The Awl has an interesting piece about papercraft in prison. Obviously that’s the sort of thing boingboing would link to. Next week: prisoner-modded ‘steampunk’ shanks, stylized prison-breaks as YouTube responses to OK Go videos, and associated ‘yardsourced’ projects (Clinkstarter), with all the (brass) trimmings: ‘Help me fulfill my dream of building a giant dirigible in solitary confinement!’ ‘Help me turn my cell toilet into a working trebuchet!’ On a more serious note, the article neglects one of the most notorious episodes in prison papercraft history, from Action Comics #267:
Luthor communicates with the ancient Greek historical figure in Latin, by the simple expedient of saying ‘thee’ instead of ‘you’ in English.
Neat! This shows, as few other things could, that strategic dynamism is consistent with the values of a classical education.
{ 20 comments }
Jacob T. Levy 06.21.12 at 2:38 am
but… but… if he invented a time-travel teleporter… why wouldn’t he just…
Because the Silver Age, that’s why.
John Holbo 06.21.12 at 2:39 am
Just think of the possibilities of this device for online education and distance learning!
Matt 06.21.12 at 3:16 am
Think, Jacob- an aspirin-powered time teleporter can only grab things from the past. To send one’s self out, you need Tylenol, or better, Advil, which explains why the warden didn’t give him any of that- he was no dummy.
Brandon 06.21.12 at 3:34 am
You have to admire Luthor’s style. Other evil geniuses would simply break the laws of their country by using their genius to break themselves out of prison, but that’s just not enough for him; he has to find a way that also breaks the laws of space and time. That’s real criminality.
mds 06.21.12 at 3:57 am
Well, in his tepid defense, he was talking to “Hercules,” not “Heracles.”
Both Sides Do It 06.21.12 at 4:06 am
I like the idea of a prison where only notorious prisoners go. But a lot of kinks would have to be worked out before one could be implemented
How does “fame” interact with “notorious”? Are they co-incidental? Do they overlap? Would the definition include prisoners who are not famous in and of themselves but have achieved fame because of their ostentatious manner of committing felonies? Would it include eg Bernie Madoff who committed one of the oldest frauds in the world but is almost undeniably one of the most famous American felons convicted in the past several years?
Would the prison population in general look up or down on criminals who made it there? Would it depend on which of the above categories they fell into? Would you be subject to transfer out of the notorious prisoner prison if a few decades have passed since your crime and no-one gives a shit about you anymore? Has the Unabomber reached that status?
The ordinary citizen whose momentary lapse in judgment leading to an unusual and scandalous act produced a spectacular media circus of a trial: would they be eligible to attend the notorious prisoners prison? Would it constitute cruel and unusual punishment for someone who drew a bad hand of moral luck to live the rest of their life jockeying for position in the cafeteria line with Two-Face, having to beat Lex Luthor to the good books in the prison library, and having their laundry fucked with by Mysterio?
Both Sides Do It 06.21.12 at 4:11 am
Also if Luthor built a time machine (“in a prison cell! out of a box of scraps!”) that could conjure fictional characters out of thin air, why didn’t he summon a Luthor who knew how to break out of prison and defeat Superman?
John Holbo 06.21.12 at 4:17 am
But he didn’t conjure a fictional character. He conjured the historical Hercules. The Roman version of him.
John Quiggin 06.21.12 at 4:19 am
Not to mention … dynamic tension
John Quiggin 06.21.12 at 4:20 am
#8 Is that like the skull of John the Baptist when he was a young man?
http://www.thebookofdays.com/months/may/3.htm
John Holbo 06.21.12 at 4:45 am
Plus Roman Hercules is a ginger, so maybe I should delete ‘soulcraft’ from the post title.
JakeB 06.21.12 at 5:31 am
If Luthor had only thought to look FORWARD in time to summon Thin Lizzy to help him, he could have busted loose out of jail and rocked out at the same time!
ajay 06.21.12 at 8:55 am
But he didn’t conjure a fictional character. He conjured the historical Hercules. The Roman version of him.
No, Luthor, being a fictional character himself, could only have conjured a fictional version of the historical Hercules.
I’m never going to have a better opportunity to bring up my favourite Silver Age storyline, in which Luthor, foiled again, reasons thus: “By myself, I can almost – but not quite – defeat the Man of Steel. But what if I were to be one of thousands? Thousands of identical copies, all allied, all supergenii, with a single purpose – destroy Superman!”
So he sets up a clone factory and grows two thousand copies of himself in vats. Unfortunately the process, still experimental, goes wrong, the growth process is inadequate, and the clones emerge as dwarfs. Enraged, Luthor orders his henchmen to throw the unwanted midgets out of the factory and let them fend for themselves.
“But don’t you have any feelings of responsibility for them at all?” the aghast henchmen cry.
“De Mini-Mes non curat Lex” is the only reply they receive.
ajay 06.21.12 at 9:39 am
You have to admire Luthor’s style. Other evil geniuses would simply break the laws of their country by using their genius to break themselves out of prison, but that’s just not enough for him; he has to find a way that also breaks the laws of space and time.
Macavity! Macavity! There’s no one like Macavity! He’s broken every human law, he breaks the Law of Gravity!
Eimear Nà Mhéalóid 06.21.12 at 10:44 am
Sadly, I can’t find an image online of my favourite prison papercraft escape plan, the “humorous” postcard sent from Lincoln Prison by Eamon de Valera and friends, with a drawing of the key they needed copied to escape. After a couple of failed attempts the third set of keys worked.
homunq 06.21.12 at 11:02 am
@ajay: you deserve to have at least one groan in response (just as the mini-mes do, without the “one”), so:
*groan*
Barry Freed 06.21.12 at 11:16 am
I dunno, homunq, they say the groan is the highest praise you can give to a pun but Ajay’s 13 reminds me of Pynchon’s “For De Mille, young fur-henchmen can’t be rowing!” gag in Gravity’s Rainbow in both set up and delivery and that is very high praise indeed.
Alan 06.21.12 at 3:12 pm
John @ 2: I’ll smile about that all day today!
phosphorious 06.21.12 at 3:25 pm
“Formula XYX (48^z)L^z” is probably the most scientific thing that has ever been said.
Hogan 06.23.12 at 5:34 pm
@7: because the history book that had that Luthor in it was checked out to another notorious criminal.
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