East of West, Issue #43 – “Famine”

* Part 14 of 16 of the The Apocalypse: Year Three storyline *

Welcome to Ghostliness & Nerfherders Presents: East of West, Issue #43 – “Famine”! In the previous installment, we battle between the Three Unreasonable Horsemen and the One More Reasonable Horseman breaks out on the ground. This is a flashback, you see. Death kills the three. Bel Solomon kills Death.

The most groundbreaking information from this flashback is that War is in love with Death and Death doesn’t return the sentiment. Does it explain a lot? Maybe! I’d have to go back and read through the series again for any subtext, but I don’t know why I didn’t see this coming a mile away.

This flashback was the only event of Issue #42. We’ll probably pick up where we left off with the Archibald/Xiaolian clash already in progress!

East of West, Issue #43 [October, 2019]
Written by: Jonathan Hickman
“Famine”

“We’ve taken everything you love.“

War, Conquest, and Famine are hangin’ with Babylon and Balloon. Babylon asks if his dad is hurt or ok; the two different states of being. Well, War says he’ll keep his end of the deal. But Death? The loose cannon? Who fucking knows?

Anyway, this War/Death thing goes back millennia. Eons. Conquest tells Babylon to forget about it, it’s trivial and stupid and full of weird Horseman horomones. “So… you ready to go to school? It’s a short walk to begin the long journey of becoming the Great Beast.”

So where to, Chuckles? In a nutshell, when two or more Horsemen are together they can shape the world in a way no man can. Conquest proves this by taking a huge sword and whacking the lake with it, opening a staircase. That’s convenient! Let’s descend, shall we? Age before beauty. Hup two.

Down the stairs into the underground leads to a vast, open desert.

“So what’s this place called?” asks Babylon.

“It’s the Valley of the Gods,” Famine answers. “We died here.”

“Let’s see if you can take it back.”

Near the Armistice, Freeman and Wolf wait for the clash. Freeman says waiting is the worst part. Wolf disagrees. The worst part is the unnecessary conflict and carnage. That’s an easy lob and you whiffed it, Freeman.

“Why are you talking like our hands are clean in all this, Wolf? Brother… they are not.”

It will surely be a lovely wedding!

Wolf doesn’t argue with that. He gets a bit introspective sometimes, clouding his vision of what will actually happen. These two mopes, Archibald and Mao, they’re going to fucking kill each other. “And we’re going to what… just watch?” Wolf asks rather incredulously. Freeman smiles wryly. “Yes,” he responds. “We are going to watch.”

Meanwhile, Archibald and Bel Solomon pore over their war plans and maps and charts and journals and fanfictions.

“Are you as thrilled as I am at the prospect of victory?” Archibald asks earnestly.

“Go to hell,” Bel grumbles. He still has his hands tied behind his back BDSM-style.

The General warns Archibald that there are thousands more force than they expected. Archibald answers with a mighty “Hrmpt!” and tells him to hold all their forces. Bel hopes Archibald chokes on all this spilled blood.

BOOM!

Mao’s armies attack in full force. Loaded tanks. Screaming soldiers. Bloodshed and butchery.

“How long has it been since you actually faced someone as a man?” Bel asks his fancy mustachioed friend. “Did you think they would just give up and run?”

Pffft, Archibald has so many Aces up his sleeve that he had to buy 50 packs of cards. That’s 200 Aces! Let ‘em fucking retaliate! Watch this:

THUNK! THUNK! Giant machine gun robots! Like something out of Star Wars. They stomp and blast and blast and stomp. Mao grits her teeth. This bites! She wasn’t expecting this! Hrmpt!

Let us take a break from the wartime pleasantries and focus on Death at the Axis. He spends days descending the endless staircase. He walks the bridge and visits his eyeless Oracle buddy. His rhyming eyeball pipes in that Death has another eye to give!

Roses are red / violets are blue / you look like a monkey, and you smell like one too / Amen

Let us get back to the wartime pleasantries! “It’s a shame, really. I expected more. But what is life, except a series of disappointments.” Archibald takes a fat drag of his cigar and watches his enemies blow up and burn.

“You’re slaughtering them.” Bel’s eyes bug out.

“Yes. Like the swine they are…” Archibald’s eyes also bug out. “See them scream, Mister Solomon. See them squeal…”

“We’re not just ending a nation here today… we are putting an end to a rival for all time. I want to extinguish the very idea of them as a people. I want them erased from history. Do you know what that is called, Bel?”

“What, goddamn you? What?”

“It is called…”

“VICTORY!” screams remnants of Mao’s army.

“We knew that Chamberlain had some new machinery of war… we just had to draw them out. Are our people in place?” asks Xiaolian from a high precipice.

“Yes, great Mao.”

“Then send word to what we buried in the battlefield.”

Fire starts raining down from the sky. Widowmakers plunge into the field. Some leap atop the giant Star Wars robots and drop bombs into the cockpits.

Now there’s a standoff on the ground between Mao’s army and Archibald’s army. Archibald’s team is sending in a shuttle. A literal shuttle, one that looks like it could be launched in space and blown up due to faulty design just like Challenger!