Welcome to Ghostliness & Nerfherders Presents: East of West, Issue #5 – “The Lost Words”! In the previous installment, Xiaolian crushes Hu’s head like an egg with an iron hand grip and then chops off her father’s head with Hu’s sword. She’s a badass, yo. She runs the House of Mao now. Death eats out of the palm of her hand.

That’s really it. Half of Issue #4 was a battle between Death’s three-man army and Mao’s multi-million-man army, and Death fucked their asses up.

I have no idea what to expect! Unpredictable and exciting! Just like my erect [REDACTED].

East of West, Issue #5 [August, 2013]
Written by: Jonathan Hickman
“The Lost Words”

“Have you heard The Message?”

Ugh, no. Screw the message. We’re putting cover sheets on all our TPS reports now. Have you heard THAT message, jerk?

Chamberlain and a buddy are flying to a place called the Lair of the Beast. The buddy looks like Cowboy Dumbledore, aka Bel Solomon, who I was introduced to in Issue #2. He’s the “skeptic” of the “weird Message council”. Hu used to be in that group, but she, uh, lost her head.

Anyhoo, the Lair of the Beast is a place that Solomon had never been to before because, as he explains it, he thought he was too good for that place and better than everyone else. He asks Chamberlain how he can stand coming here, and Chamberlain informs him that he tries to visit as often as possible. You know, when he’s not banging three women at once. Which isn’t often!

“Born of the East, child of the West, the one true son of America.”

…k.

Back in New Shanghai, Death looks kind of sad! He’s just sitting there alone in the square. A wolf peers at him from a distance. A crow tells him “She’s here.” Death is ready for Xiaolian’s arrival. His pants are tight just anticipating it!

I’ll chain you in the basement, dear old husband of mine.

She approaches, flapping her gums about her family’s garden. “…for the last ten years I’ve called it ‘prison’. What do you think of my garden, husband?” she asks him sardonically, implying that she’ll be keeping him here indefinitely…if he stays.

Death’s all like “You can’t hold me, Woman!”, and then when Xiaolian tells him to go, Death says “…yeah, I don’t wanna.”

Death says he still doesn’t have what he came for. A wet dick! Ha! That’s probably what it’s gonna be. Death is a horny boy.

Some backstory gets relayed about Xiaolian, how she’s been a hothead her whole life, how she’s been trained to fight since forever, how she’s been a Warmaster since she was 16, how she was involved in a border conflict with Sonora (who I don’t know yet) that made her a killer since 20 (dishing out that good old TEXAS JUSTICE!). She won a battle that turned disputed territory into Mao territory, and on that day she killed 100 men! You go gurl.

When I was 16 I was downloading porn at two in the morning with a dialup connection.

So, in short, Death got to see her a lot. He was impressed. And she denied him, which defeated him, as was foretold by this bit of the Message: “A Lotus, of steel and without mercy finds mercy, and not for mercy’s sake.”

HERE’S WHAT HAPPENED! They met up, one-on-one. He presented her with “the night’s crescent moon”. She presented him with “the night itself”. As foretold by the Message: “A Lotus, the death and resurrection of love”.

BLAH BLAH BLAH. What is this, the frickin’ bible?

Xiaolian tells his beloved White Groom that she is now formally recognized as Premier of the House of Mao! Cool, huh? The other nations expect her to follow in her father’s footsteps – being a pussy – she’s going to teach them all a harsh lesson. Itching for war, this young lady! Death promises to aim his guns wherever she needs them. Xiaolian, however, tells him that he’s been really cramping her style! So no! They’re gonna break up now. Bye! “It’s over. There’s nothing for you here. Things have changed.” she says, coldly, bluntly. It’s pretty sexy.

This guy, this Death guy, he starts putting up his defenses! “WHATTAYA MEAN NOTHING’S CHANGED? A BLOO BLOO BLOO!” he blubbers. What about their history? Everything they’ve been through together, baby? Just like that, it’s over? “Thought you’d be happy to see me.” he says. “You look different.” she tells him, simply, like she’s telling him that there’s mustard on his shirt.

“No, YOU look different.” he spits petulantly, like a child full of mustard! She tells him that she’s older now, and she dies a little more each and every day that she wakes up.

“They took your hands?” Death observes, FINALLY. And she’s like hell yeah, I can crush sisters with these! Xiaolian explains that she was able to replace what could be replaced, and it wasn’t enough anyway. “You healed,” she tells Death, “I got worse.”

Death apologizes and tells her that he loves her. She won’t hear any of it. This Death guy apparently wasn’t around when she needed him most, like the DEADbeat he is (lol).

You are DEAD to me! …so to speak.

We see some flashbacks of them together in the tub. Gross. Also, a panel of her pregnant and distraught. Also a panel of her giving birth. Double gross. Here are some words overlapping those flashback panels: “They tried to leave the world behind. Xiaolian, no longer a Death Dealer. Death himself, no longer Death. The two became three and the prophecy was fulfilled. ‘Of the third, but not of the three.’ ‘A cup, of a cup. A chalice, of a chalice.’”

Death admits that, yes, he really should have been there when she needed him, but he defends himself further by explaining that he had no choice in the matter. He was betrayed and he didn’t see it coming, so now he has scores to settle and wrongs to make right. When he found out she was alive, well sir, he made a beeline for her! Quite literally! I mean, that’s the only thing that I’ve seen him do so far in this comic book. Besides killing presidents, I guess.

Xiaolian isn’t accepting his dang excuses! It’s too late to make it right for her, and whatnot. She tells him, quite sadly now, that he made her believe that their love was a lie. Then he left. Then they came and took everything from her. They took her name. They took her hands. They killed their child. She cursed his name that day, and she curses it today! Curse! CUUUUUURRSSE!!

The they, of course, are the other three smelly Horsemen. When Death fucked off to whatever it was he had to do, they showed up. Now we see a little more of the perplexing flashback from Issue #3, where Hu and three unknown entities surround Xiaolian and fuck her shit up a little bit. The one who looked like a red Carmen Sandiego was War, who used to be a woman. That makes sense, War is always a woman in Good Apocalypse Fiction. In fact, Conquest (the blue one) is also a woman here. Famine’s a man. I mean, they’re not human. You know what I mean.

War is a stone-cold red hot bitch.

Hu’s wincing and scrambling on the ground with bloody stumps at the ends of her arms; Hu looks on triumphantly. As you may remember, Hu told Xiaolian to get out of her hole. Presumably, Hu led the horsemen to Xiaolian for religious Message reasons. Probably because marrying Death is weird and stuff. At that point, Xiaolian begged for mercy, and mercy she did not get.

“Never actually heard The Message, have you, Xiaolian?” Death asks her, but she doesn’t care about the Message. All she cares about was that one day they were together, and another day she was imprisoned in her father’s garden.

Death lays down the 411 on the Message. It dictates what the Chosen do, and guides the Horsemen. They can’t step outside of the Message’s…message. Death, being a Horse Man, takes his lead from the Message and what he believes to be true. And he believed that Xiaolian was dead, but their son should be alive. To Death, it makes no sense that the other Horsemen would spare her and kill their son! The Message requires him to be alive! The other Horsemen won’t – can’t – kill him.

I mean, duh.

“They believe he’s the Beast of the Apocalypse.”

And then they show an image of their son hooked up to all sorts of Matrix gobbeldy-gook! Wires and tubes and shit. It’s a real sorry state. The Lair of the Beast.

Bel Solomon and Chamberlain converse with each other at the LAIR OF THE BEAST. Solomon laments the sins of the both of them that have led them to this moment; he wanted to speak to Chamberlain since the rest of the Chosen are the true believers, and Chamberlain doesn’t like the implication that he, himself, is not a true believer.

Solomon starts pouring out his feelings about this whole Chosen business. “I never believed any of this. I joined the Chosen because I figured selling my soul was worth protecting my nation…” he says, regretting not believing any of it from the beginning. “…they’re actually going to attempt to manufacture the end of the world.” And, to this, Chamberlain’s all like “I know! Oh boy!”

Solomon snaps that it’s not funny. Just look at what they’re doing with this kid!

Look! They’re turning him into Young Sheldon!

Black holes! Bleep blorp!

After the machine asks him a couple more questions of philosophy, social politics, and literature, it asks him “How do you feel?”, to which the child responds “…I don’t know what that means.”

Solomon is crying! How sad! “I want you to help me stop them.” he says to Chamberlain, who likely has no interest whatsoever in stopping anyone from doing anything if it might mean he can’t fuck three women at once anymore! Solomon is being Mr. Morals and he’s barking up the wrong tree, man. Chamberlain asks him if he’s lost his goddamned mind. “Next you’ll be telling me how all men are created equal, and that the Japanese aren’t perverts. I’m embarrassed for you, Bel.”

I am simply erect with ambition.

Solomon is beside himself with shock at Chamberlain’s shitty attitude! “Are you really just going to watch and do nothing?” he asks his terrible friend, who argues that ABSOLUTELY NOT! He’s going to watch and revel in it!

Bel Solomon storms out. Chamberlain tells him to wake up and start playing the game. Solomon insists it’s not a game, it’s the world. It’s the world they ruined, so maybe they should try fixing what’s broken. Chamberlain laughs and tells him good fucking luck! He’ll be keeping a close eye on his futile efforts.

Back in New Shanghai, aka Xiaolian’s Playhouse, Death is trying to talk his beloved bride into joining him to find their son. She says no way José! They’re through! Done-zo! Her job is to distract the Chosen with the biggest fucking war they’ve ever been hit with. While she’s doing that, he can save their son himself. Or else! “If you don’t…if you fail…there’s nowhere on Earth you’ll be able to hide from me.”

Death is aroused, probably. He promises to save their son, and then he promises to come back to New Shanghai for her afterward.

“God help anyone who tries to get in my way.”

Final Thoughts

The story is unfolding like so many…uh…road maps.

It appears Death and Chamberlain have very different plans after all. I’m looking forward to Chamberlain getting his head crushed by Premier Xiaolian Mao’s crazy candy-coated hands.