Welcome to Ghostliness & Nerfherders Presents: East of West, Issue #36 – “This Is a Real Revolution”! In the previous installment, we catch up on what Death and Babylon are up to. And guess what? They’re bonding! Skipping stones and fishing and swappin’ stories. Why, Death almost becomes sick of the little shit. I mean, he kind of does. Thinks that boy ain’t right.

Xiaolian sends a message through her one-way walkie-talkie that she’ll be leading her army. Babylon wants to help, and by God, they’re both gonna help!

Looking forward to seeing just how in the HELL they’re going to do that exactly. But right now I’d rather watch Andrew Archibald Chamberlain eat his own butt.

East of West, Issue #36 [March, 2018]
Written by: Jonathan Hickman
“This Is a Real Revolution”

From afar, high up in the air in their crazy ships, Wolf and Crow observe the burning Union. He asks some weird robotic creep what it knows of the White Tower. This weird robotic creep may be a human for all I know! Maybe I’ve even seen him before and written six paragraphs about his eating habits.

What he knows about the White Tower is that it’s currently burning, so we can check that one off the list. There has been an uprising and chaos is tearing the city apart. “As ordered, we have completed a cursory drone reconnaissance. There are power outages. Shortages of food. And what little hold the rebels have on the city, they are losing quickly.”

So, in short, the Endless Nation can stomp right on in and take if they so wish. Crow isn’t as optimistic. Wolf is very optimistic! So it’s settled.

Bodaway chastises everyone present about their ignorance about the Union being “bones and bonded”. No pureblood Nation native can enter the city for reasons that aren’t explained (shock collars). They can’t send their machines either, as the Union has countermeasures for automatically stopping an automaton invasion. So let’s go home! Fun’s over!

Wolf still stares at the burning city and starts waxing poetic about yada yada yada. “When a conquering nation has no external enemies, it turns its aggression inward. A kind of natural schism occurs… and the enemy becomes yourself. The old ways start to fear the new ways. And the new ways have contempt for the ones that came before.”

“The Machine City. The Sea of Bones. ‘Bones and Bonded’,” he continues. “I know what that means better than you, Bodaway.”

So there is, apparently, a whole vault of skeleton stashed away somewhere in the Union. The Nation sends in a UFO-type automaton to crash through into Bone Storage and abduct all the bones. “I am bringing our lost brothers and sisters home. I am breaking the spell… and ending this madness of hating ourselves.”

…Baba Booey Baba Booey Baba Booey!!

Wolf stands importantly.

“I have not come to tear down what our people have become… I have come here to heal the old wounds… So that together we can become something greater than we ever were.

Bing bang boom win.

“Your end will be the same as theirs. There is nothing special about you.”

Two days later, creepy Endless Nation robot dude announces that they’ve gained control of the power grid, the automated functions, and suppressed more of that pesky uprising behavior. Now that the people have been subdued and tranquilized and stuffed into lockers, the Nation is ready to secure the perimeter of the city limits. “Tell the elders the Union is ours.”

Wolf rides in on the Hellbeast. The one, of course, that Ezra Orion was connected to until Wolf ate him. It hisses and asks Wolf what he will be doing with the population. Will he show them mercy or will he show them reruns of America’s Funniest Home Videos?

“…I don’t know,” Wolf responds, rather sheepishly I might add.

They pass by the skeletonized remains of Madame Antonia LeVay, burned at the stake. Looks tasty!

WHERE is the America’s Funniest Home Videos we were promised?!

Wolf gets up on some high overlook and addresses his new batch of people, introducing himself and telling them that he is the end of conflict. He is peace… yeah, a piece of ass that is… “I don’t care which side you were on – or what you fought for. From here on out, mine is the only side that matters.”

“NO!” screams a tiny little voice from the large crowd. It’s the Resistance Girl, I don’t remember her name! I don’t think I learned it. She is demanded to be silenced, but SHE WILL BE HEARD!

“This is wrong! All wrong! We fought against corruption and oppression… We fought to free ourselves from those who saw us as inferior… subhuman. They… they treated us like animals… They starved us! They murdered us! And now you want to pretend we’re the same?”

All good points! She tells them all to fuck off. Bodaway calmly tells her that their little resistance and the history of the Union in general is just a blip in a much larger, colder history. As in, straighten up and fly right or they’re going to do to you what all the white people did to them hundreds of years ago. You feel me?

Bodaway turns to Wolf. Wolf stares back. “My words were clear… peace for all.”

Resistance Girl is not happy. This still stinks to high heaven. She has lost the fight in her… she hangs her head, and, in a meek voice, she says: “It wasn’t supposed to be this way. We… we won.”

“These are the end times, child… there are no righteous left among the living,” replies Wolf.

“And what you’re feeling… that’s the hopelessness of a conquered people,” explains Bodaway solemnly. “Fight it… don’t fight it… we leave it to you.”

FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT!

Or not.

Or maybe?

“I will never fucking kneel,” she says.

“Good for you. Dying as you lived is a just end,” says Bodaway as a couple of guards pick the girl up and take her away, presumably to make her watch America’s Funniest Home Videos until she dies of a gut-bursting laughter.

“Let this be a lesson.” Wolf addresses his new people once more. “Tearing something down is easy. Holding on to it… building something better… that demands more than rage.”

“We have taken all that you have. We will erase all that you were.”

I love how nihilistic this series is! Really melts my butter!

Nothing pleases me more than watching that silly goose Bob Saget, actually, sir.

Bodaway snidely praises Wolf on, frankly, some actual impressive accomplishments. “Should I expect an encore? Or are you finished.”

…

“I ask, because I’m beginning to feel like a foil,” Bodaway frowns. What good is a council of elders if you make no mistake?”

Ahhh, the claws come out! Hisss! Meow! Woof! Blub! Wolf assures the stinky old man that his services are valued, actually, and shove a cork in it. Bodaway doesn’t believe Wolf. Wolf assures him further that, perhaps, maybe, uhhh, perhaps he could get a place above his current position. Want to run the Union?

“Ha!” Bodaway spits, not too keen on running any union, let alone the Union. But so it shall be, for Wolf leaps out the broken window gracefully, cape billowing in the wind. “My role here is done. But the Prophet’s? That remains unfinished.”

We turn to the Atlas, which I think was ol’ One-Eyed Barkeep’s place of business. It has that big globe-like thing that can track… Babylon, I think it was? This was many issues ago and I have Alzheimer’s. The Three Hapless Horsemen enter and take a look at the globe. The place is full of skeletons, including the barkeep’s. “Monkeys… Monkeys… Monkeys as far as the eye can see,” says War.

Famine peers at a blip on the map. “I think I have something,” she says, eyes all kinds of buggin’. And yes, I was right, this was all to find Babylon. The last directive, according to THE ATLAS, was a group of four bounty hunters sent over to find the child (I do remember these schmucks) and then… nothing.

“Well…” War downs a shot of what I can only assume is FUTURE BOURBON. “Sounds like we have some catching up to do.”

MEANWHILE, Death and Babylon are camping out for another night. A whiny Babylon asks his exasperated father how much longer until they get to where they’re going – finding the Maoist army. Even Balloon can’t pinpoint that with all its whiz-bang gadgets and hoo-hahs.

Good thing I brought Parcheesi!

“Hey… can I ask you something?” Babylon looks at his father with his no-eyeballs.

“…One question. Then bed.”

“Okay. What’s she like?”

Oof. Well, she’s got candy-coated hands that can crush your little peanut skull to oblivion! She’s perfect. Strong. Beautiful. Confident. She smells like potpourri, the kind you put in a bathroom to eliminate the, you know, the stench. “To put it plain… your mother is the most impressive woman I’ve ever met. But that’s not the best part.”

What is the best part? Getting that adamantite handjob?

“For the first time ever, someone made me not wanna be a monster. And now, I get to do somethin’ for her. Bring you home. How’s that sound, kiddo?”

“Can’t wait!” Babylon grins.

Elsewhere, Wolf and Crow (and some muscle) are also traversing the desert. “The Message is itching under my skin. I hear that fool Orion screaming in my head.”

Time to go to the old Armistice. Time for the final days of the Prophet.

Final Thoughts

We’re really building up to something, ain’t we, folks? Time to see how the HELL a little white kid can help his warmongering mother. Maybe “I LOVE YOU” cards scrawled in crayon?