Leonardo, a comics genius

Léonard by Turk & De Groot is a particularly long-lived humorous series: after having made its debut in 1975 on the pages of Achille Talon magazine, it was subsequently serialized starting from March 1977 in a series of volumes, now in its 51st edition. June 2020. Now the first two volumes are also available in english thanks to the digital edition of Europe Comics (volume 1 and volume 2).
Originally Bob De Groot, the screenwriter, had imagined an inventor named Methuselah as the long-lived biblical character, but later opted to focus on Leonardo da Vinci. On the other hand, this initial idea leaves traces in the drawings of Philippe Liégeois, known as Turk: Leonardo, in fact, is outlined with a white bum constantly in motion.
The two authors focus above all on Leonardo the inventor, a choice that allows them to show the scientist's variety of interests and his brilliant and multifaceted mind. With an irreverent spirit, the two belgian cartoonists create a series of gags, some of a purely visual page, others developed over a dozen pages, in which one laughs not only with, but also about Leonardo.
A heartfelt tribute to one of the greatest geniuses in the history of Italy and the world.

I did not choise the strip above at random. The two authors, in fact, have simply transposed a Leonardo's project present in the Codex Atlanticus into modern terms. The project presents a chariot with a kind of motor, that is a series of gears that allow the wheels to move, and the equivalent of the rudder of boats, which had the purpose of changing the direction of the device (a sort of proto-steering wheel). To supply energy to the motor we find a rubber band: I like to remember that Hooke's law of elastic force was enunciated by Robert Hooke only in the seventeenth century.
In 2004, the Museum of the History of Science in Florence created a miniature and, apparently, working version of Leonardo's car, as we see in the video below: