For The Love of Comics

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Viral Participants who received phones with their retrieved cakes, bowling balls, or fugitive packages” received the following text this evening:

“I wouldn’t worry about Gordon. ITS ALL PART OF THE PLAN”

Naturally, some genius on the SuperHeroHype! boards figured out that this was a clue to a new page of the Why So Serious Site with Jokerized portraits of US presidents and… a switch.

Flip that switch by clicking on it and you’re taken to yet another site with a new poster.

Now that’s cool on its own, but if you go back to the previous page with the Jokerized portraits of presidents and scroll down, you see a note that says “Four days”.

Might we be getting to see the new trailer in four days?

Technorati Tags: movies, the dark knight, viral campaign, joker, poster, gordon, why so serious, it’s all part of the plan

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Image via Wikipedia

Emails went out from Jim Gordon today letting us know that we’ll have to step up in order to stay out of jail next week.

My friend,

Indictments are about to be handed down. If you don’t want your name on one, we’ll need your full cooperation in an upcoming operation.

In case you haven’t heard, we are struggling with a bit of corruption in the department. I’m not about to let the Gotham PD collapse in on itself, so we’re taking action. We’ve identified a group of offenders that need to be apprehended. Problem is, most of these cops are hightailing it out of the city. But a C.I. just like you just gave us some information on their last known whereabouts. Now all we need is to catch them. This is where you come in.

Consider yourself on deck. I’ll contact you next week, and let’s just say it’s in your best interest to play along. County’s not a place you want to spend the rest of your life.

Lt. Jim Gordon, MCU

People also received calls on the numbers they submitted to Acme Security Systems asking them to participate in a survey and received a phone number to give out to others who would like to participate. The number, by the way, is 877-777-6197. On the surface, the survey seems like a fairly straightforward opinion survey.

But, if you check out the latest update on the Concerned Citizens for a Better Gotham website, you see this note:

Message from the Webmaster:

You may be wondering why I haven’t updated this site recently. Well, you wouldn’t either, if you were facing legal actions like slander charges and defamation of character accusations.

I can’t afford to get sued for hundreds of thousands of dollars, especially now that everyone who supported this site is “unavailable” or “can’t remember” they had anything to do with the site.

If I weren’t waiting for my last paycheck, I’d go on a little “vacation” myself. In fact, if you don’t get any more updates from me in the next few days, it means I did just that.

This whole smear campaign has been a real SOURCE of consternation for me. I’ll be glad when it’s all in the past. And you know what? I just might vote for Harvey Dent.

William Bucksworth-Haven, Webmaster Extraordinaire

Taking note of the stresss on “SOURCE”, view the source code for the page. You’ll find this bit in the code -

Enter those numbers for the survey answers and you’ll hear a message that I’ll let you listen to for yourself, mostly because I’m too damn lazy to transcribe it at the moment.

Since it’s the number that we submitted to ACME, I assume the message is for Joker’s clowns, but it could just as easily apply to the people involved in trying to bring down Harvey Dent.

Of course, they could be the same people, couldn’t they?

What do all of you think? Let me know!

Technorati Tags: Dark Knight, Viral Campaign, Jim Gordon, Harvey Dent, Joker

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The Clown Travel Agency is Now OPEN and it appears that speculation about the next step being an international treasure hunt was exactly right!

This is going to be a bit image-heavy while I update you all, so be warned.

The envelope reading “Departure Date 4-01″ is now open. Click on the papers within and you get this card:

Click on that card and you’re taken to this list of cities with instructions on how to pick up the “bags of fun”:

Once again, nothing going on in Orlando. But since they’re only on London at this point, I’m severely tempted to make the four-hour drive to Miami to see if I can make it before they release the location!

If you’re in any of these cities and decide to go after the clues, please let me know - I’d love to hear about it!

12:42 EST Edit: The addresses all seem to be bowling alleys and the “bags of fun” contain bowling balls and cell phones, presumably for the next phase of the campaign. Here’s a shot from one of the Brazil locations:

The bowling balls have numbers on them; when the participant calls in they hear the following message:

“Nice work, clown! Now call the number on the ball immediately, from this phone and THIS PHONE ONLY. Don’t give this number to anyone else, or I’ll know. Hopefully, your cohorts will be in the same league as you, because once all your points are racked up, I’ll give you all something that will really bowl you over…”

So it looks like we’ll be getting another prize today. Maybe a new trailer or poster?

More updates as I find them.

6:29 PM EST Final (?) Edit: All the calls are in! Now, when you open up the envelope, you get this message:

Head over to the url in the message and follow the onscreen instructions by entering your name, email, and phone number.

Your phone will ring right away, but it’s not a voice you expect. Jim Gordon tells you that you’ve just been busted in a Gotham City Major Crimes Unit sting and that you now work for him. He promises to be in touch.

So here’s the question - did the Joker set us up? Did someone else break into the Joker’s communication network and impersonate the Joker? Did Gordon just get a tip? What’s going on?

Honestly, the voice on the phone didn’t sound like Gary Oldman (the man playing Gordon in the movies) to me, so I suspect this may be an April Fool’s joke/ test that the Joker is putting us through and the game is nowhere near over, but there’s only one way to find out…

… and that just might be it for today. I’ve heard that some other viral sites like ibelieveinharveydent.com have been updated, so I’ll do some rounds and see if there’s anything worth mentioning at the moment.

Technorati Tags: Clown Travel Agency, The Dark Knight, Joker, Batman, Bags of Fun, treasure hunt, Jim Gordon

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Damn, that was quick!

All day, the recipients of the cell phones from waaayyyy back in December have been receiving calls from a gentleman who gave them a letter and told them to share it with the “other” accomplices. It seemed pretty obvious that it would be an anagram for either a new subdirectory or a completely new page.

All the letters are finally in. Behold the Clown Travel Agency!

The envelope says “Departure Date 4-01″ and it’s a jpeg that will have to be updated, so it looks like we’re all now on hold until April 1st.

I hope my boss doesn’t expect me to get any work done on Tuesday…

Technorati Tags: Dark Knight, Viral Campaign, Joker, New Site, Clown Travel Agency

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In keeping with the running Dark Knight theme that I seem to have going lately, I found this fan film via TomzToy’s Bat Blog.

“Born Laughing” seems to be an imagining of an early (and possible first) murder by Heath Ledger/Christopher Nolan’s interpretation of the Joker.

The writing is decent, the makeup is pretty close to Ledger’s, and the acting is pretty good for a fan film. The performance seems like an amalgam between Jack Nicholson’s performance as the Joker and what I imagine - based on the trailer, prologue, and promotional material released - Ledger’s performance to be like. Of course, we’ve yet to really see Ledger’s performance in detail, so this fan could be dead-on.

Am I alone in getting the impression that this is the Joker basically wiping out any trace of his past life?

Technorati Tags: The Dark Knight, movies, fan film, Joker, Born Laughing

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Source: WikipediaIn response to the latest edition of The Gotham Times, Joker has released a new edition of The Ha Ha Times and I’m here to walk you through the discovery so far.

On The Gotham Times, point your cursor over the “ha” in the “Gotham” of the paper’s title. You’ll notice that there is a flash animation of the words “ha ha ha” and it is now clickable. Follow that urge to click that link and you’re taken to the latest edition of The Ha Ha Times. This edition is titled The Gotham Lies and has doctored articles like “Harvey Dent Joins Hair Club For Men” and an ad for the Iceberg Lounge’s Titanic Night.

Soon after the new edition’s discovery, the geniuses on The Superheroy Hype! Forums noticed that certain words were circled. User Sam_Cooksey discovered that, by using this formula:

For each paragraph that has a circled word in it, start at the beginning of the paragraph and count how many words until you get to the circled word. That number corresponds with the alphabet A=1 B=2 etc. For example, if the circled word is the fifth word in that paragraph, the letter for it is “E”

We would discover the following messages:

Page 1:
Made you look again. Nothing Here

Page 2:

Red Herring

Page 3 and 4:

Seriously, how many times are you gonna fall for this

As of these writings, that’s all that has been found. Theories are being thrown all over the place, including the theory that this is just a big April Fool’s prank by “Joker”.

Head over to the Hype to follow their progression yourself, or I’ll update this post if and when I come across anything else that’s worth knowing

Technorati Tags: Joker, Gotham Times, Ha-ha Times, The Dark Knight, Two-Face, Harvey Dent, Viral Marketing

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Image from Wikipedia

As pointed out on my last post about the Dark Knight viral campaign by strings, whom I assume to be stringsbatman from the Superherohype boards, there are a lot of updates that I didn’t know about.

So here’s my attempt to catch up.

First of all, those who participated in the movement to drum up support for Harvey Dent’s run for Gotham City District Attorney, like those who responded to the Joker’s demand for fans to take pictures of themselves in Joker makeup, received a print copy of The Gotham Times in the mail. Shortly thereafter, the website for The Gotham Times was updated, seemingly with the same articles.

The new Gotham Times leads to many new sites, including a site for Dent’s rival Dana Worthington, the Drudge-esque Maiden Avenue Report, Dana Worthington’s Gotham Victims Advocate Foundation, a site for St. Swithuns Catholic Church, Batman Supporters Citizens for Batman, meeting place for several groups Rossi’s Delicatessen, and Gotham’s local news network Gotham Cable News.

So far, I’ve found updates on the aforementioned Gotham Times, I Believe In Harvey Dent, Remembering Gina, Gotham Cab, and The Internal Affairs Division of the Gotham City Police Department.

One cool little easter egg I’ve found so far is an ad for the Iceberg Lounge in The Gotham Times. Those who are currently reading the Bat-titles will remember that the Penguin is currently claiming to be going straight as the owner of the Iceberg Lounge.

I’m still sifting through all these pages, so I’m sure that there will be more updates as I find more stuff.

Technorati Tags: Dark Knight, Joker, Gotham City, Gotham Times, Harvey Dent, Gotham City Police Department, Penguin, Batman, Viral Marketing

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A little over an hour ago, “—” left this comment on my last Dark Knight viral update post:

its good to see some of you clowns still have a little faith in me. keep your eyes peeled when the guy in diapers stops bye. a new game is going to begin

Originally the only “guy in diapers” I could think of was “Baby New Year”, but New Year’s is already here. You’ll have to forgive me for that one, I had a long day and my brain must have needed food, because it hit me while I was throwing down on some sesame chicken - CUPID!

I still wasn’t completely sure the comment was legit, so I did some research. As always, the geniuses at the Superhero Hype boards were already on the case and I learned that this has been showing up all over the ‘net tonight, all from some variation of “laughing matters” - the email address that “—” gave for the comment registration was “laughingmatters50 @ yahoo.com”.

So… it would appear that the game, once again, is afoot! Keep your eyes out for a special website with a name something like “laughing matters”

EDIT!

I emailed the address that “—” left and got this reply:

HaHaHa. I see that you have your own little ways of jumping a HEAD of the game.
I admire that in a clown. I have a little mission for you. just be patient and youll find
all the clues a clown could use. That is if you have what it TAKES

I wonder if there’s any significance to the all-capitalization of “HEAD” and “TAKES”.

More as it develops, though there may be nothing until Valentine’s Day.

Another Edit at 12:30 AM EDT
Everyone at the Superhero Hype boards is a little skeptical… I just got this email as I was heading to bed:

So my spy tells me you have doubts. A good clown should always be suspicious. It’s true things didn’t go as planned.
Just sit tight like the hoarding mass you are. A new boss will be taking over in a few days. He will instruct you when
the first arrow gets shot.

Final Update 7:25 AM
Call off the hounds. While I was sleeping, “Lou-fin Matters” stepped up and admitted he’s a faker. What a douche.

Technorati Tags: Movies, The Dark Knight, Batman, Joker, Viral Campaign, Laughing Matters

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Batman On Film has an update on the Dark Knight Cellphones via this email from one of their readers:

“’Chicago Joker Phone Guy’ here. Just got a text at 10:49 PM (CST) on The Joker cake phone that said that $30 was added to my account and the phone is now good until 3/29/2008.

After looking at the account information once the phone was initially received back in December, I found that the phone was set to expire tomorrow (1/30), leading us Bat-Fans to believe that the viral campaign (at least with the phones) was going to end. With the addition of the extra minutes, this means that the viral campaign lives on despite the untimely death of Heath Ledger (may he rest in peace). I have looked on message boards and several of the other cities have also confirmed that their phones have received extensions until the end of March as well.

[If this is indeed the case], I applaud Warner Bros. for continuing the marketing campaign and not letting the fans down or suppressing Heath’s extraordinary performance. We all have the greatest respect for Mr. Ledger and I believe we all know how to separate the Joker character from Heath. Heath’s performance should be celebrated and shown to the world and I believe that is exactly what Mr. Nolan and WB plan to do.

I cannot wait for the next viral to start and I will keep you updated as always.”

I agree with “Chicago Joker Phone Guy” on this one - I think the best way for WB to honor Ledger is by promoting his last performance as planned - by spotlighting that performance and riding it for all that it’s worth, which I suspect is quite a bit.

Technorati Tags: Comics, Movies, The Dark Knight, Viral Marketing, Batman, Joker, Heath Ledger, Cell Phones

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I’m on my way out the door for an appointment, so I don’t really have time to get into this, but I was just emailed this story:

NEW YORK (AP) — Heath Ledger was found dead Tuesday at a downtown Manhattan residence, and police said drugs may have been a factor. He was 28. NYPD spokesman Paul Browne said Ledger had an appointment for a massage at the Manhattan apartment believed to be his home. The housekeeper who went to let him know the masseuse had arrived found him dead at 3:26 p.m.

Read the full AP story here and I’m sure I’ll post more tonight after I get home and read about it.

EDIT! Comic Book Resources has an excellent write-up with running updates.

I know I said that I would probably have more to say later, but I really don’t know what I can say. Obviously I don’t know that I would even be posting about this if Heath Ledger wasn’t playing The Joker in The Dark Knight, but it goes beyond that. Ledger was quite possibly the most talented actor of my generation and it breaks my heart that by the end of this year, we’ll have seen the last performances that he’ll ever make.

This is a deep, deep loss. I don’t think we’ll ever know how big of a loss since we’ll never know how much better he would have gotten.

Technorati Tags: Comics, Movies, Heath Ledger, Joker, The Dark Knight

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