UPDATE: It turns out that this had nothing whatsoever to do with True Detective Season 02. I’m leaving the post up because it’s a cool statue and Stephen’s a cool guy, but it’s not a True Detective thing. Whoops! Mea culpa, all apologies to the internet.
And it shoulda been.
If you’d like to read my better founded speculations about True Detective Season 01, please go here: http://www.unnecessaryg.com/blog/?p=1961
If you’d like to read outdated speculations about Season 02 that turned out to be untrue (but were still a lot of fun at the time), please continue here.
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So my buddy Stephen Notley, the artist of Bob the Angry Flower, is a pretty well-known and well-respected cartoonist. Which is as it should be, because he’s damn good at it.
And, as you probably know, Nick Pizzolatto is a stone-cold comic book fanatic who has been known to send odd boxes of promotional material to comics artists that he likes.
And both Stephen Notley and Avery Alix have been receiving mysterious letters about the King in Yellow:
ENHANCE
Okay, so I can’t make out much in that, but that’s what I got. The other two pages are from Chambers’s play, “The King in Yellow.”
Stephen got that letter back at the end of November. Just last week he got this:
A mysterious crate, nailed shut.
Open the box! Open the box!
The contents of the box.
If you’re anything like me, your Lovecraft alert is clamoring right now. That’s obviously the Horror in the Clay. That means Season One was The Tale of Inspector Legrasse. Well, that makes sense.
The pieces of paper.
So I think this is a promo for True Detective Season 2, and it means that we are going to see some more stuff about the King in Yellow and some weird Pizzolatto reinterpretation of the Horror in the Clay, which means lots of stuff about artists and dreams.
Stephen didn’t post larger pictures of the pictures, but when you consider how little help the yearbook pictures were in understanding Season One I don’t think it really matters. If he does, I’ll add them.
I have one more thing to say: this is so freakin’ cool. Good job, True Detective promo team, if that is your real name. You picked the right guy to mail mysterious boxes to.
Can I have a promo pack, too? pretty please!
Um, from me? Sure! What’s your address?
Holy Freakin Hell! Would you be willing to sell this box?
I will give you $500 for it!
The new theory is that this box came from a company called The Mysterious Package Company, which apparently will send people stuff like this for about $200. You may want to check with them, but in good conscience the artist refused to take your money. If it turns out that it’s really for True Detective maybe you can change his mind.
Yeah the only thing that was worrying me was that its far too early for season2 promo items.Thanks for the reply.
So what did this actually end up being? Did we ever find out who it was from? What a massive shame it was that this wasn’t real, it made me so excited for Season 2 and that season ended up being so poor and uninteresting compared to 1.
Let’s all just think of it as a visitor from an alternate universe where TD s02 was what we all wanted.
I never did get a definitive answer as to what it was.
Its a package from The Mysterious Package Company, thats why Kris has complained below. They offer this as one of their gift packages to send people but its meant to be a mystery.
Anyway, I would kill for the King in Yellow figure so let me know if your buddy wants to sell it! haha ^_^
Thanks so much for posting this, I wasted money, and two months of keeping this a surprise for my husbands birthday. When researching the King in Yellow, you’re The first link…. revealing all the mailings….thanks! Guess it’s not so mysterious anymore for him or the hundreds of mailings that just went out. Thanks Geoff, also for posting the amount for the mailings, the irony is that by joining this company as a member you’re supposed to keep secrets. Seriously, this post sucks, so disappointed that a year after someone tells you what it is you don’t pull the reveal pics.
Well, your complaints are well justified. The truth is that I utterly forgot about this post, because I’m not used to the idea of a blog post hanging around causing trouble years after it became irrelevant.
In hindsight, yes, this had nothing to do with True Detective and I should have taken it down. I’m going to add something to the top of the article that says this is not TD merch and to not buy it based on that. Private message me your address and I’ll send you and your husband some comics and graphic novels to make up for it a bit.
You are still killing the mystery for anyone who gets this gift. Take this post down if you have any kind of good soul.
Nonsense, look at the other comments. You’re mad, at least two other people went and bought something from the company.
If you work for the company, let me know and I’ll take it down.
Hmm, I just received the first mailing and also found this webpage quickly. But in this day and age it’s natural for someone to google, and find, the answer to the mystery, especially when company uses autopen on the envelope, making it clear it’s a mass mailing. My wife, who arranged this mystery, is also glad I found this site right away so we could see the statue in advance, because she’s creeped out by it and is glad to have advanced warning of it. So, Geoff, thank you for the spoilers!
Well, thanks for being understanding about it. On the one hand, my excitement got the better of me. On the other, it was a fairly reasonable suspicion, especially because we thought True Detective would continue more along the lines in which it had begun.
I received the same “King in yellow” letter. EXACT SAME.
Any further info?
Mysterious package so crazy sweet so just ordered a puzzle, code-breaking version from the armchair detective company https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/3-mysterious-cases-from-the-armchair-detective-co#/
Totally hooked on all this!
This is only a spoiler for morons. If you haven’t figured this is a “fun mystery” by the time you receive the second mailing, something is very wrong with your medulla oblongata. I just received the statue myself. The fun part and the mystery is…who sent it? You ruined nothing for me.