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Your TSA Gestapo: Now profiling based on ... comic book scripts


From SFscope:

Boom! Studios sends word that comics writer Mark Sable was detained by TSA security guards at Los Angeles International Airport this past weekend because he was carrying a script for a new issue of his comic miniseries Unthinkable. Sable was detained while traveling to New York for a debut party at Jim Hanley's Universe today.

The comic series follows members of a government think tank that was tasked with coming up with 9/11-type "unthinkable" terrorist scenarios that now are coming true. (See this article for more on the series.)

Sable wrote of his experiences: "Flying from Los Angeles to New York for a signing at Jim Hanley's Universe Wednesday (May 13th), I was flagged at the gate for 'extra screening'. I was subjected to not one, but two invasive searches of my person and belongings. TSA agents then 'discovered' the script for Unthinkable #3. They sat and read the script while I stood there, without any personal items, identification or ticket, which had all been confiscated.

"The minute I saw the faces of the agents, I knew I was in trouble. The first page of the Unthinkable script mentioned 9/11, terror plots, and the fact that the (fictional) world had become a police state. The TSA agents then proceeded to interrogate me, having a hard time understanding that a comic book could be about anything other than superheroes, let alone that anyone actually wrote scripts for comics.

"I cooperated politely and tried to explain to them the irony of the situation. While Unthinkable blurs the line between fiction and reality, the story is based on a real-life government think tank where a writer was tasked to design worst-case terror scenarios. The fictional story of Unthinkable unfolds when the writer's scenarios come true, and he becomes a suspect in the terrorist attacks.


Explain to me again how Al Qaeda did not win the war on the American way of life.

Comments

Miko said…
Because the "war on the American way of life" is something that the U.S. government invented to distract us from the real causes of terrorism. It'd be hard for them to win a war they weren't and aren't fighting. Rather, the U.S. government won that war; they're the ones fighting it.
June 28, 2009 at 12:58 AM
Anonymous said…
Chilling. But on a bright note :) I may look into buying this at the nearby comic shop
June 28, 2009 at 7:19 AM
G Rex said…
Frickin' mall cops. Still, the comic sounds like a good read. And if you like that, might I suggest John Shirley's trilogy, A Song Called Youth? Three books, Eclipse, Eclipse Penumbra and Eclipse Corona - cyberpunk sci-fi written back in the 1980s, featuring a New World Order type movement with Christian fundamentalism at the top. Anti-hero a retro-rocker named Rickenharp who trades his guitar for an assault rifle, and then trades it back.
June 30, 2009 at 8:32 PM
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