Fear of a Black Tee

One of my coolest tees, a reproduction of a Rush

"Golden Age" concert shirt

The black T-shirt has become a staple of just about everyone's wardrobe these days. The colour black, after all, has a slimming effect - visually - so anyone with a few extra pounds might gravitate to this darkest colour to fool their friends and enemies. Then there's the fact that black simply looks cool. And everyone wants to look cool.

Here's my cock-eyed history of the cool black look:

The "bad guy" in old movies used to always wear black, as a symbol of darkness and evil, in diametric contrast to the good guy's white or light coloured attire. The film serials that were produced from the 1920's up until the 50's were also partly responsible for establishing tropes such as the dark-clad bad guys, often wearing masks, too. This look was effective in creating a menacing, dangerous and shadowy character. The western and horror genres made best use of black garments. Sometimes the crime thrillers, too.

Over the years, as film - and even comic book - characters were written with more and more complexity and often duality, it became more common to see the hero, or anti-hero, dressed in black. And with that, there became a blurring of the line between good and evil. Think of The Shadow, Batman (the blue of his cape and cowl represented black in the comics), The Punisher, The Crow, V (of V for Vendetta) and countless others. These were essentially good guys, but they operated outside of the law and didn't always display honest and moral attributes. All in black. 

And even as pop culture villains became "cooler" visually and otherwise, and more acceptable to like, their dark appearance became more desirable to imitate. Like Darth Vader, Pinhead, and Catwoman... hehe. Rebels and outsiders adopted the look with ease, and even the everyday person eventually came around to it, too. As time went on, even the truly good guys in pop culture, the heroes, were dressed in black. Men In Black (um, bad example), Bruce Lee, Neo of The Matrix. I hate to say it, but even Chuck Norris.... remember, he did that movie Good Guys Wear Black way back in '78. 

So... with that little pop culture history lesson behind us, maybe we can understand how black became the clothing colour of choice for cool cats. 

My Punisher tee, alongside The Essential Punisher

volume of the origins and early appearances of the

vigilante crime-figher

The black T-shirt became a thing for me when I was in my early teens in the 70's. My first shirt bore the logo of my favourite rock music radio station at the time, Q-107 (in Toronto). I wore that thing until the washing machine rendered it impossible to squeeze into any longer. I hate shrinkage. The next black tee I got was a Rush "2112" shirt, showing the band's famous album cover with the red star of the Solar Federation of the epic song cycle. 

The most popular concert shirts from the 80's were the half sleeve jobs, sort of styled after the Major League Baseball look. I had a bunch of those, and the black tees vanished from my closet. Then concert shirts weren't even a thing for me; I didn't really want to wear logos on my chest anymore. But enter the new millennium, and I'm back on the bandwagon. Now I've got several black tees, both plain ones and ones bearing images. I grabbed shirts of some of my all-time favourite bands, like Black Sabbath, Cheap Trick, Rush, Priest, and Van Halen. There's a Star Wars Rebel Alliance logo shirt, The Punisher, and a Criterion (a video company catering to film aficionados) logo tee, and even a 30 Rock shirt.... as that TV series neared its final episode, I felt I needed something special to remember this favourite show by. Those are some of my favourite tees. All black. All cool.