Well, if we are really experiencing "The End," David is not surprisingly pulling out all the stops.
I've made it pretty clear, I think, that Layla isn't exactly my favorite character. Even in David's capable hands, she's always been more or less a one-trick pony, a plot device used to move a story somewhere that it needed to be more quickly than it would have arrived without her. However, David does a great job of making her a more complicated character here as she confronts the reality of losing some of that power, a consequence of her decision to resurrect Guido many issues ago. The fact that she finds herself facing a different set of circumstances in the wake of the "Hell on Earth War" than she originally did makes particular sense given that Guido probably didn't become the overlord of Hell in the original timeline since, you know, he was dead. Her resurrection of him directly creates the confusion that she experiences here. In other words, she has no one but herself to blame.
Making sure that we're clear on the story that he's telling, David focuses this issue on someone else facing unexpected consequences after bringing back someone from the dead. The death of the young boy at the hands of his demonic mother is sad in and of itself, but it's also a reminder of how Layla ultimately failed in her attempt to save Guido, since he's just as lost to her. Instead of "the briefest of sideshows" that this tale constituted in the original timeline, the events of this issue result in Layla finding herself alone with a demonic husband and without a clear sense of how to help him. Layla had always been emotionally isolated from her teammates due to her knowledge of the future, but now she's also physically isolated from them just as she no long can take comfort from "knowing stuff." In making it so clear that she's lying in the bed that she made, David also leaves us wondering about the same question as Layla: what happens next? Somehow, I doubt that we're getting a happy ending.
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