I’ve seen a lot of post-apocalyptic imagery this year lately. It would be easy to chalk this up to, say, global warming, and theorize that humanity is confronting its own mortality, but people have always found a reason to imagine themselves being wiped from the face of the earth: nukes, plague, rapture, etc. (Daily Show writer Rob Kutner recently wrote a book about the many ways we might bite the dust.)

I think the reason I’m seeing so many people-free skylines now is more about Photoshop than fatalism. The biggest spark for the trend was I Am Legend, whose one-sheet depicted Will Smith alone in New York City, without even an intact Brooklyn Bridge to keep him company.

Given the prominence of the span in the I Am Legend promotions, it’s no surprise that the coattail-riding History Channel showcased a crappily ‘shopped Brooklyn Bridge for their Life After People miniseries.

Movie Poster Addict pointed out that foreign posters for I Am Legend didn’t necessarily show the iconic Brooklyn Bridge tableau. The poster from Spain evoked New York’s ruin by depicting cars tossed all over the road. I guess in the movie, before everybody dies, they hold a big demolition derby in the streets. Sort of a last hurrah, you know, for the kids.

Scientific American also evacuated New York last year to illustrate their feature “An Earth Without People,” in which they interviewed the author of bestseller The World Without Us. (A lot of media outlets have found a lot of catchy euphemisms for “everybody’s dead.”) This depiction of an overgrown St. Patrick’s Cathedral is novel enough…

…but SA did themselves no favor with their other Photochop, “Crazy Flooded Subway Rat Fun-Time!”

The images of an empty Manhattan probably look bleak to those who don’t live here. To many frazzled New Yorkers, they look like utopia. In the “Luck of the Fryrish” episode of Futurama (the best half-hour of the series), Philip J. Fry tours the underground ruins of Old New York.

Giddy at the deserted metropolis, Fry allows himself to live the dream: jaywalking with reckless abandon.

By my reckoning, no city has been depicted human-free as much as New York. The Omega Man, a previous film adaptation of the I Am Legend novel starring Charlton Heston, takes place in Los Angeles. As you can see in this trailer for the Heston movie, Los Angeles without people has an overall aesthetic of “unentertaining.”

Up against the wall, you mother.

To my surprise, I could only find one image of a post-apocalyptic London, a sign of its decline in global influence. If Adobe CS3 had been around for the turn of the 20th Century, things would be different.

The sharpest-looking no-people city is definitely Tokyo, thanks to the work of one dedicated Photoshopper who goes by tokyogenso. The artist made a few stunning apoc-o-scapes, all of which you can see at Pink Tentacle. The best is the Shibuya progression, which starts at present-day…

…and then…

…and then…

…and then:

Gorgeous. But enough doom and gloom. Maybe instead of imaging the world without humans, we should imagine it with monkeys. Surprise, Tokyo wins again!

(Video also via Pink Tentacle.)