Visual Skeptilization

Is there a way to make someone an instant skeptic through art? Is there a way to so baffle and confuse an individual’s worldview that they are forced to engage in critical thinking?Is it possible to create an image that is so logically incongruous that the viewer will have to reconsider their worldview?

I believe that this is possible.

I have scoured the world for such an image. I have searched long and hard, not even knowing what I was looking for. I knew only that I would know it when I found it.

I believe my quest to be at an end.

Click through to see it, but be warned: This may shatter your understanding of the world you believe to be real.

So, yeah… This is a real thing.

I heard about it a couple of months ago and decided that it couldn’t possibly be real. I ordered it from it publisher, Antarctic Press and it arrived today.

The comic is black and white and only about 16 pages long. To add to the absurdity is that after the main comic, there are several pages of Steampunk Palin pinups and a preview for Time Lincoln.

The plot, I am being dead serious, is that in the near future Sara Palin, John McCain and Barak Obama have to team up to save the world from the evils of the big nuke and oil industry led, of course, by Al Gore.

Naturally the three, led by Palin, use their steam powered cyborg bodies and robot army to win the day for green energy.

I am being completely honest. This is real. This is a real thing that you can buy. Here is a picture of me actually reading it.

I can tell you that the whole thing is absurd. It makes no sense but it’s fun.

What I can’t tell you is whether it’s pro or anti Palin. It may be neither. It certainly paints her as a hero, but a hero of causes that she does not champion. It seems to support green energy, but has so little consideration for science that it puts steam power as both an energy source and one that is separate from coal and nuclear energy.

I remain absolutely baffled as to the intentions of the author. I will, however keep this as a relic of the age in which we live. A reminder for me in the future that there existed a time where someone would write and sell this. I wonder if, when I rediscover this years from now, whether I will recall a time where political figures could be reality show celebrities and laugh, or long for the days of such moderate intellectuals.