Infocult: Information, Culture, Policy, Education

This is a clever idea: retelling DC comic book villains' stories in the style of Little Nemo.  And narrated by the villain Lex Luthor:

(thanks, Lee Graham)

Creepy manga: Enigma of Amigara Fault

"The Enigma of Amigara Fault" is a short horror story, a manga about rock, claustrophobia, and the uncanny.  Be careful of this one if you're seriously claustrophobic. 

(via Same Hat)

Best Freudian joke of the season: Cat and Girl

I love this Freudian joke, from Cat and Girl:
(image deleted for unreadability)
Click to get the full effect.  The multiplex, as you'll see.

Lost tales from a better dimension: Edward Gorey does Star Trek

This is mad and brilliant: Edward Gorey's The Trouble With Tribbles.

The tone, the style - perfect.  And Gorey trumps Trek by the end.

(via Making Light)

"Mad Hatter" arrested; world blames New Jersey

Life imitates pulp fiction: New Jersey police arrest a criminal dubbed "the Mad Hatter."  Because he switched hats between many bank jobs.

The article is a wonder of economy, mixing breezy humor with casual violence:

The robberies began about a month after Madison was released from a halfway house after serving nearly 20 years in prison for the bludgeoning death of a girlfriend. He said that upon release he found a $42,000-a-year job as a machinist.

"I thought, that's not bad, right? That was good money when I went in. But that was 20 years ago," he said. Then came a lesson in inflation.

No word on The Riddler in Newark.  I await The Scarecrow, anywhere.

More delights from a Gothic comic

The gloriously Gothic web comic Ballad has added more stories since we last noted it, back in 2005.  This is a Gorey-ish, steampunk-like, gorgeous world concerning a resurrected boy, a precocious and powerful girl, and her godlike father.  "Cakes for Tea" finished.  It was followed by "Ballad and the Marine Library of She'lotith," wherein our heroine sends Ballard to retrieve books from a library which surfaces only occasionally (image grab below).  Next came "Picnic in the Park," a longer and more complex story about poems, vengeance, and learning to wield power.

If you haven't read it before, start at the beginning. Make time for this charming, disturbing, beautiful, and haunting comic.

Censors for Free Speech

"Censors for Free Speech" is a superb article in Reason on the history of film content controls.  Jesse Walker does several excellent things for historical and present awareness of the topic, starting with reminding us that movies were not initially protected by the First Amendment in the United States.  That interpretation lasted until 1952, which explains a great deal about the first two generations of American film.

Walker then shows how film censorship, like copyright policy, cut across party lines, being driven by people on both the left and right.  The Legion of Decency worked with liberal groups, Progressives helped close some New York City movie theaters, and the supposedly liberal Wilson administration's justice department imprisoned a filmmaker.

The title's paradox offers a great way to see the history of cinematic content control, as many censors positioned themselves as defenders against even stricter controls. That's a powerful political move, and one to anticipate today.

That censoring ju-jitsu move should remind some of us of the Comics Code, where the industry regulated itself rather than suffer federal controls.  There's another comics-movies parallel in the 1930s National Recovery Administration's content censorship - check out the list of prohibitions (it's even called the Production Code).  And the deployment of psychology to support censorship by the Motion Picture Research Council is of a piece with Fred Wertham.

The article concludes by mentioning censors' habits of moving on to other media, once they've accomplished some expenditure of effort in one medium.  The example of television isn't the best one, however, as digital gaming has rapidly become a large target, as we've been noting here.

Bonus reading: Walker links to "The Unluckiest Man in Film History" (2000), an account of a filmmaker jailed for his movie during WWI.  It's deeply sad, and sometimes hilarious.

What we need now is a "planetary control room" staffed by robots

Many Infocult readers have probably read this new Wired story, about a CIA scheme to stage a fake sf film to get some Americans out of revolutionary Iran, but I wanted to note several amazing passages.  First, a Roger Zelazny-Jack Kirby-theme park axis:

All they needed now was a film — and Chambers had the perfect script. Months before, he had received a call from a would-be producer named Barry Geller. Geller had purchased the rights to Roger Zelazny's science fiction novel, Lord of Light, written his own treatment, raised a few million dollars in starting capital from wealthy investors, and hired Jack Kirby, the famous comic book artist who cocreated X-Men, to do concept drawings. Along the way, Geller imagined a Colorado theme park based on Kirby's set designs that would be called Science Fiction Land; it would include a 300-foot-tall Ferris wheel, voice-operated mag-lev cars, a "planetary control room" staffed by robots, and a heated dome almost twice as tall as the Empire State Building. Geller had announced his grand plan in November at a press conference attended by Jack Kirby, former football star and prospective cast member Rosey Grier, and several people dressed like visitors from the future. Shortly thereafter, Geller's second-in-command was arrested for embezzling production funds, and the Lord of Light film project evaporated.

Reminds me of Jodorowsky's Dune, which is nearly contemporary.

And an ARG-ish knitting of fiction into reality, which one could imagine under the header "This is not a CIA game":

The new production company outfitted its office with phone lines, typewriters, film posters and canisters, and a sign on the door: studio six productions, named for the six Americans awaiting rescue. Sidell read the script and sketched out a schedule for a month's worth of shooting. Mendez and Chambers designed a full-page ad for the film and bought space in Variety and The Hollywood Reporter. The night before Mendez returned to Washington, Studio Six threw a small party at the Brown Derby, where they toasted their "production" and Mendez grabbed some matchbooks as additional props to boost his Hollywood bona fides. Shortly thereafter, the Argo ads appeared, announcing that principal photography would commence in March. The film's title was rendered in distressed lettering against a black background. Next to it was a bullet hole. Below it was the tagline "A Cosmic Conflagration."...

When the ads appeared, Hollywood Reporter and Variety writers called, generating small news articles in each magazine. "Two noted Hollywood makeup artists — one an Oscar winner — have turned producers," read an article in the January 25, 1980, Holly wood Reporter. "Their first motion picture being Argo, a science fantasy fiction, from a story by Teresa Harris ... Shooting will begin in the south of France, and then move to the Mideast ... depending on the political climate." (emphasis added)

There's also a bizarre Prisoner echo in the fake production company's name: Studio Six.

Dreambelly of the blogosphere

To my shame, I only now realize that Jim Woodring blogs.  He's into Moleskine mutations now:

(via the sublime Mz. Wurzel)

Comic junk food updated

Here's a cruel, fun twist on the old comic book ads for junk food.  Imagine one starring a character from Watchmen.

(thanks to Disturbingly-smilin' Steve)