Author notes

Whatever happened to T-shirt Medusa, part 3

Jake Richmond

on Dec. 29, 2022

Happy Holidays!

Whew. 60 panels in 3 days. This is the longest "24 Hour comic" I've ever done (And of course it doesn't count as a 24 Hour Comic at all because it took 3 days). As a point of reference, I usually do 8 Modest Medusa strips each month. So this is 15 comics worth of panels, or about 2 whole months of Modest Medusa strips.

This one is a deep dive. 6 or 7 years ago I launched a "t-shirt of the month" project with a Modest Medusa reader and created the character "T-shirt Medusa" to promote it. T-shirt Medusa starred in a few promotional strips that appeared in 2016 and 2017, where she would mysteriously show up to taunt Modest into buying a shirt (I incorporated two of those strips into this comic). I had kind of sort of thought I'd maybe offer a canonical explanation for this someday, and that thought eventually turned into this comic. Obviously not canon.

This comic is more about me and my uncertainties, fears and anxiety over the last few years than anything else, but I think maybe a lot of you can find something relatable here. I came up with the idea for this comic during the Modest Medusa Kickstarter last Fall when I thought that project wasn't going to fund and I suddenly realized I had no idea what I was going to do with myself if I couldn't make a living doing Modest Medusa anymore after 12 years. The project did fund, but that feeling of dread has lingered. I've decided to try to learn from it.

This comic takes its name from the classic Superman story "Whatever happened to thr Man of Tomorrow?" It was created for the upcoming 48 Hour Modest Medusa book. Should be available in a few months.

No plans for new t-shirts. Well… maybe.