The High Coronach

Death comes to all things that have life. This is the truth of the universe. Nowhere is this more apparent then the city of Cemeteria, the city that borders the spiritual realm. Naturally, with that proximity to the beyond, a system of ritual and religion has built up. The majority of Cemeterians revere the idea of death, not only as an ending, but as a source of continuance. The apple dies, but the one who eats it gains nourishment. So it is for souls. When a person dies, the afterlife becomes stronger. The crux of it involves the quest to make sure the souls feeding the afterlife are good ones. The head of this religion is the High Coronach. Elected pope-style, from the lesser clerics. When the city of Cemeteria is exposed to the world by a supervillain’s attack, the Coronach wants to start spreading the religion to the rest of the world. This proselytizing is not welcome everywhere in the world, and so the ruler of Cemeteria, Queen Deathknell, has to try to smooth things over politically.

I remembered Queen Deathknell just recently and figured “Hey, that’s a pretty ‘supernatural’ idea, lets build on that” so I’m doing it. The next character is also from Cemeteria:

Morrie

Cemeteria is not a perfect place. As with any large city, there is a criminal element. But they have to deal with Morrie. Morrie has served as the police chief of Cemeteria for over a century. With supernatural gun-summoning abilities, Morrie has stopped the soul smugglers and ghost bandits and, of course, grave robbers that are brave or stupid enough to try their luck. Morrie is a grizzled, rough old man, who was a great ally to Queen Deathknell’s mother and is now especially protective of the current monarch. While this is very welcome when it comes to him doing his job (Cemeteria doesn’t have a military, at least not yet), he has been known to cause some embarrassing situations when dignitaries from the outside world are in town.

It doesn’t come across too well, because I’m not good at this, but Morrie is supposed to be unnaturally tall and lanky. I had the Arch-Vile from Doom in mind. I named him Morrie as a reference to the phrase Mememnto Mori, which seemed appropriate.

Underchampion

In the city of Cemeteria there is a competition. Every year the city’s greatest warriors gather for contests of strength, speed, and intelligence with the winner gaining the title of Underchampion. Traditionally the Underchampion has been awarded a position as top soldier of the royal army, but the latest winner is not particularly pleased with the current government. Rejecting the traditional post, the Underchampion is actively leading a rebellious group against Queen Deathknell with intent to make the Underchampion the ruler of the sacred city.

I like this idea because in addition to stories about the Underchampion sending his forces against those of Queen Deathknell, I could also do stories of the two of them competing in the Cemeteria contests. On some level, I’m confident that this was inspired by the rivalry between T’Challa and Erik Killmonger in Black Panther comics.

Xaxhak

Mentions of Xaxhak can be found in ancient scrolls in the Mystical Library of Vodin, on stone tablets discovered in the ruins of a Scottish castle, and carved onto a wall at the scene of a massacre in the middle of Los Angeles. Cave paintings have even been discovered depicting an angry mouth eating human figures. Since as long as humanity has known, every 28 years, Xaxhak arrives on Earth with the intention of devouring 72 human beings. Unfortunately for Kelly Doukas, the twenty-eighth year has just come again.

When I drew Xaxhak (done with intention of having an easy drawing in addition to filling the supernatural being niche), I looked at the thing and though “This thing should be called ‘The Carnivortex'”. Unfortunately, looking the word up on Google, I found out that that was the name of some band’s album. Oh well. The choice to make her the villain for Kelly was just a whim of putting some things together that I didn’t intend, which has worked out well for me so far.

If I were thinking ahead, I might have saved these two for sometime near Halloween. Instead, I didn’t:

Killshadow

A young woman was murdered by a vampire and, as one might expect, rose as a vampire herself. But through sheer willpower and hatred she has the strength to oppose the vampire who killed her. That vampire is now the leader of an Eastern-European crime syndicate, so the woman, now called Killshadow, is slaughtering her way through her killer’s army in a bloody swath.

I don’t really have much else to say story-wise, because it is a pretty generic revenge deal. While the easiest inspiration for Killshadow is the 90s-style anti heroes (especially Spawn), but instead of making any kind of comment on those, I’m really trying to comment on the way vampires are treated these days. A lot of people have complained lately about “sparkly” vampires ruining everything, but I’m here to tell you that vampires have been a mess since long before that. Even things that I legitimately enjoy like Blade comics and Buffy the Vampire Slayer treat vampires as hordes of mooks to be mowed down by the hero. What I want is a return to a time when a single vampire was a threat.

Killshadow has ALL the vampire powers. She can turn to a wolf or a bat or to mist. She can flit through the darkness, control vermin and weather, and basically everything the folklore vampires could do. And she is in no way the sexy Vampirella-style vampire. Under that stupid mask she looks total Nosferatu-style. And while her sense of “justice” keeps her killing bad guys (this is still my superHERO-creating year) she does not brood about having to live off blood. She revels in the slaughter of her enemies and enjoys every moment.

Just so you know, I tried about twenty combinations of words like “blood,” “night,” “kill,” “dead,” “dark,” “shadow,” and a bunch of others before I got something that sucked just the right amount and also wasn’t already used too many times.

Queen Deathknell

Built around a portal to the spirit world is the hidden city of Cemeteria. Though the world at large is unaware of the existence of Cemeteria, some supervillain learns about it and, seeking power over life and death, attacks the city. But Queen Deathknell and her army rise to oppose him, saving the day but revealing their presence. Queen Deathknell (Nell to her friends) is a benevolent ruler who maintains order in Cemeteria to keep the world from being overrun by undead, and keeping the afterlife from being corrupted.

It’s pretty common in comics to have rulers of fantastic realms play a big role (You’ve got the Atlantises of Aquaman and Namor, or my favorite, Black Panther‘s Wakanda, just to name a few), so Queen Deathknell is my one of those. I also like to take the imagery of death and treat it as not-evil, which is always nice.