Movie Time!

Mike Mignola, the illustrator and writer most famous for creating Hellboy, did a one-off comic book in 2002 called The Amazing Screw-On Head.

The titular character works as a secret agent for President Abraham Lincoln. Screw-On Head, an expert in the occult, is literally what his name implies, a mechanical wonder who attaches himself to various mechanical bodies equipped to carry out his duties.

In 2006 the Sci-Fi channel (now SyFy, boo) commissioned an animated pilot of The Amazing Screw-On Head and Mignola delivered.

Alas, it was not picked up as a series despite boasting the voices of Paul Giamatti in the lead role, Patton Oswalt as Mr. Groin, David Hyde Pierce as the villain Emperor Zombie and Molly Shannon as Patience, Screw-On's ex, now a vampire aligned with Zombie.

The show, like the comic, is wickedly creative and very funny -- a steampunk melodrama well aware of its own ridiculousness. Here's the trailer:



You like? Watch the whole thing here. It's only 22 minutes long.

Crosseyed & Painless

"Facts don’t necessarily have the power to change our minds."

Wait, what? Those are writer Joe Keohane's words, from his article "How Facts Backfire" which is worth a read.

And on a completely unrelated note, steampunk -- which has been chugging along just fine for a few decades now -- may have finally reached critical mass. The literary/fashion/cultural/art movement is explained in full via The Economist. Dude, your grandpa reads The Economist.

Does coverage in mainstream media signal the death of a subculture? Or is that question as dated as the idea of broad exposure ruining such things?


[Tip of the dunce cap to Arts & Letters Daily]