East Of West #42 // Review
A very important flashback occurs in East Of West #42, by writer Jonathan Hickman, artist Nick Dragotta, colorist Frank Martin, and letterer Rus Wooton. This issue eschews the book’s usually plot and lore heavy approach to take readers back to the violent falling out of the Horsemen. It’s a simple story, but it contains a rather essential plot twist that explains so much about the relationship between War and Death.
War asks Death to meet her at the Valley of the Gods to bring an end to their conflict and Death thinks back to the last time he met the Horsemen there after they had attacked his wife and taken his son. What follows is a three on one battle, as the Horsemen battle it out with the Chosen watching the whole thing. Death is able to defeat the other three Horsemen, but it takes a lot out of him, making him weak enough to be felled by Bel Solomon using Conquest’s sword. As he lay dying, the black pigment of his skin leaks away into the ground, leaving only a stark and pure white.
Simply put, this issue is amazing. It’s really just one long fight, as the Horsemen clash against their most powerful member and it works perfectly. Readers had always known since seeing the resurrection of War, Conquest, and Famine waaaay back in the first story arc that Death had gotten his revenge against them, but seeing it is something altogether different and a bit unexpected. At this stage in the book, it seems like an odd time to do an issue that is a flashback to an event that readers basically already knew took place, but it works so well because it gives readers a preview of what’s to come, the big final battle between Death and War. It also gives readers a glimpse into the real reason behind the Horsemen’s attack on Death’s family: War was in love with Death. Jealousy struck and it led to the dissolution of the Horsemen. Human emotion ripped apart these superhuman avatars of the Apocalypse and the seeds that were planted by them are about to germinate into even more violence.
It’s that little moment that takes what would otherwise be a nice addition to the book’s lore and transforms it into something more. War and Death have always had a more antagonistic relationship than Death and any of the other Horsemen, a rather personal dimension to their hatred of each of other. It was easy to think that War hated Death for abandoning his duty for a family because Hickman had made it seem that way. However, with just two little speech bubbles, he turns that on its ear and gives readers a much more satisfying reason. Sure, the other two Horsemen hate Death for abandoning them and go to their graves believing that is the reason behind all of this, but giving War a more personal reason for it makes her hatred of Death even more powerful. For the most part, the character motivations for the majority of the cast in East Of West are rather, for lack of a better word, lackluster. Besides Death and Xiaolian, most of them are doing what they’re doing because of either the prophecy of the Word or to gain more power in a world that is rapidly falling apart. That isn’t a bad thing, of course, but it robs the story of a lot of emotion. This little twist, though, takes an event that readers thought they knew all they needed about and tweaks it just a little bit, adding a new dimension to it that changes the event and makes it make way more sense.
Seeing as how this comic hinges on the battle between Death and the Horsemen, Nick Dragotta and Frank Martin step up to the plate on this one, and like the sluggers they are, they knock it out of the park. There are times in this book when Martin gives the colors in this book an almost painted look, adding texture that they would otherwise lack, and he does that in the opening scenes of the book, before the flashback, in the quiet moments. The colors during the flashback proper have an almost washed out look to them and that fits perfectly. Dragotta’s pencils during the fight are just wonderful. He uses a lot of manga-esque motion lines to give the fight a sense of movement that it might lack and it’s choreographed perfectly. Death is in his all-black form, but Dragotta is able to use little details like the tensing of the muscles, the wideness of his eyes, or the way he grits his teeth to get across what’s going on with Death emotionally. In one panel, War asks Death why he loved Xiaolian and not her and it’s simple and understated and amazing because of it.
East Of West #42 takes an event that readers thought they knew and puts an extra little shine on it. That shine not only changes the way the event itself is perceived but also takes what readers knew about the dynamic between Death and War and changes it into something else entirely adding an extra dimension to it. East Of West isn’t exactly an emotionally resonant book; in fact, it would be easy to say that emotion is one of the least important things about it. Beyond Death and Xiaolian, the motivations of nearly every character have been very cold. This issue takes another character whose motivation seemed that way and changed it and now everything makes a little more sense than it did. Hickman pulls this in a perfectly understated way that actually gives the reveal more power than if he had foreshadowed his way up to it for the entire series. The artwork from Dragotta and Martin seals the deal on this one. This issue highlights a creative team working at the top of their game, gelling perfectly to make something is more than the sum of its parts.
