Via his Twitter feed, writer Mark Sable reveals that he was detained for 30 minutes prior to a flight by the TSA after a random search turned up a copy of his script to UNTHINKABLE. In the BOOM! series, a government think tank spends its time thinking up possible terrorist scenarios. Read Twitter backwards!
# Just hope TSA writes a spoiler free review for Unthinkable.9:55 AM May 10th from Tweetie
# My privacy, a small price to pay for educating the government about the medium.9:53 AM May 10th from Tweetie
# I hope the TSA enjoyed the waterboarding in issue 3.At least they know comics aren’t just about superheroes.9:52 AM May 10th from Tweetie
# Nothing like starting the day explaining you’re not a terrorist, but writing about them.9:50 AM May 10th from Tweetie
# Talk about life imitating art imitating life. I ouldn’t make this up if I tried.9:48 AM May 10th from Tweetie
# Wow.Just detained by TSA for over half hour.They read and questioned me about the script for Unthinkable9:41 AM May 10th from Tweetie
More reax in the link.
Um… searched the text, but can find no link. Shall I maintain there is a link? Ignore intell which contradicts this assumption?
(And someday, somewhere private, I’ll explain my scenario. Well, two, actually.)
ah….something’s not right.
if he was really ‘detained’ for being a suspect terrorist, I don’t think they would’ve let him ‘twitter’ his thoughts.
His comments came afterward.
well, you gotta congratulate the TSA that they’re willing to employ intellectually challenged people too!
I wouldn’t believe me either, Michael. I can’t say I don’t appreciate the PR during the week the book comes out.
During my “detention”, they had my cell phone, macbook, ticket, ID…they had everything. But as Kevin Melrose pointed out, my twittering came from my iphone afterward.
The big unanswered question is still - was it a coincidence, or was I screened because of what I wrote about Unthinkable (both the comic and the Alternate Reality Game)?
These are the some of the websites from the ARG:
fictional private military contractor: wolpackpmc.com
fictional character’s blogs:
peakoilishere.blogspot.com
isomergrenade.livejournal.com
www.bringontheendtimes.wordpress.com
On some level, I’d be comforted if the NSA was monitoring me this closely, and could pass on that info to another agency. On another, they’d be pretty shitty analysts if they couldn’t figure out if it was a game.
As far as the TSA goes, I’ve got nothing against the workers, who were just doing their job. (Wait…let me rephrase that…stopping and searching me - doing their job. Reading my script…not so much.) But I think the airport security is a joke. By the TSA’s own admission, their security is easy to thwart and aimed at stopping terrorists who “aren’t clever”.
I’m really curious is if this has happened to any other creators or readers.
Yup… the shoe bomb terrorist… if he had gone to a lavatory (usually located near the cockpit or near the rudder) before lighting the fuse, we probably wouldn’t know about the cause. But he instead tried to light his shoe, with a match, while sitting in his seat, on a non-smoking flight.
Hope and Change at work.
Mark– I was stopped at the Canadian border one time and questioned for about an hour about one of my silkscreens with unreadable type graphics– which I explained were supposed to be words in “martian”, which I explained was a literary conceit. They could not understand the idea of silkscreening at all and they did not believe that I actually made the prints myself– and were convinced I was smuggling drugs or something– they asked me to scratch the ink and had the dogs sniff the paper. They thoroughly searched the car and seemed frustrated that they couldn’t find anything illegal or out of line. Ridiculous story but true.
When I won an Ignatz, the year after 9-11, they kinda freaked out when I tried to bring the brick on the plane, but when I explained that the brick was a comics award they thought it was hilarious.
I’m pretty sure everyone who’s flown home with an Eisner has had it deemed “suspicious.” There were 5 or 6 guys with puzzled and alarmed faces staring at the x-ray display and then it was swabbed and tested for bomb residue. To be fair to the TSA, it does look like a thermal detonator.
Those guys working at the borders, they have no sense of humour. I never joke with them or airplane personnel. They are like minigods who serve the mightier one, and are suspicious of all, so best to be open and communicative with them despite their techniques. Imagine the scenarios they see every day..
I once had a very interesting and friendly conversation conversation with an airport screener in Tampa about whether I had ever considered having laser eye surgery. It went on for about 10 minutes. I was shoeless at the time, but still managed to ‘do the old soft shoe’…since I felt I was at an audition. Win the gig, get to go on the plane.
It’s bullshit.
The residue of a government that treats people like shit all over the globe. Ordinary people should protest every day.
[…] Unthinkable #1: Writer Mark Sable and artist Julian Totino’s series about a think tank charged with thinking of unthinkable terror attacks to defend against in a post-9/11 world. How good is it? Well, good enough that Sable was apparently detained by airport security at LAX when they found his script for the series. That sure sounds like a pretty ringing endorsement to me. […]
[…] COMIC SCRIPT GETS WRITER A VISIT FROM TSA […]
Will someone please explain what TSA stands for? Don’t assume all your readers are familiar with local acronyms. Some of us come different parts of the world.
Thank you.
“Will someone please explain what TSA stands for?”
I’m going with Transportation Security Administration.
“Don’t assume all your readers are familiar with local acronyms. Some of us come different parts of the world.”
You have Google over there, though, don’t you?
What is google?