9.03.2014

Last month, Disney Press announced the upcoming release of Before Tomorrowland, an original novel which expands on the universe of the Tomorrowland film, including a 20-page prequel comic.

After some digital sleuthing, Tomorrowland Times discovered that the comic's artist Jonathan Case posted this seemingly innocuous preview of a page he was coloring:

Tesla, Edison, and Eiffel.
We immediately knew what we were looking at: the fabled meeting of the Plus Ultra society in the real-world Eiffel Tower apartment! (As described in The Optimist ARG.)

Additionally, Case posted this draft of the full lineup of the Plus Ultra society members:

As described in our recap of the The Optimist ARG, the Plus Ultra society is populated by such historical figures as Nicola Tesla, Thomas Edison, H.G. Wells, Alexandre Eiffel, Mark Twain, Amelia Earhart, and Walt Disney.

Amelia Earhart's plane.
In September of last year, popular web comic The Oatmeal posted an article entitled "Is Disney making a movie about Nikola Tesla?" In it, he describes his interaction with director Brad Bird:

 ... they asked me a bunch of questions about Nikola Tesla. They asked what Tesla was doing in Colorado, and if he'd ever conducted experiments at Mineral King. They asked if Tesla belonged to an organization called "Plus Ultra", and if it was possible for him to have met Walt Disney.

How far the movie will delve into the back story of the society is still unclear, however these images confirm that its formation will be extensively explored in this prequel book.

Before Tomorrowland is now up for preorder and is set for release April 7, 2015.


Einstein.



5 comments:

  1. So cool! :) I love the style of the drawings on the comic, and I can't wait to learn more about Plus Ultra. I'll definitely be ordering the book. Thanks for the post guys! :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hey guys, great site thanks for the updates.

    I stumbled across something interesting on Wikipedia that lead me down a bit of a rabbit hole. Debated about sharing 'lest it disappear like the others... Made me smile it has lasted as long as it has.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonograph#Early_machines

    Here's the user's edits, have a look at the dates.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/TeslaAfficianado

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Interesting Kalani. This was 8 months BEFORE The Optimist - before any of us knew anything about this - we didn't even see the 1952 box until January 23, 2013.

      Wow. Not sure how to process this.

      Delete
  3. I've been sitting on it for a bit, thinking about asking Amber to post in the FB group instead but figure that's not really any less public. Yeah, the dates made me go back and look at news articles and build a timeline (ha!).

    The basics had been formed by Lindelof sometime in 2011, but 2012 saw news of Brad Bird joining and by end of year rumor was Clooney was attached. As of Nov 2012 everything I see says the project didn't even have an official greenlight... (Then again, they were saying it was going to be something in the realm of "Close Encounters" so take that all with a grain of salt.) Someone was laying groundwork in September for sure.

    An interesting side note, "1952" was said to be also known as "Tesla", in this article in Empire.
    http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Fw1O_r9l5-UJ:www.empireonline.com/news/story.asp%3FNID%3D35736+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

    ReplyDelete
  4. This just keeps getting better and better. It's getting hard to keep ahead of all of it .

    ReplyDelete