Mephisto - Collision - Ryan K Lindsay

1. It’s all one big splash page, I want this to hearken back to the sort of openings Eisner did on The Spirit. There’s text up the top which is maybe 30% of the page, and then there’s the image which fills probably 60% of the page (and some text can overlap onto the image), and then the final line can be the last 10% or so at the bottom.

Text: Who is Mephisto?
*the first use of Mephisto should be large and old school, like an iconic logo for him.

Text: It’s a question scholars have laboured centuries trying to ponder, and it’s a problem that even Mephisto himself doesn’t bother to spend time analysing.

Text: All that matters is what Mephisto can do. The answer there is painfully easy. Anything. There is nothing outside of his wheelhouse, the only wall or barrier known is by delineating what he wants to do.

Text: Approaching the intersection of 51st St and 10th Ave we have a multitude of everyday people living their lives. A single mother, struggling to appreciate and understand her child’s tears, doesn’t look where she is going; a truck driver, carrying a payload he’d prefer not to have within his vehicle, lets his foot drop down just a little bit harder than usual just so he can be rid of such filth; a young boy walks along, not a care in the world; and a blind old alcoholic stands and waits, every care in the world has already had its way with him and left him a hollow shell of a man.

Text: No one could guess how these people will meet seconds into their future. And none of them will ever know why.

Image: We have a bird’s eye view of a usual New York intersection, it’s the aforementioned 51st and 10th, and we should see maybe one block more on each side, this isn’t extreme close up time for the intersection, the people should be small but clear enough to make out what we are seeing. I’m thinking a pretty good level of detail is going to be needed here, Seth Fisher style if you can. We want to see trash in the gutters, other characters standing around and adding depth. I want the mentioned characters all slowly converging on the intersection, though the old man is already there. The mother and child are coming from the top of the image, the truck from the bottom, the boy from the right, and the old man already standing on the right in front of the boy. The boy also needs to have red hair. And on the left side of the intersection I want to see a familiar man in a red coat with a high collar and black/red hair. We all know who he is, but we don’t get a great look at him. Have a dog barking at him from behind.

Image: Also, feel free to sneak some Easter eggs into the scene, perhaps a trenchcoated Travis Bickle, maybe even Sport standing nearby in the stoop of a building. A young soup nazi is working a mobile soup stand, like those hot dogs stands. You know, that sort of thing. Make the page come alive, the audience only gets one page, and one image, make them appreciate it.

Bottom Text: But one person knows why. And he’ll be the only one to ever know. You’d have to ask really nicely to find out why, and maybe even offer something, because when dealing with the black hole of Mephisto’s soul no light gets in or out for free.

Strangely enough, this was the third script I wrote for Mephisto. As usual, whenever a character is chosen for the week I take a day or two to just mull it over. If inspiration strikes, cool, if not then I wait some more. I do a bit of research online, Wikipedia is a glorious resource, and something always sparks while reading the character's history. Then I just start typing and see what flows out.

I wrote my first Mephisto script pretty quickly. It was a simple and fun little riff on a certain Charlie Daniel's Band, and telling the big red man to yell out "Boy, let me tell you what!" was fun, but the script just didn't feel good enough for me. It was a gag, and I wasn't certain a perfect one, so I pushed it aside and looked for more inspiration.

My second Mephisto script was a bit more serious. It faded in on Mephisto sitting on his throne and a certain X-Man coming to him for a favour. A bit of a strange favour, and one Mephisto would not acquiesce to, but it piqued his interest and that's where we'd leave him. I liked the script but found that it focused more on the delicious dialogue from the prim lady with the X on her instead of our dead devil. So I shelved it, and hoped I'd get something else.

And I did, which you read above. Hope you liked it.