Last fall when “Twilight: New Moon” came out, try as hard as you might, the merchandising tentacles of the young adult franchise could not be avoided. One web comic artist made a statement that geeks could get behind. With one fell swoop of his tablet pen and dry wit, Joel Watson of Hijinks Ensue started a trend with this version of the “Edward” shirt:
I met Watson at this past Spring Dallas Comic Con and was delightfully surprised to find that there was a story and a great cause behind this tee design. Here is SciFiMafia’s exclusive interview with Joel Watson on his “Edward” tee design.
SciFiMafia: How did the idea for the “Edward” tee design come about?
Joel Watson: The “Edward” shirt came about when I was frantically trying to think of something to draw for a comic and had kinda gotten fed up with the merchandising that was sorta of being blasted into my every head orifice about “Twilight”. Kids like that stuff and they don’t know any better. That’s fine and there’s nothing evil about it, except for the negative portrayal of what a healthy relationship is, but that’s beside the point.
I wanted to do something that would say, “If you’ve got your Edward, then I’ve got mine or [rather] we’ve got ours.” And in this case it was the good Admiral Adama, Edward James Olmos. I put that into a comic where one of the characters seemed to be wearing an Edward shirt and he was holding a tray of tacos and when he moved the tray of tacos it was Edward James Olmos’ face on the shirt.
Immediately, there was this sort of outcry from my readers to actually produce the shirt. So within just a few days I was taking pre-orders and it started selling better than any shirt that I ever offered. So that was the initial idea for it. It just kind of being contradictory to the “Twilight” craze and the fact that this shamefully bad piece of fiction that was capturing the imagination of the nation’s youth.
(Click to embiggen.)
SciFiMafia: Yeah, I know, it is quite sad. Have you ever tried reading the “Twilight” novels?
Joel Watson: No, but I have actually sat down and saw the first movie, completely sober and without the benefit of the RiffTrax commentary or anything like that. I learned [Twilight] vampires don’t have fangs and they don’t really wanna hurt anybody and they’re not even essentially bad. There was nothing tragic. There was no downside to being a Vampire. This vampire, Edward, is like “I’m disgusting, don’t look at me. I’m a monster!” but at the same time he’s a fucking beautiful rainbow sparkling in the sunlight. I want to tell him, “I’m a student of the tortured vampire and you sir, are no tortured vampire!” I did a little bit more research just out of morbid curiosity to try to learn a little bit more about the books and the more I learned… it was like it went from funny to sad to really funny to just depressing.
So my offense shifted from “the teeny boppers are trying to take over vampires and castrate them and take everything cool about vampires and ruin them” to “oh, man, they are just completely obsessed with this really awful fiction”. But it was kinda a perfect storm. There were these terrible books about teen non-angst, and then terrible movies with a pretty boy that teenagers could love, and all this merchandise for them to devour and it was just unstoppable. So I was trying to say “if everyone’s going to wear a shirt that says ‘Edward’, so am I, but it’s going to be an Edward that I actually respect”. As if to say, “Not only do think [Twilight] is crap and you should stop giving them your money, but also I support good sci-fi.”
SciFiMafia: I couldn’t agree more!
Joel Watson: So that’s the origin. That’s how it got started.
SFM: Did you have to get permission to use Edward James Olmos’ image for this after the idea took off?
JW: Oddly enough, I didn’t think I did. I kinda thought that it fell under parody which is such a grey area. The general consensus that I’ve always been told is try and see what you can get away with and if you get a cease and desist order, cut it out, because you’ll lose. I actually assumed, sorta incorrectly, that any public figure’s image could be used for anything but I guess with this particular design, I wasn’t mocking Edward James Olmos, or making fun of “Battlestar Galactica” in any way. The way I used his image, it might confuse people in thinking that he was actually endorsing it or something, you know?
Four or five days into the pre-sale of these t-shirts, I’m just blown away at how well they’re selling and really excited that I might get to continue being a cartoonist for another few more months because of this. I get an email from a guy at Olmos Productions Incorporated that said basically, “Hey, we know about the shirt. We need to talk.” That only sounded bad to me. I just crawled back into bed and then slept for practically the rest of the day. Finally, despite the knot in my stomach, I got up the guts to call him. They were all like “Hey, we saw the shirt. We love it. We think it’s great. We wanna work with you.” I’m like… [I’m gonna] throw up!
SFM: [laughs] And a big sigh of relief on your part, I bet!
JW: It ended up working out better than I could have expected. We agreed to a small licensing fee and they ended up donating all of their profits to Doctors Without Borders for relief in Haiti. I couldn’t be more happy with it. They’ve been really cool to work with so far and we’ve even talked about doing other projects together. We would have already had a picture of Edward James Olmos in the shirt but I think he was out of the country filming at the time all this went down.
It was a really cool experience to find a celebrity that understands how much his geek following actually does for him. Before “Battlestar”, he was a celebrity and he certainly had geek cred from “Blade Runner”, but in the last five years because of “Battlestar”, he’s risen to this geek icon on level with any captain of any particular Enterprise. I think maybe somebody had to sit down with him, maybe Ron Moore sat down with him and said “Hey, lemme explain geeks to you real quick and here’s how you should handle these people. Sci-Fi fans either embrace something fully 110% or they hate it! They’re rabid to some extent, but once you’ve got their devotion, they’ll support you to the ends of the earth so treat them right.”
[This shirt design] was a celebration of the role that he portrayed and at the same time, making fun of something that most hard-core geeks were staunchly against. Combining those two ideas into one effort is a double-y positive promotion of Mr. Olmos in the eyes of geeks. I think that anyone that wears that shirt is doing it more to support him and “Battlestar” than to make fun of “Twilight”.
SFM: But a lot of us would do both anyway!
JW: Sure, absolutely! I think they would wear the shirt more to say “I’m down with the Admiral” than to say “I hate Twilight”, but in this respect you’re stating your preference and offering an alternative. Not only does Twilight suck, but…
SFM: But Battlestar rocks!
JW: Yeah. I get kinda of a warm feeling from it.
SFM: What about the character ‘William Adama’ is so attractive?
JW: I’ve always just been really enthralled with the Adama character. He’s saddled with this insurmountable task with absolutely no end in sight, no hope, no reason to even fight, but he doesn’t consider giving up an option. His character is a creature of pure will. It’s funny that you probably don’t see a lot of geeks as vocal supporters of war, military action, or anything like that, but when you give us a commanding authority figure, military or otherwise, like on “Battlestar”, or “Firefly”, or “Star Trek” … who’s not only top of the chain of command, but also a bad ass and I think that’s a gateway for a geek to understand and respect that kind of authority. When you see it in a character like Adama, you’re like “I’ll follow you to ends of the fucking galaxy!”
SFM: My sentiments exactly!
JW: “I would strap on a side arm and go fight cylons with you, buddy! We’re all in this together and we’re fighting for the survival of the last remaining humans.” And in the end it’s just a tv show, but like everything [else] geeks take it one step further and make it a little piece of their reality. It’s more fun that way. So, I think because of how great that character was, the [scifi] community is richer for it. I can’t imagine”Battlestar Galactica” having the impact that it did without the exact actors in the exact roles. Mr. Olmos brought Admiral Adama to life and made him into an ideal we could believe in. He was like strength and will in the face of adversity personified.
SFM: I would follow Admiral Adama to the ends of the universe and back. In a sense, it was like we were watching sci-fi history as we were watching that show unfold.
JW: It was a lot like [watching] the History channel. It felt like “Oh, God, in fifty years we’ll be talking about the battle of New Caprica”. There were more than a few moments like that when you really felt like you were witnessing something real and important unfold. So it was a shared experience. It was like saying, “Where were you when Kennedy was assassinated?” and “Where were you when Adama got shot or the ship jumped to FTL seconds before slamming into a planet?” I’m not saying the show is anywhere near as important as real world historical events, but you definitely remember those moments like it was a real piece of history.
SFM: It so amazed me that a television show has captured us in such a way that it’s become so entrenched in our lives and into popular culture… or rather geek culture!
SFM: So, what’s next? Will there be a spin-off shirt to the Edward shirt?
JW: It’s funny because immediately, my readers kept saying that I need to do a follow up shirt… you gotta do a Jacob shirt with Jacob from “Lost”. I politely decline because I really feel like it was a special right time, right place, right idea situation. So I just want to let it live its life and not force bad ideas down peoples’ throats to try and recreate that success. When people stop buying it, I’ll know that it’s time to retire it.
I just sold one of these to the Visual Effects Supervisor of “Watchmen”. I saw his name on the order and I’m like wait a second. Holy crap, this guy did the visual effects on Watchmen and the last two “Matrix” movies and “X-Men III”! I really respect this guy’s work and I emailed him to confirm the order and I had to throw in there “I really like [your work]”. He responds, “Oh, I love the shirt. I have already got one. This one is for my girlfriend.” It’s opened doors for me and every time I see someone wearing one I kinda freak out a little bit.
I’m just really grateful that I had the right stupid idea at the right time. I’m not that special. Anybody could have come up with this. But luckily, I did and I accidentally got permission from Olmos to keep doing it.
SFM: Joel, it’s like you’re bringing the sci-fi community together with this shirt.
JW: If it does something like that, then I think that’s awesome. If it make them feel like they are representing for geeks everywhere then why not?
SFM: So this is kinda like your perfect storm.
JW: A little bit! Honestly, it literally took me from wondering how I was going to continue keeping my comic going and my site up and running financially to at least being able to take a deep breath and step back for a couple of months to plan my next move. Had that shirt not worked out as well as it did, I don’t know if I’d have had to get a day job by now. That’s how much it means to me. And whatever it means to anybody else is equally important but again, I couldn’t be more grateful of how it worked out and how team Olmos reacted to it and how they’ve treated me. All of that has been excellent.
All licensing revenue from the sale of each shirt is currently going to benefit Jaime Escalante who was the inspiration for the film “Stand And Deliver”. He is seriously ill with cancer and Mr. Olmos recently released this statement asking for donations for Escalante:
An Appeal to the Friends of Jaime Escalante
Anyone who has seen “Stand and Deliver” knows how much Jaime Escalante (Kimo) has done for this country. The love and dedication he gave to his inner city students, and his unfailing conviction that every one of them was “gifted,” brought out talent that had been untapped – and unseen – by other teachers.
The genius that he awakened in the “unteachable” commanded the attention of the entire world. It caused countless educators to reconsider what their students might really be capable of if, like Kimo, they could awaken the “ganas” (desire) in them.
Jaime didn’t just teach math. Like all great teachers, he changed lives. Gang members became aerospace engineers. Kids who had spent their youth convinced their lives didn’t matter discovered they were leaders.
Now, Kimo needs our help. He is seriously ill, and the treatment he needs has depleted all the funds his family can raise. They did not want to ask for help, but we took it upon ourselves to get the word out to all the country and around the world, to make his final days as comfortable as possible – and maybe even give him a chance to beat the cancer that has afflicted him.
I have been moved to tears to hear of the circumstances of this great man and am calling for a last National Understanding of his selfless contributions to “making a difference in this world.”
Together, we have a chance to make a real difference in his life. I could not bear to think that we would do any less for one who has given so much for so long.
You have my deepest appreciation for any and all prayers and help that you can give.
Edward James Olmos
CLICK HERE to print out the donation form to help Jaime Escalante.
Or, you can support a good cause and pick up your very own EDWARD shirt HERE
…and be sure to check out Hijinks Ensue, a geeky web comic for the sake of geekery.
Header image, featuring model ‘Rebekah’ is courtesy of Greg Easton Photography
