Yup! You can get sneakers with Doctor Baer-inspired designs on them over on my Etsy store!
It’s been a lot of fun designing apparel that’s a little more customizable than your average t-shirt. I feel like the Wisps sneakers look pretty neat. But what I’m really enjoying is making products that also build more lore into the world of Doctor Baer, like the Shoes of the Deathly Dance:
From the world of The Inscrutable Doctor Baer and the Case of the Two-Faced Statue.
These legendary shoes should not be worn by the fearful or careless! They are cursed shoes the mysterious Baba Yaga instructed a young farm hand to give to their wicked employer.
These enchanted shoes compel the wearer to dance fiercely until they meet their end–unless the wearer has a pure heart. You will know that the dancing curse is activated if the shoes turn green. If they stay blue and red, you are pure of heart and safe from the curse!
Like the talismans I’ve been making, it’s a fun creative exercise to create an in-world object that comes with the suggestion that it might have magic properties. It’s a nice, time-boxed way to playfully explore some of Doctor Baer’s world. I don’t need to tie these objects into any particular plot, but if they seem especially interesting, I can. And yes, it’s another way Doctor Baer readers can support me.
As a kid I was all over products like this. Whether it was superhero pajamas or the He-Man dress up set, anytime I could feel like I was participating in the imaginary worlds I loved was a good time. I guess there’s something to it like what makes Halloween so fun. But it was also the notion of interacting with an object from that world. I remember getting my first light-up lightsaber in 1984. It was a cheap knockoff purchased at a vendor stand at the state fair, basically a flashlight with a green piece of cellophane over the bulb, and an opaque white tube attached to the bulb end. I couldn’t cut through walls, and the tube got irreparably bent after a few swings, but it helped transport me into the world of space wizards and monsters on a warm summer night in my grandparents’ back yard.
These things I’m making might not deliver such core memories or emotional charge. But I’m having fun sitting alongside that kid while making them.
