Welcome to Ghostliness & Nerfherders Presents: East of West, Issue #12 – “The Night Before”! In the previous installment, the various world leaders prepare for their meeting at the Wall, a neutral zone of sorts surrounding and restricting access to the Armistice. Symbolically, it’s a location where the warring nations can call a truce and settle differences in an even-headed and diplomatic manner. It’s not going to fucking work. All these people are out for blood.

That’s about it. Tensions are palpably high! I’m looking forward to this one. We’re gonna find out who the snakiest of snakes are, and it’s probably Archibald. I mean, duh.

East of West, Issue #12 [May, 2014]
Written by: Jonathan Hickman
“The Night Before”

“Revenge is for the righteous.“

Darn tootin’. So I didn’t mention Peter Graves in the last issue, which is crazy because it was a missed opportunity to make a lot of Airplane! jokes. He accompanies Madame LeVay and Miss Lux to the Wall as a representative of the Union. In a flashback, there’s some serious BDSM shit going on with Lux and Graves. He’s on his knees, all nude and gross, while she stands over him and stuffs a sizeable oval-shaped electronic device down his throat. “I know how you like to please me, Mister Graves…I want you to open wider,” she instructs while he gags and writhes.

Lux gets elbow-deep down his throat, pushing the device deep into his ugly, smelly-looking, wrinkly body. She interrogates him in a rather verbose full-page spread. In summary, she asks if he’s heard of a man named Jakob de Fontagnes. Because he shouldn’t have; just like most doctors, he’s a subtle murderer. Eventually, a younger protégée caught de Fontagnes red-handed, so to speak! It seems this Jakob douchebag enjoyed sewing up foreign objects in his surgery patients. Small, diseased rodents. Dying birds. You know. For fun. One day, de Fontagnes had a bout of food poisoning, and this young understudy had to perform an autopsy one one of de Fontagnes’ patients who died on the operating table. Needless to say, it didn’t end well for Jakob McFaganotes.

Hey, this is how I used to end my Ted Talks.

What’s the point of all this? Lux finds this DeFooginsnoogin character fascinating. “He hid the object of their death inside them,” she says, doing her best to land the parallels here between Graves and DeFtones. To really drive the point home, she slaps Graves, punches him across the jaw, and kicks him up the chin. SLAP. KRAK. WAK. Shit’s wack all right.

Lux “kindly” reminds Graves that he will be on his best behavior at the ol’ Wall meeting. She vouched for him personally to Madame LeVay, so don’t fuck this up, you gross old man you.

Yeah, ain’t that the kind of family friendly comic book entertainment we’ve all grown to cherish over the last eleven issues?

The leaders and their various lackies sit around a large ring-shaped table. LeVay stands up at her seat and announces the beginning of the diplomatic proceedings! This should be good. I predict Archibald will pull out a glock and start capping motherfuckers left and right.

“We were summoned by a nation…and all other nations have answered.” LeVay says tartly, considering this whole proceeding a waste of her very valuable time. Time she could be spending killing civilians or bossing around various Horsemen.

LeVay bluntly asks Xiaolian WHY, exactly, they’re all here in this pit together right now, having to talk to each other and exchange “pleasantries”.

Xiaolian’s like “yeah, that’s fair”. She gets honest with it. “My father always insisted on directness when dealing with matters of…grave importance.” So let’s cut to the chase! No point in beating around the bush!

It’s Wartime, baby!

*intermission music*

“Man is a most complex simple creature. See what he weaves, and how base his reasons for doing so.“

Ehhhh, darrrrr, huurrrrrr, buhhhhhh

LeVay is like “War? What is it good for?”. But, actually, she smirks and coyly asks what war Xiaolian is even talking about? “This one. The one we’re about to make. The one between the Chosen… and the righteous.”

That giant oaf of a hunched-over Black Towers president, whatever nation that might be I don’t remember just give me a break, asks who here is even Chosen and who here is righteous? What does that even mean? What’s even going on? Where are my pills? MABEL! MUH PILLS!
Xiaolian is respectful of Burkhart’s ignorance. After all, this unseemly shit has all been festering in the darkness. Only special people know what’s going on here, sir. “To know the Chosen, one must either be Chosen…or have been marked by them in some way,” Xiaolian explains all serious-faced like this is a serious matter or something.

Burkhart whispers his continued confusion in Archibald’s direction. Archibald is sitting there acting like he, too, is bewildered and concerned. Like the proverbial snake in the grass! “She’s got spiders in her head…and cobras in her mouth,” Archibald warns mysteriously. The crow flies at midnight, don’t forget that one neithers.

“Does the House of Mao lack the courage to point their finger directly at those they accuse?” questions Madame LeVay, arching an eyebrow and sitting back with a smug satisfaction. Gotcha! Put that in your pipe and crush some heads.

Xiaolian points at LeVay. LeVay gets feral.

“Hrrrn. Idle threats are one thing… Be careful what you risk.” LeVay snarls through her teeth. Xiaolian ain’t afraid! Magic hands, bitch, she will rip that stupid head right off your scrawny turkey neck. “When I take your head…I will carry it around with me like a purse,” she shoots back at LeVay with a demeanor of complete serenity.

LeVay loses composure completely and starts howling at the Mao woman. John Freeman VIII has had enough of LeVay’s shit and tells her cork it! He slams his fist on the table with a WAK! Let’s move on!

Bel Solomon asks Freeman if the Kingdom has any opinion to speak on. No. 9 starts whining and bitching for about seven words before No. 8 tells him to cork it, too. Everyone here requires a corking! “He [the king] sits above the concerns of elected officials. So today, I am only here to listen,” Freeman tells the rest of the council rather shortly. He will relay the skinny of the meeting to his dad later. Then, and only then, will the Kingdom form an opinion. So don’t do anything stupid because he’s going to hear about all the stupid shit that goes on here.

“Your father…always waiting to see what cards the other men hold,” Solomon comments snidely. And you know how the saying goes: you really showed your hand…when you played your cards. Hmm. Ahhh. Yes.

Tensions seem high.

♫♫ Get outta my dreams… Get into my car ♫♫

Freeman warns Bel to watch his tongue. Lest we forget, there’s some unfinished business between them. Bel’s psychotic inner child freaks out! He drowns out the voices by calling attention to the presence of the Endless Nation! What’s up, fellas? Got something to say? Heh heh.

One of the Endless Nation representatives is some dude with half his head roboticized. He’s got electric wires coming out and shit. It reminds me of how they have Death’s son hooked up in the Lair of the Beast. “The data is incomplete. Ethereal. All scenarios remain nebulous.”

So that’s cool. The future is unknown, big whoop. Join the club. Xiaolian requests the Divination Special from the Endless Nation. That and $4 will buy you a Grand Slam Breakfast at Denny’s. Another dude, the Shaman (who also looks like some freak decked out in robo-apparati) starts spewing some gobbledygook about statistics and probabilities. It sounds like House of Mao has the upper hand here, though! Best not fuck with Xiaolian, guys. Come on. Just go home.

The Main Endless Nation Honcho, he glares at Xiaolian and provides the human element to the Endless Nation’s opinion. “My projection? This…all of this…is a performance meant to induce a particular outcome.” Ding ding ding!

Bel Solomon can’t hold his tongue any longer. Oh man, politicians politicking? Lies upon lies? Good gravy, man, what a fucking bombshell. Tell us more about it, please! How enlightening!

Be that as it may, Bel Solomon found the Shaman’s nonsense intriguing. In a nutshell, if the Endless Nation and the Republic of Texas remain neutral, then conflict will be impossible to escalate. Cool. Bel’s on board, but his inner voice finds such a neutrality preposterous! What makes a man turn neutral, asked the great Zapp Brannigan once. We are still figuring that out, Zapp. We are still figuring that out.

President “Gallant” Burkhart agrees. No conflict! For the common good. *snort*

Strong words coming from a fucking DEAD MAN.

Archibald does not like this one bit. That’s just what he needs right now is his sappy commander-in-chief ruining his game by being nice and reasonable. “Mister President, I beg you do not commit us to a course of action that limits our–” Archibald starts, but he gets cut off. Archibald takes it stride, already plotting his next murder…

Burkhart makes a formal stance against Xiaolian’s call for war. “Today, I will stand against this aggressive display of…irrationality,” he declares with hesitant conviction! Nice use of gendered language there, President Mustache. It’s gonna be fun seeing everyone fight over who gets to kill you.

Xiaolian tries to calmly bring attention to the stupidity of this sit-here-and-do-nothing attitude from some of the world’s greatest nations. LeVay gets her dig in: “The argument is over, and you have lost. Learn to live with it, you impetuous child.”

Good thing LeVay doesn’t get to see how Xiaolian would react to this, because a blinding flash of white light and a deafening BOOM fills the room.

One of Bel’s men draws their guns and pulls the hammers. John Freeman does the same. Xiaolian and her people also ready their weapons. The Endless Nation covers themselves with force fields. Miss Lux sits there emotionless, perhaps a little impatient. It is revealed that Peter “Have You Ever Seen a Grown Man Naked?” Graves’ head was blown right off his body in an explosion of gore and various lengths of intestine! LeVay is completely horrified and nonplussed for the briefest of moments before pointing a bony finger at Mrs. Mao. “YOU DID THIS!!!“

Lux smiles. “No she didn’t,” she thinks to herself.

Xiaolian tells LeVay that SHE’D be the dead one if she did this, make no mistake.

This man owed me fifteen bucks, missy, and someone is going to have to cough it up!

Archibald is all “now you’ve gone and done it!”, since President Burkhart is now inexplicably bleeding out of every head orifice you can think of. Two deaths for the price of one! Xiaolian says there’s more of that where it came from! War, remember? She wants it bad.

The Endless Nation, still in their protective bubbles courtesy of a talking, floating orb, speaks up. Xiaolian’s father was an honorable man, but it seems none of this honor was passed down! First of all, lady, you committed regicide, mmmkay? Second of all, ma’am, something fucking fishy is going on here. YO! BRAINIAC! CRUNCH THE NUMBERS!

“Internal explosive ordinance triggered remotely. Heart rate spike and sudden blood loss. Short-range signal. Sharp-edged weapon. The synopsis is conclusive. There were two murders with two differe–”

BLAM!

Bel Solomon unloads his gun through the floating orb, which cancels the force field, and the bullet continues right through Endless Nation Brain Man’s Big Brain, Man.

We see a vision of the possession situation happening with Bel Solomon. It’s Cheveyo of the Endless Nation, who got sniped on Bel’s orders in Issue #10. Cheveyo’s got a beef with his own people! They cast him out because he’s old-school; didn’t like all the new technology his people were embracing Luddite-style. So fuck those guys.

Ugghh, cut it out, you’re gonna bring the All Lives Matter jerks out of the woodwork with this one.

Bel Solomon stays silent and deranged while Cheveyo goads him to explain the real deception: the one coming from the Endless Goddamn Nation.

Cheveyo twists Bel’s nipple to get him to talk. “Thu– there is…deception here,” Bel mumbles, but his face is pushed down into the table with a sickening KRAK by his own henchman. Bel continues to try to speak in Cheveyo’s words even though he’s got a mouth full of fine artisan wood. Wink.

So guess what, Toots? Bel Solomon shot at the Endless Nation, so now neither of them are going to be able to maintain their neutral cahoots plan! “You wanted a war, Xiaolian? Now you have it.“

The two alive Endless Nation representatives leave.

Now, finally, it’s Xiaolian’s turn to smile.

Silently, she carries herself with the poise of a world leader who got exactly what she wanted and takes her leave while everyone else…well, the ones who are still alive and conscious and sane and alert, maintain their positions around the table, speechless.;

“The petals of Lotus turned red. For they were dipped in blood…and stained forever.”

And that’s all she wrote!

Final Thoughts

Fuckin’ A, man. Remember when I was reading about Dick Grayson rejoining the circus? What a pile of shit something like that really is compared to something like this.