A Happy American Inventor Day to everyone, which occurs on Thomas Alva Edison’s birthday. The same Edison who’s DC power was finally turned off in November after 125 years of inferiority and who swindled Nicholas Tesla out of $50,000. That’s right, today is in honor of Thomas Edison the hypocrite who bootlegged the film Voyage dans la Lune, distributing it in America so that the filmmaker never profited from it, while forcing American filmmakers to flee to the West Coast in order to escape his oppressive monopoly on filmmaking equipment. Today’s celebration glorifies a man who electrocuted cats, dogs, and even an elephant for publicity purposes.
Happy 161st birthday Thomas Edison. Thpppt!!!
Five Fists of Science |
These reasons are why I got such a kick out of the historically fictional graphic novel The Five Fists of Science, where Mark Twain, Nicholas Tesla, and Bertha Von Suttner join forces to battle J.P. Morgan, Thomas Edison, and Andrew Carnegie’s evil plot for world domination. Morgan, Edison, and Carnegie summon supernatural demons through occult rituals and human sacrifice, which Twain, Tesla, and Von Suttner must battle with electricity guns and a giant robot (I wuv giant robots).
The comic’s introduction goes over the characters and clarifies how much of each presentation is real, and how much is the author’s imagination. The result is a fun ride, filled with witty dialogue and characters that feel true to form based on our historical understanding of them.
Thomas Edison makes the perfect villain, one we love to hate. May he rot in peace.