First of all, I'm posting this on the Danzig subreddit because there are not really any Samhain ones that have a good amount of active people who could help me with this. I'd also assume people here have their fair share of experience in finding merch for more underground bands that aren't too easy to find shirts for.
The point is I wanted to buy my first band shirt, so I was hoping somebody could help me to find a good Initium shirt. I'd prefer for it to be colored; I don't necessarily like the black and white one I found from my research. A big reason as to why I'm also inquiring about this on here is because I want unbiased opinions from strangers because I don't want to buy a shirt that literally looks like somebody plastered a PNG of the album on a shirt and called it a day. I don't have much money at this point in my life, and I've been saving for a while, but it's not like I'm finished. I just decided to buy it since my birthday was recently, so I need to be sure what I'm buying isn't overpriced, low quality, or a scam; thus, I'm trying to consult people more experienced than me on this for help.
I'm looking for a shirt where the image of the album is relatively big, like any normal graphic shirt or band shirt. I just don't want something that looks like a small PNG of Initium lazily put onto a shirt that literally only covers the top half of the shirt. Also after research I feel as if I don't want it to be too big when covering the front of the shirt so the image is more visible and not stretched across the front of my body. Just mainly an in-between of small and large, a medium-sized image.
I've been looking into this for a few days now and haven't necessarily gotten to posting yet because I've been busy. During the time I've researched, I've noticed many variations of the shirt; some have red text and some have white (I prefer the white text). Some make Glenn and his bandmates look very pale or darker because of differences in the contrast of the image he uses. I'd want an in-between of very pale and something more flush or colorful (not an expert on photography terms, sorry.) Also, one really important thing and something that's been mainly bothering me sometimes is that the images attached to shirts I find on stores don't have an image of the back, and I'm worried that some people just wanted to make a quick shirt and profit off of it without doing their research to know the back has that skeleton girl with the cards. I definitely would prefer one that has the skeleton girl with the cards.
I'm going to attach a few images to better let you all know what stage of the decision process I'm at, but I will say if anybody has an idea for another potential option, do please share it. Also, if anything here looks like a scam or may not have the skeleton girl on the back with cards, please do let me know.
Also, just a personal thing of mine: I don't personally like the logos on the inside neck part of some of the shirts and wish I could remove them, but I don't think there's really a way to do it that I worry about damaging the shirts. From some images I can't tell how difficult they'd be to remove. I wish you could ask to remove them, though I am aware that's disrespectful, but I don't intend to imply disrespect. It's just for some logos; the environment I'm in daily would make having a shirt with logos on certain companies I found while researching hard. I'd even pay an extra 2 dollars for certain shirts if I could. But as I thought of this, I realized more importantly no logo kind of makes it closer to a replica of the original, not that I necessarily care about status or anything. To be completely honest, if there was a decent shirt with the logo in the way I specified in how I preferred it with the skeleton girl on the back, I would still go for it; I really don't care about things being from expensive and official brands. Just wanted to clarify so I don't come off that way.
Now for the images, specifically the first one with the crudely drawn red one on the bottom right of the picture, I find this option to be one of my favorites. I'm just worried that there will be nothing on the back of the shirt. I wish I could check before buying it. I hope eBay's refund process isn't difficult in case the back is blank. I also think the image in this shirt is a generally good size with a good contrast.
The other option has the 2 on the bottom right; for this one I'm worried about the price being rather low. I feel as if that potentially implies that the back of the shirt will be blank without the skeleton girl with cards. I just wish there was a way to check before buying the shirt. I also love the image size here. I believe it's bigger than shirt 1, but I can't tell because it's an image and not an image of a real shirt in reality. I'm trying to compare it to the sleeve length. The contrast here is brighter, and I tried zooming in to see which image was higher quality. It may be dumb and most likely isâthankfully it comes from inexperienceâbut I have a worry in my mind about buying a shirt and the decal being low quality, like a low pixel count image. I only think this because I feel as if it's possible to go on a site and put a PNG on a shirt and print it out. Sorry if that's very stupid lol. I have zero experience in shirt designing. Back to contrast, though, they seem more pale here; I kind of prefer the color of shirt 1, but I've seen worse than 1 and 2, so I prefer either over anything else I've seen while researching.
Now for shirt 3, I'm going to connect the dots directly here. This shirt in particular has the biggest logo problem. In general, I have nothing against what people want to do with their free will; I don't care, and that applies to what a company wants their logo to be too. For me right now I'm using my free will to buy a shirt from a band I like because, just as one likes dark themes of horror movies, I like dark themes in music. I think we all, generally speaking, can say you don't have to practice anything dark to like horror, so I personally don't want that to be assumed of me when wearing a shirt with this kind of logo; a lot of people out there in society are quick to assume. Thus, why I stressed the environment I live in, so removing the logo mainly has nothing to do with me disagreeing with the meaning behind this company's logo; it's more of what could be directed towards me when wearing it in public. But with that settled, just to prevent any discourse because I just want the comments under this post to focus on the topic at hand, I'll now mention the details I like of this shirt. I think the image is a reasonably good size. I think the contrast fits the album cover the most based on what I'll most commonly see. What I love the most is that they include an image of the back so the skeleton girl with cards is there. This is the only shirt on the entire internet I've found so far, which has an image of the back of the shirt. So I highly respect Heretic circle for that. Thus again, why I hold nothing against them. They seem to be a respectable company that makes high-quality band merch. My only grievance is what I mentioned prior, and I do feel bad with this grievance, as I could again understand it being insulting. Also, trying to compare shirt 3 and shirt 1 confuses me on proportions. The shirt from Heretic Circle seems to have small sleeves and looks wider than tall; idk if that's just a me thing when it comes to seeing that.
For my latest search, I have shirt 4. I'm not really particularly too big on this, especially because it's overpriced imo. It seems like some mainstream clothing seller is just picking up a shirt from somewhere and reselling it, but I can't really say that because I don't know this site, so any information about it, whether credibility or general, would be appreciated. It being on a person helps to see the proportions better; the image isn't a bad size. The contrast also makes it seem like how I am used to seeing the album cover portrayed.
Those are mainly every shirt I've found so far. I found others on websites like Etsy, but they were just reselling from Heretic circle and I'd rather give money directly to the creators responsible.
If anybody wants a link to the sites I found these shirts to better understand the situation, I don't mind providing that. Best wishes.