Creative Staff:
Story: Jonathan Hickman
Art: Nick Dragotta
What They Say:
This is the world. It is not the one we wanted, but it is the one we deserved. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse roam the Earth, signaling the End Times for humanity, and our best hope for life, lies in DEATH!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
This years Free Comic Book Day was a bonanza for me in that through ComiXology I got to try a slew of first issues from Image Comics. Pretty much every one of those that I grabbed I’ve found myself picking up the trades for. With a title like East of West, it has a minimal approach to what it wants to say about itself, both in cover design and the premise as you can see above, and I’ll admit that I probably wouldn’t have given it a second look beyond that. While I know Hickman has a string of solid credits to his name, they’ve been books I haven’t been interested in so I haven’t delved into his works too much. The first issue of this when I read it had me going and ordering the first two volumes right away. And even then I wish there were another half dozen volumes available so that I could just soak up this world even more.
Alternate world stories are always fun since you can do some pretty great what-if stuff from different points of time and rewrite things in a great way. With East of West, that divergence begins in 1862 amid the Civil War where the North and South find themselves facing a very different battle as the war went on. Instead of just going against each other, the Native American population banded together into their own formal nation that set to reclaim their own lands, Texas went off on its own and over the course of years everything turned into a situation where seven nations now exist within what is now the United States. Add in an event in the center of the nation that caused massive amounts of destruction that became the site of an Armistice in 1908 and you have a kind of uneasy peace that exists between the nations now.
Now being 2064.
The backdrop for this is important as it sets up the kinds of tensions there are and the political side of it as the seven leaders all work together towards a secret goal which is explored throughout the background of the opening volume that involves the end of the world. The concept of bringing the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse to do the deed fits in with the mindset of a certain cult of some sort and that plays out throughout, especially as we get some time with the Horsemen themselves. Three of them are off on their own as they orchestrate all of this, having been reborn recently into younger bodies which has its own dark comedy as they kill and destroy with ease, and some of the commentary out of them as they use these bodies is disturbing but hugely engaging to watch. They know their position in the world but they also know they need their fourth.
The fourth being Death.
Death, in the form of an all white man in a cowboy outfit, is traveling the land to seek revenge on a number of people for an injustice done towards in some years prior. The mystery of it is revealed towards the end of the volume as he spends a good bit of time in the west coast at New Shanghai and its own nation, but his quest for revenge without knowing what it is proves to be engaging all on its own. With a pair of warriors that are working with him on this that have gone all white themselves, the level of skill they bring to their methods is terrifying as we see early on how they extract the information they want. Their quest to find those responsible for what was done to Death himself is really nicely done as it takes us to several places of power, from the White Tower of the Union to New Shanghai and quietly into the places of Texas where we get an idea of what kind of larger game is being played there.
There is a grand and epic story at play here that has some tremendous visual quality about it as Nick Dragotta brings this world to life and as Hickman presents us with some great verbal sparring, politics and outright fear among a large group of people. But it also brings us a powerful romance, an amazing tragedy and a world that is so different that you want to see something from every corner of it. We get some tantalizing teases in a few places where different people from the seven nations interact, both in a more normal and common level as well as those working the structures of power as they seek to advance their own goal of the apocalypse, and it’s just scraping the surface of what’s possible here. Hell, it’s a book where you find yourself rooting for Death in a way that’s not like a lot of others since he’s a grim and gritty type with a dark purpose that’s in a world that feels very unique.
In Summary:
East of West wowed me when I read the first issue and did it again when I reread it a couple more times to take in the world building that goes on here. When I ended up getting this trade with the first five issues, I was exposed to an even larger, richer and more engaging story that has a grand scale to it with some fantastic personal touches while still being superficial in a way. It’s not trying to get us to want to hang around with these characters but rather giving us a large storyline with identifiable characters that are engaged in events that can change the world. I love the world that’s presented here, the characters and the epicness of it all. A lot of it reminds me of the later original run issues of Grendel from Matt Wagner with its world building and the usual of political and social alongside religion while giving us more personifications running about that are enacting their own will. It’s not something I find myself saying about too many books, but this is a must-read book.
Grade: A
Age Rating: 16+
Released By: Images Comics
Release Date: September 24th, 2013
MSRP: $9.99
