Everybody else is doing super-hero zombies. Black Lanterns etc. We're getting morbid in a slightly different vein...a more thoughtful, but perhaps even more creepy vein.
Like this whole story, this idea started with Lewis. When the Smiling Man first appeared in LIGHTBRINGER, Smiley talked repeatedly as if he had faced Lightbringer before---but Lightbringer had never met him before. Later, Lewis talked about a scene he had thought up, where Smiley went by a suit of Mindmistress' armor, and other tokens of the heores, talking about, "After all...I've defeated them BEFORE."
Almost creepy enough. Yet Mindmistress has been searching for peers out there. She's like a normal human on an island of apes and is desperately, incredibly lonely. And if there really are parallel earths---with multiple Shakespeares, multiple Hilters, multiple Rush Limbaughs---why weren't there multiple Mindmistresses? Most superheroes are born in a very unlikely accident, and you wouldn't expect them to be on every earth, but if one's possible, there should be a small minority of worlds that have other versions of the same hero. Alan Moore explored that idea in SUPREME...
Yet multiple versions of heroes to my mind dilutes the uniqueness of the hero. But if they were the last surviving versions of that hero...?
So I combined the two ideas...and then this scene occurred to me...rather like Ebeneezer Scrooge looking down into his own grave...and knew I just had to do this one. The idea of facing an entire cemetery filled with "you" is a very, very creepy one.
This is actually combining two pages as originally scripted, but there were justifiable concerns that we were stretching out this story TOO far, so I combined the two into one extra-long page.
Think about this: if Smiley has killed multiple versions of our heroes, why is he sparing THIS particular grouping of heroes he's killed many, many times before?
I just wanted to hop in here really quick to add a note to Al's mention of the Black Lanterns. If you were to ask Geoff Johns, he would tell you, quite adamantly, that the Black Lanterns are NOT, in fact, zombies. Pointless semantics? Yes! But I don't get many opportunities to trump Al's god-like knowledge of comic book lore.
I imagine that there's a room somewhere in his home that is like the Library of Alexandria, filled with nothing but monthly issues. I have a 2 ft. shelf of trade paperbacks.
Brett Knight is the unseen but often mentioned brother of Dasien. He DOES exist, and he'll debut one of these days.
Mercifully, Al appears to have removed my terrible Michael Knight reference. I don't remember if I actually told him to remove that awful joke or if he just ran out of space, but either way I'm quite grateful.
I'm rather amused with one particular headstone in Debbie's lot.
The effect that Al used on the cemetery is actually quite cool. In a weird way, it even kinda reminds me of the cover of the first Black Sabbath album.
It should also be noted that just because he's killed SOME of them doesn't mean he's killed ALL of them. I do plan on exploring alternate universe Lightbringers in future stories.
Characters created by William Adams, Ida Kirkegaard, Abby Lehrke,
Lewis Lovhaug, Neil Purcell, Al Schroeder, and Remus Shepherd.
Please do not duplicate without permission.
