SW10/WWW/HCC: Powernaut 1912 #1: Being the Adventures of Paul Poderr in the Ways of Power!

Scott Eiler seiler at eilertech.com
Sat Feb 15 12:05:17 PST 2014


As promised, the Powernaut is going where Powernauts have never gone 
before.  As often happens, he's going in a totally different direction 
than people might expect.

http://www.eilertech.com/stories/powernaut/1912.htm

---

Author's Notes:

2014 was originally scheduled to be the year of two big stories: 
Occulator Compuplex 2005, and Hypergaard 1969. But as ever, I take detours.

While I was deciding what to publish after Powernaut 1968, I was issued 
a High Concept Challenge: take a hero across genre boundaries! That is 
what the Powernaut was made for. 1912 will take it farther than ever, to 
a world where superheroes have never existed. We'll see if the Powernaut 
puts his stamp on *this* world like he has on all the others.

When I started the story, I was expecting one more month of free time 
and figured I'd never get a better chance to tell this story.  So I 
started drawing 1912, which requires double-sized strips.  Then the free 
time disappeared.  Oh well.  I shall have to continue, only at a normal 
pace.  That leads me to one strip every two weeks.  I'm going to 
officially start the series next week.  But you're all members of the 
Power Patrol, so you get to see the whole thing a week early!  (Just in 
time to meet the challenge deadline.)

The plotline for this series came to me as a snippet, about the 
Powernaut, a campground, mercenaries, and... well, you'll soon find out. 
It was an intriguing idea, but I felt I should roll dice to decide which 
year. At the time I got the idea, the Powernaut's plotline went 71 
years, from 1941 to 2011. 71 years don't fit well on dice. So I asked, 
why not 100 years, all the way back to 1912?

The more I learned about 1912, the more feasible the idea became. Comic 
strips not only existed then, they were in their Golden Age. 1912 was 
notable for one comic strip everyone may recognize: "Little Nemo in 
Slumberland". The strips were about double the size as the present day, 
and more verbose. The art was as detailed as any time ever since. I've 
tried to reflect that in Powernaut 1912. I've "outsourced" some of the 
forest scenes, but I think that fits the spirit of the times also.

In a very real sense, this series drives home what the Powernaut is. He 
may appear anywhere. He is a hero. And, power will figure into the story 
somehow.

-- 
(signed) Scott Eiler  8{D> -------- http://www.eilertech.com/ ---------

When you *are* the leader... whatever goes wrong... whether you did it
or not... *you* are held responsible. - Barack Obama

I know. - Archie Andrews

- from Archie #617, March 2011, scripted by Alex Simmons.


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