Everyone is invited!

Hope to see you there!

Here is a very handy PDF map of the show floor! It points out where all our people are going to be, but for the most part this is going to be very easy for you. You are going to come in the front door, turn slightly to the left, and OPEN YOUR EYES. There is really no way to miss us. But we also have some folks spread willy-nilly elsewhere in a transparent attempt to foil surveillance, so the map will be your handy scavenger-hunt clue-sheet that will lead you to a bounty of friendly folks and kind and wonderful delights.

The show will be at the Washington State Convention Center in downtown Seattle, Saturday and Sunday the 13th & 14th. All that info is on the PDF! So just download it I guess. And then come! Meet our people! Shake their hands and get their various signed, limited, special, and normal wares! This is what these things are for. The minute the show closes, we are going right back up into our ivory tower, but the foolhardy courts have granted you these several hours on these upcoming days. We hope you spend them with us!

Wait who the heck is Frank anyway? Frank is one half (with Becky, the other) of the internet comic strip “Tiny Kitten Teeth”, our newest partner in delightful-goodsmongery! Frank & Becky describe “TKT” (as the kids will come to call it) as a hand-painted, saturated and satirical ode to the vintage books and animated films loved by whimsical adults and precocious children worldwide. We think it’s just peachy-keen comickin’, a highly engaging and wonderfully-distinctive strip that will charm your shirt right off — thus leaving you strategically vulnerable to the aforementioned giraffe or the schooner-addicted owl seen above. WARNING: Not for purchase by candy salesmen, as you may become legally too attractive to children.

Not into, you know, color? Rather remind everyone you come into contact with of the myriad ways that each day might lead inexorably into pit-staring, moan-filled problems? Dorothy’s “The Hundred Daily Dreads of Everyday Living” poster has now been issued in portable/wearable form, so that even on the move out in the bright, wide, pointy world, we might be kept sharply prepared in case anything, absolutely anything at all, happens. Because it could. Reassuring smiles from strangers are absolutely not included.

Finally, having overheard us mention the normal, everyday miseries that each human with a soul is ultimately subject to, our friend and yours Ryan has issued a succinct but comprehensive answer. “No,” he says kindly but firmly, “there is, instead, this.”

I came up with Dr. McNinja when I was studying Cartooning at SVA. It was originally just an internet handle for myself that I came up with mashing words together. After the name was created, I started thinking about what someone with that name might look and act like. And then I thought about what sort of world would support a character like that in a way that made sense. And it just grew and grew from there. I did the first comic for a summer class between my junior and senior year, excited that I could so a fun comic since I’d spent the last year on my very serious “junior thesis” project. I started doing the comic regularly as a webcomic about a year after that.

Is there a moment in the good doctor’s adventures that’s a particular fan favorite?

I think what currently stands as the fan favorite moment is when Dr. McNinja confronts Dracula at Dracula’s moon base, and then Dr. McNinja’s unique escape from the moon. I don’t want to say exactly what it is, because it’s one of my favorite moments too, and I think it’s so much better left a surprise if someone doesn’t know it’s coming.

So, in a world where a doctor who is also a ninja fights Dracula on the moon, is it a challenge to continually surprise the reader?

Yes! It is absolutely a challenge to continually surprise the reader in a way that isn’t cheap. I can’t try to pressure myself to try and keep doing more over the top wacky stuff, because it will just get cheap. I just try to write fun and satisfying stories, and hopefully the way I write Dr. McNinja, the insane stuff will happen naturally, because that’s just the way the comic wants to be.

And yet it’s very consistent! One thing about Dr. McNinja comics are they’re accessible: the title alone lets you know right away what you’re in for, and whether it’s something you might enjoy — and then the comic delivers on that promise.

Thank you! One of the lessons I learned in art school is that many successful comic characters have this sort of “holy trinity” in their name, appearance, and how they act. For example, The Shadow. He’s all covered up in cloaks, and he has these bright eyes hiding in the darkness he wraps himself up in. And, he is a very “shady” sort of character. He operates in the darkness, in a very mysterious way. It all syncs up. Dr. McNinja is very similar, though I certainly won’t say that I planned it. It’s just fortuitous, I think. Letting your audience know exactly what they’re getting into as soon as you can is really important in entertainment.

There’s a great clip of Bernie Mac performing at Def Comedy Jam. And he comes out in really weird clothes, dancing out to the comedy DJ (what?!) and he grabs the mic and just says to the crowd “I ain’t scared of you muthafuckas!” and it totally just sets the audience up to be on board with him for the rest of his very high energy set. Another good example is Star Wars. I mean, it’s just CALLED “Star Wars” for a start, and that’s pretty much what’s going on! And then you’ve got the classic opening of the outclassed rebel ship being tailed by the massive dark and scary Empire one. You know exactly what’s up immediately.

And so with The Adventures of Dr. McNinja, people hear that, and they often have a sort of laugh at just the title, and I’m really proud that when they go forward, the comic delivers on what the title “promises.” It’s the adventures of a doctor who is also a ninja!

What is Raptor Bandit Industries?

Raptor Bandit Industries is sort of an overall brand for my t-shirt designs, prints, and Dr. McNinja books. It came about because I used to just design t-shirts that were somehow related to Dr. McNinja. But as time went on, there became less and less of a connection to the comic, and now I just design whatever t-shirts I want. So I didn’t want to call them “Dr. McNinja shirts” anymore. Raptor Bandit Industries seems to fit the aesthetic pretty well. It’s named after some characters from an early Dr. McNinja comic.

Is it important to keep the Raptor Bandit merchandise in the same tone as Dr. McNinja, or is the advantage of an umbrella label that it allows you to branch out and try different sorts of things?

A lot of my stuff is in the same tone as Dr. McNinja anyway, but one of the advantages of selling through TopatoCo is that it allows me to reach people who don’t necessarily read my comic. For example, my newest shirt (above) is sort of a riff on Dune and the board game Settlers of Catan. A joke that caters VERY specifically to fans of both of those would be even more limited if I was only selling it to just Dr. McNinja fans too.

Can you talk a little about WWBD?

Pretty early on in Dr. McNinja, I set up this recurring joke that he is Batman-obsessed. And at one point, he has to solve a mystery, and he says “What would Batman do?” and then he goes on to crash into a random warehouse and beat up some thuggish looking guys, because that’s what Batman would do, right?

And then I thought it would be funny to do a WWBD shirt much like the well known WWJD merchandise. So I designed that up with a trademark-free version of Batman’s symbol. And then I put it on sale, and it sold like mad, and I quit my day job and was happy forever.

With something like shirts, how important is it to design for a general audience? Or do people prefer in-jokes?

I think there’s room for both. I’ve heard that the less people that get a joke, the funnier it is. Hence the shirt I just talked about. I think that shirt will go over really great with someone’s small group of gaming buddies, while the rest of the world will look at it and say “huh?” But most of my t-shirt designing work is about turning a joke in Dr. McNinja into something that anybody can get. For example, there’s a moment in the comic where Dr. McNinja high-fives his gorilla receptionist Judy, and when it happens there’s an explosion behind them. I thought it was something that could work pretty well on a t-shirt, but I knew I had to swap out Dr. McNinja for something else. I went with a shark. So now it’s a shark high-fiving a gorilla in front of an explosion, and it says “Nice.” That’s all you have to know. There’s no story behind it, and I think most people know that. They can look at the shirt and appreciate it for what it is, a glorious moment of nature or something.

If McNinja were on the shirt, then it’s a doctor with a ninja mask? High fiving…a gorilla? And it’s nice? Why? Who are these people? Must be from some weird comic book.

As T-shirt sales have become a huge part of squeezing a career out of online entertainment, everyone and their dad’s got a T-shirt with their logo on it now. But not all of them sell. Are there universal rules of what makes a good T-shirt design? For this type of business (selling online, direct-to-consumer), anyway?

Well, people want a t-shirt that says something about themselves, what they think is funny, what they think is cool, etc. Some shirts even make more direct statements! A good example is Ryan North’s “Feelings are boring. Kissing is awesome.” shirt. Beyond that, I think a shirt has to make its statement quickly and efficiently with only the context of the shirt. Jeffrey Rowland’s “Loch Ness Monster Adventure Club” shirt is a good example there. All the info you need about the joke is there, and it reads very quickly.

How do you decide what’ll be a good design for your audience, in your store?

Well for a long time it was just “How about some animals doing something wacky.” And I’m trying just so dang hard to get away from that now. But in general I just try to think about stuff that’s awesome to me. Chainsaw nunchucks, scary video game characters, Mexican bandits riding dinosaurs, etc. It’s the same thing that drives my writing of the comic, but in a different context.

Why animals in particular?

God I have no idea. I wish I did.

You don’t know why you find animals funny, or you don’t know why people buy animal shirts?

Both! I imagine that people think they’re funny the same way that I do, otherwise they wouldn’t buy them, but seriously I have no clue why I’m so attracted to stuff like a dolphin holding a gun, or two guys fighting with crocodiles. But I think I’ve probably done enough, and I’m trying to figure out a new direction.

Everyone on the internet yearns for the day when they turn their strange hobby into an improbable career. How have you found the process of having your livelihood depend on designing and selling merchandise that people will want to buy?

Well, it’s been a lot of fun discovering that I can design some popular t-shirts, but I have a feeling I’m not going to be good at it forever as I get older, and my own fashion tastes diverge from the stuff that I’m designing. So I’ve enjoyed it so far, but I’m trying to get into making other things besides t-shirts so that when I’m not good at it any more I’ll have other things to sell that people will like.

I remember a few times it was really great to be absolutely terrified about what I was going to do about money, spend the weekend designing a t-shirt in fear, and then by the end of the next week feeling like everything was okay again because the t-shirt preorders went really well.

Diversification is always good, and it’s nice to think that audiences who’re on the same wavelength as you will age as you age. Now, you mentioned designing a T-shirt in fear: while there’s certainly craft involved with creating things like comics, people sometimes gloss over the business acumen it also requires to create a sustainable career. What are some deliberate BUSINESS MOVES you’ve made along the way?

Let’s see. I have two dudes who work on the comic with me [inker Kent Archer and colorist Anthony Clark], not only for their skill that I don’t have, but because they do jobs on the comic that would keep me from having the time to work on stuff that helps make me money. I’ve made comics that only appear in the Dr. McNinja books as an incentive for people to buy something that’s made up mostly of content that’s free online. I don’t ship my own stuff anymore! This lovely company handles that for me now, and that was the best business decision I’ve ever made. I think most of my big business decisions involved when it was a good idea to hire someone else to handle part of the business for me. Even the bonus comics in the books are done by somebody else.

But that’s really just an excuse to make Benito Cereno write comics for me, because I think he’s great.

Any missteps you’d care to share with us, business-wise or merchandise-wise? Experiences you’ve learned from?

Absolutely. Check out a couple of my failed t-shirt designs:

I think the only thing that can be learned from these failures is that people don’t want to buy something that is “too” random…and also ugly. People were just confused by these, and they aren’t very attractive. I still like the moon one though.

Can you talk about Warrior Plumbers? Were there challenges getting such a complex illustration to work as a limited-color screenprint?

Oh, yes! That was actually the hardest time I had making an illustration for limited-color screenprinting, and even then, there are more colors than are typically allowed by our printer. Probably the biggest thing I did to help myself out here was having Zip-A-Tone-style shading on it to allow for some depth. Because it’s just dots on the black screen. It helped keep me from having to do a couple different shades of green, because otherwise I’d have to. Also I had some tinkering to do to have a sort of orange-ish shade that worked as the human skin tone, brick, turtle flesh, AND fire.

Why stick with the limited palette for the print?

It just turned out that I liked the palette once it was done! I had versions with more colors on them, but the limited one just all works nicely with each other. So I figured I’d stick with it for the print. The only thing I changed was some color tinting I originally had that didn’t really look right with the shirt color and inks, but was able to be on the print just fine.

Any plans for different types of merchandise?

I’ve got some print/poster ideas I’m going to start working on. A Dr. McNinja action figure seems like something that surely must see the light of day someday. And I’ve been doing a lot more writing lately, so while I’d rather not reveal exactly what I’m writing, I’ll say that they’re projects I think Dr. McNinja fans will enjoy. In general I’m just trying to think in a broader sense what sort of stuff a Dr. McNinja person would like. It’s not too hard, because if anything, I’m a Dr. McNinja person.

TopatoCo thanks Chris Hastings for his clever and provocative answers to our inquiries, and urges you to check out drmcninja.com and the Raptor Bandit store!

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Flickr photo of Christopher Hastings by LAGtheNoggin

How’s that project coming? How’s your day shaping up? How many things on your to-do list have you crossed off? How many have you added? How many calls have you made or emails have you sent or meetings have you meetinged or works have you enworkified? If the answer is a negative number (measured in kilopascals per liter of deep, rueful sighing) then we got just the thing for you. It is a bright, colorful reminder that you need to just, for God’s green sake, DO YOUR WORK. Do you need to outfit yourself (or better yet, everyone in your office) with a torso-worn reminder? Or do you just need a big ol’ giant poster to stick above your desk so everyone walking by can silently judge you? Either way we are here to help remind you of your priorities and thereby cause you to succeed at your thing, thus directly and absolutely positively putting money into your pocket. In our (admittedly limited and possibly wholly imaginary) tests, when properly and strategically activated these items pay for themselves nearly instantly.

But is too much work also a danger? Zach Weiner would have you think so, with his new cautionary tale about the human condition. Zach’s eerie, profound (semi-autobiographical?) fable raises junk-scratching questions about the fundamental nature of our quest for “progress.” Are we fated, as a species, to work so hard that we eventually collectively force ourselves (via nuclear holocaust, if necessary) to take a much-needed billion-year break? Is it writ in our genetic code that we if nothing stops us, we will eventually work ourselves to the bone, and then our bones will work themselves to their atoms, and then the atoms will work themselves down to the quarks, and then the quarks will cry themselves to sleep every night? Is there any saving the human race?

If we are workaholics by nature, perhaps the solution (for our own safety) is simply to make our work frivolous. Kris Straub’s got the species’ back with the new Periodic Table of Science Fiction. Put this up and you won’t need five hundred DO YOUR WORK prints littering your dang place. You will be drawn to its extreme level of scientific accuracy and your brain will be safely diverted from any extinction-level breakthroughs, all its sinister crannies filling with thoughts like “Oh yeah I remember Space 1999!”

Hey now CLICK ON IT (there’s a link to an enlarged view over on the product page)

How lucky for everyone, then, that your favorite speculation-engine Dresden Codak has a new shirt about The Trojan Tyrannosaur and that your favorite twitch-magnet Chris Yates has adapted his famous Poop Sign into a proud torso-sheath! As a concession to the fungibility of the human spirit, we are making both commercially available even to the same individual. The choice will rest with you. Am I, you should ask yourself, more excited by the prospect of something that could reasonably be named Stegodysseus, or by the simple and uncomplicated pleasure of a shirt that says Poop right on the front of it? We are not saying that you have to choose; that is up to you and your God and your parole officer and the rules at your group home.

ALSO WE GOT POOP SIGNS FOR BABIES EVEN. The Poop Sign was conceived for this use and potentially no other. This is the sound of the world being satisfied; everyone else can go home now.

What kind of “posters” might exist, in some hypothetical world where they are available for you to love and own and enjoy? Perhaps they might contain information — what if there was a Simplified Interstate Map (Newly Revised Edition) made by Chris Yates, or a Chart of #1 Hit Songs by Genre, 1950-Present made by Dorothy Gambrell? Could this format lend itself to a List Of Essential Information For Time Travelers, or even a Hierarchy of Beards? What bounty of useful knowledge could this format be utilized to convey? Only frenzied, gibbering speculators, gazing wide-eyed at the starry sky above and madly theorizing about what lies beyond the black, impenetrable veil of the future, may know for sure.

And what if this “poster” concept could be applied to making large paper versions of your favorite internet comic strips? Such a thing would seem the height of impossibility! OH NO MY FRIENDS. No, we have pooh-poohed the naysayers and TAKEN THIS TO THE LIMIT. Did you know that we sell Dresden Codak comic prints that are within inches of being as tall as Hollywood celebrity Danny DeVito? THIS IS NOT A THING WE DO LIGHTLY. In fact, we are so serious about this moral imperative to provide the world with goodness that we now offer prints and posters (in various forms) for eleven different internet comic strip titles. That is more than ten more internet comic strip titles than Hollywood celebrity Danny DeVito has Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series. Not to knock Mr. DeVito, but we are sort of leading the pack in this regard.

I know what you are thinking. (The computer monitor works both ways.) “But what,” you are thinking, “shall I do with this large blank wall directly opposite my bed? I have already adorned my workspace with your informational chart reference posters and some other space with many fine comic-strip prints. WHAT ABOUT THE BEDROOM?” I am pleased to say that one Mr. Brandon Bird has handily answered that question with a work entitled “Killing Machine.” Ladies and gentlemen, your worries are over.

Here’s a reminder of our get-it-by-Christmas holiday ordering deadlines! There is a little more info, not a lot, here.

If you order by the following deadlines, your package should have plenty of time to get where it is intended to go. Please keep in mind that we here at TopatoCo do a lot of things, but actually deliver your package is not one of those things. Once the package leaves our warehouse, it is up to the Postal Service to get it to you. Also, if you live outside of the US there will most likely be customs fees. Those are on you, dude.

USPS INTERNATIONAL PRIORITY = December 8

USPS INTERNATIONAL EXPRESS and
DOMESTIC FIRST CLASS AND PRIORITY = December 15

USPS DOMESTIC EXPRESS = December 18

Shipping times for UPS vary, depending on where you are located, but are guaranteed. For information please visit the UPS web site to calculate shipping times and plan accordingly.

All items must be designated “in stock”. Anything “All Gone” is gone, perhaps forever, but at least for now. Any shirts in “Short Delay” status are in the screenprinter’s reprinting queue and won’t be restocked before Christmas.

THAT BEING SAID — if you don’t care about Christmas delivery, order anything you like, at any time! We are not going to judge you.

ALSO — it should be mentioned. We bark a lot about deadlines and make loud, stern faces at the 0.5% of customers who make Problems, but the vast majority of you are kind, friendly, good-smelling and we are pleased and proud to serve you. Thank you so much for your patronage, for your support of the independent arts, and for being normal and nice. It’s for you that we do this!

And for, you know. The money.