Extra Feature Friday

Neilsama on Sept. 3, 2009

Neil's Notes:
I'm not happy about this page.

The multiverse naming scheme was intended to be entirely allegorical. It was also my idea, and I had intended it to be a much more visual and meaningful allegory than what it ultimately wound up being. To say that a jokey PSA wasn't what I had in mind would be a monumental understatement. Not only was it never my intention to have the villain turn the whole concept on its head, but I certainly didn't want to do it as a one-page wall of text supplemented by clip art.

Superheroes are part of the new wave of mythology. To me, this allegory was about honoring the heroes of the story by drawing parallels to legends of old. Mindmistress is from Reality: Prometheus. Dasien is from Reality: Hercules. Lightbringer is from Reality: Apollo. That's all it was intended to be. Somehow it got twisted around into this bizarro page that couldn't be more off-the-mark, and I wouldn't be so mad about it if it wasn't the sole allegory on which I had my heart set.

If I could turn back the clock and reinsert the scene that I had wanted to do, it would have taken place during The Gathering, when it would have been relevant to the story and most advantageous for the sake of the characters. I think Al completely misunderstood this allegory by first over-explaining it (as he's wont to do) and then presenting the whole idea in a slapdash, all-in-one info dump. It is astonishingly both overthought and underdelivered.

This page is, in every conceivable way, the exact opposite of what I wanted to do.



Al's note:
Some things we thought about getting into, but on reflection thought it would hold up the story. One of the things was giving names to the various alternate worlds that our cast is from. So—this is a public service informative segment from Smiley's world.

I suspect they have a “Full House” channel. A “Little House of the Prairie” channel. A “Seventh Heaven” channel.

ANYway…I wanted to nail down the worlds that at least our immediate cast is from. The Sisters of the Twilight are pandimensional, not from any one reality, and Ringo exists between dimensions. Yet the rest…the usual comic book nomenclature for parallel worlds, Earth-1, Earth-2, Earth-616, etc. were all hard to keep straight. Naming it for one planet out of an entire universe seemed silly, and I'd rather give them a descriptive name.

I tried to use my own art as much as possible. When I couldn't, I used art that either appeared before in the series or from the immediate comics that participate in THE CROSSOVERLORD. (If you don't recognize the HEROES UNITE art, it's from a Bombshell/Commander story I'm doing for HEROES UNITE which isn't finished yet.)

Oh…name dropping. The HEROES UNITE appear here at Drunk Duck, a very entertaining superhero team. Some of its members include not only Dasien, but BOMBSHELL, HELLFIRE, a Drunkduck comic that seems to be deleted, ENERGIZE , before he became a hunted man, it seems. The were-panther sorceress is Chelsea of CLANS OF THE CATS and the zebra-striped demoness is ZEBRA GIRL. Ultra, Ataxim, and the Icons are from POINT GUARDIAN.

Carte Cache, of course, is Dead Debbie's FIRST team, from INDEFENSIBLE POSITIONS.

These are just the home realities of the immediate cast. I cover which webcomics happen in what realities at REALITEASE.

We might do occasional “extras” like this on Friday, in addition to whatever fan art we get. No promises.

Oh, and it's not EXACTLY the “More you know” logo. It's a smile, rather than a star.