Welcome to Ghostliness & Nerfherders Presents: East of West, Issue #39 – “These Brothers of Destiny”! In the previous installment, Thomas the Texas Rangin’ Hunter was able to fanagle his way into sniping the shit out of John Freeman VIII with the help of his ruthless father. Ruthless! Without ruth! Ruth’s not here, man. That’s for sure. No ruth to be seen anywhere.

That’s about it. These issues can usually be summarized in one sentence, such as “Xiaolian crushes her sister’s head” or “Bel Solomon farts out his baked bean dinner”.

How will this one be summarized? I can’t wait. I predict “Andrew Archibald Chamberlain sticks Bel Solomon’s head in a deep fryer”.

East of West, Issue #39 [October, 2018]
Written by: Jonathan Hickman
“These Brothers of Destiny”

War is pretty hot. I mean, not temperature-wise (although who can say?). Too bad she spends most of the series as a little boy and then as a little man. A shame, really.

Flashback to a small meeting of the Chosen. Ezra Orion is mad at Hu Mao, Xiaolian’s older sister, for showing up. Her father was supposed to come, not some kind of pissant offspring envoy. “The Premier will never return here. To you. I am all you get,” she says to him. Hu’s the Chosen now, bitch. What up? What up?

Cheveyo asks her if she’s thinks she’s sooooo clever. She responds that it’s just how things are. So can it.

Cheveyo argues that a perception of how things are might entirely be how things are. Illusions and tricks and sleight of hand. “Are you sure you have a place here?”

She tells him to “get fucking bent, old man.” John Freeman VIII likes her fiestiness! Curiously, she introduces herself as the only child of the Premier. Freeman gives her a word of advice: you can trust cranky old Cheveyo and Ezra Orion, but don’t trust these two fuckers over here. *jabs thumb in the direction of Archibald and Bel Solomon, lookin’ like members of ZZ Top*

Archibald calls Bel an “exquisitely rumpled specimen”. I’m moist in the loins.

Break out those fuzzy guitars! “Sharp Dressed Man”! “Sharp Dressed Man”!

Speaking of cranky, Bel wants to know why they’re all wasting their time meeting again. Working on bringing about the end of the world due to the Word of the Message and all that other dipshittery. Bel’s the skeptic, remember? Every group of Chosen needs a skeptic, I always say.

They all watch a projection of the Message, sliding by like a marquee sign. Here’s the major takeway phrase: “The end of all things.” Debatable that an end doesn’t mean a new beginning. We could agonize for hours – days – over that one! Join us in the agonization, Hu. Join us, goddamnit.

Hu thinks that this new beginning nonsense is a load of… well, she likes it. The rest don’t. Bel argues that the Message is just a guide, like the Bible or Zagat’s restaurant books! They all actually answer to a higher power, and the higher power is dead. “And it happened right in front of us,” says Bel. “We all watched.”

So, ergo, don’t talk to Bel about the Message and the end of times. It’s all hooey. Peace out.

“How things were is not how they always will be.”

“How things are is not how they will end.”

Flashforward to the present, where things that were are not how they are now and it won’t end that way either (see, I’m paying attention). Wolf wonders if eating Ezra Orion has caused the Word to end up in him. At any rate, he can feel it squirming around in there like worms in dirt. He recites some Words from the Message, and Crow thinks it’s all hooey. Peace out.

Wolf would smile if it were nonsense, but he will not smile. He will never smile again!

I think this might be one of them Taylor Swift songs.

A floating orb drone swings on by with some information for them. “Seventeen minutes ago we received a proximity alarm from a perimeter drone. There was a breach fifteen miles southwest of here.” Shit, not Gary Busey again! That guy’s always trying to get through!

Wolf uses the orb as binoculars and sees Mao’s army at their door. And it’s sizeable enough. Lookin’ pretty hale and hearty, actually.

“So… what do you want to do about it?” asks Crow. Well, it depends on what Xiaolian Mao wants to do, innit? Let’s go pay the heartless wench a visit…

Elsewhere, Our Favorite Incompetent Three Horsemen of the Apocalypse approach the dead Psalm that was hired to kill Babylon way, way back. A dozen issues ago or so. “Well, if you were wondering how bounty hunters would fare in our fair city of Babylon… There’s your answer,” says Conquest. He steps on its skull. “Look here, dummy. You could have died for something that mattered.” Like Scientology! Or Trumpism.

They can feel Death in the air. Literally. Death and his son. They’re nearby. The air is thick and heady. With Death, you see. He wears some of that good Old Spice stuff. Very pleasant. Anyway, are we all ready to meet up with him again?? Who brought the Chex Mix? Famine, you fuckhead. Did you forget the Chex Mix?

“I suppose you have some sort of plan for how to deal with him?” Conquest asks War.

“…” War responds.

“That’s what I thought.”

Famine, meanwhile, picks up the metal Psalm helmet and takes a look at a prompt on the screen.

Hmm…getting that chip implanted in our brains may be a better idea than we thought…

“I might have some ideas we could noodle on…” Famine says. “I think you’re going to like this.”

Woop woop! Resurrect the Psalm. That’ll do what, exactly? I don’t remember! Something! Man, I gotta reread through this whole series again some day… catch what I missed the first time around.

What’s Archibald up to??? He’s watching his many security cameras. “What do we have here?” he says, taking a big puff on his stinky cigar. “It appears to be a bounty for a man already possessing an embarrassment of riches.” He watches as Mao and Wolf approach each other. “I have done plenty. I have earned this. For I am blessed with fools for enemies and now they gather… Kindling for the fire.”

He continues patting himself on the dick and asks himself if he should indulge himself one last time. One last time…

And then there’s Death and Babylon riding their beasts of burden, telling jokes and swapping war stories… then suddenly Babylon sees a giant bird in the sky. Balloon scans the suspicious creature. “Don’t bother. That ain’t no bird,” Death says, readying his pistol. It’s the Psalm robot thing and it’s buzzing up a frenzy!

NZZZZZZ! PSALM’S GETTING ANGRY!! NZZZZZZZZ!!!

Death shoots the thing right in the face and asks Babylon where this little fucker came from. “I thought there was only one of these things left and you killed it?” Balloon suggests that maybe some of the 150 Psalms went dormant during the Union purge. At any rate, not good. Death realizes this, because about 30 more suddenly descend from the sky, all NZZZZ-ing all day. Death screams for Babylon to get the CUNT out of there as fast as possible. And don’t look back! Go find a Dairy Queen or something, kid. Beat it.

“Don’t worry, Babylon,” Balloon says as they book it away. Death is getting swarmed and it doesn’t look good. “Your father will be fine.”

It doesn’t look good.

“He’s Death itself. What can stand against that?”

It looks like the Psalms killed him, lol

“I dunno… a buncha weird cyborg cult people?” Babylon watches the carnage from behind a rock, far away. Even Balloon is pessimistic now. Babylon wants to go back, but Balloon urges him to stay put. Let’s go find that Dairy Queen…

Nope, the red guy and the blue guy and the greenish-yellow guy show up. “Hello there, Babylon…” War looks quite smug. “Are you ready to become what you were born to be?”

Final Thoughts

Is Death dead? Did Death die a death. Did Death am become death? This is a wild series, ain’t it? When Death can die?

I have no other commentary. Death death death death death.