Posted in: Comics | Tagged: Albert Einstein, Beau Wright, Carl Watkins, comic, iron man, kickstarter, nikola tesla

The Birth of Tesla Electric Lights & Manufacturing

Published Sat, 02 Nov 2013 07:00:48 -0500

Carl Watkins writes for Bleeding Cool:

There is no doubt that at the time of conception I was playing far too much Fallout 3. The days in my cubical were consumed with thoughts of clearing an old police station of super mutants with nothing but a BB gun. As it turns out, the obsession would only grow and I found myself daydreaming of the power armor worn by the Enclave and Brotherhood.

One day as I drove home, I thought to myself "That armor is almost like something Tesla would make. LIke if Tesla made Iron Man. How cool would it be if Nikola Tesla was Tony Stark!?" And so began the story of Tesla Force; a fighting team of heroes in vacuum tube encrusted power armor led by Tesla himself! Like the seed of most ideas, it was complete rubbish and utterly derivative. But deep down I knew there was something cool about the idea.

Eventually I realized that like most mysterious figures, Tesla works best in small doses. The idea then started to form of Tesla leading a team much in the way that Charlie leads his Angels or the Professor his X-men. I began to form a group of interesting people who would be working for Tesla, both real and fictional. First a former Rough Rider, then a decorated prizefighter… OH! perhaps a clockwork cyborg. All I needed was a character to bring into this existing world to act as an access point for the reader. Luckily, the idea of patent infringement gave me the star of the book: Albert Einstein.

With the players all set, I wrote the first issue. It was crap. Cliches and forced moments of "coolness" littered the pages. For years I had a cycle where I would write a story, and then come back to Tesla for another revision. Soon I had a fully plotted outline for six issues and a pretty decent issue #1 script. It was now time to find an artist.

I'm one of those lucky people that has working artists and graphic designers as friends. I put a call out for a collaborator with the promise of paying out of my own pocket. I had many talented people answer the call, but one stuck out. Her style was not at all what I originally had in mind, but her art spoke to me and I decided to see what she could do. All it took was a single rough sketch page and I had a co-creator in Beau Wright.

Over the course of a year, I worked overtime to raise money to pay her to transform my words into a comic one page at a time. Then I finally had enough pages to put together a simple little ashcan preview. Preview comic in hand, I decided to make my first convention appearance.

Then it happened. Just a few weeks before my first convention as a creator, I lost my job. I had already spent money on my first convention appearance. I had to make the hard choice of cutting my losses or going all in. I received what would be my last paycheck. It was time to decide.

Small Press Expo 2013 was the debut of the comic, now (and forever) titled "Tesla Electric Lights & Manufacturing" after Tesla's actual company. Actually, due to a typo that was overlooked by everyone that read the preview, it was actually called "Tesa Electric Light & Manufacturing." An oversight that was not caught until the convention floor.

Optimistically, I took my entire print run. Realistically, I was expecting to sell no more than ten copies, but since I was driving it was no extra trouble to take all fifty-five. By the the end of the weekend, I was only left with my display copies (despite the typo on the cover.) I was overwhelmed with emotion on my drive home. After years of working in a relative vacuum, I finally had the approval of strangers. And not just any strangers, but actual comic fans and other creators.

Which brings us more or less to October 31st, the day we launched the Kickstarter campaign. Within hours of launching, our project was selected as a Kickstarter Staff Pick. It's a point of pride for me personally, but it doesn't get the comic made. You are what gets this comic made. You're now the publisher that dangles the blade over TELM's head. So here is the pitch:

Tesla Electric Light & Manufacturing is an alternate history tale that takes place in the early 1900s. While investigating a patent infringement claim against Nikola Tesla, a young Albert Einstein finds himself sucked into a secret war between the inventors and industrialist of the day. It's an adventure filled with secret armies, corporate espionage, and futuristic weapons.

If this is the sort of story that sounds entertaining to you, by all means, please visit our Kickstarter. For as little as $15 you can get all six chapters digitally in DRM-free formats. You'll always be able to find a comic book with Wolverine in it, why not help us make one where Einstein fights a cyborg?

If that's not enough to make you want to check it out, how about this? The first 100 supporters at both the $15 and $35 tiers will receive a hand drawn sketch card by artist Beau Wright for free!