Welcome to Ghostliness & Nerfherders Presents: East of West, Issue #45 – “War”! The final, spine-tingling issue of another fantastic series by Image Comics. They really knock it out of the park. No shitty Supermans here!

In the previous installment, the final showdown is being set up. Xiaolian Mao’s army is still holding strong, and now Thomas the Hunter is in the mix. Death traded in his other eyeball to the Oracle for her help. The three Horsemen are boning Babylon up on his Great Beast lessons.

This is the end! The legitimate end! How is it all wrapping up? I’m so titillated right now that I am SHITTING in my DIAPER. Let’s get a goddamn move on here. Why am I yapping and jawing?

East of West, Issue #45 [December, 2019]
Written by: Jonathan Hickman
“War”

“We live like we will never die.“

Cheveyo haunts the Texas Man. “Be careful now, Bel… We’re at that thin place where any separation between the waking world and the other side is illusory. We are both in peril here.” Oh, ok, I get it. Now that they’re both in peril, Cheveyo gives a shit.

Archibald stares at the Hunter — “Justice” — and tells him to bring it on, hoser.

Justice stares at Archibald and tells him he WILL bring it on, honky.

It’s dueling time, and we all know that Archibald is the fastest duel this side of the east of the west. He first decides to chastise Bel for making some pretty poor choices over the years, not least of all his clothing selection. For serious. Dude needs to find some clothes that fit.

So, Archibald gives him a chance to join him in putting down Justice. Justice, of course, is getting bored hearing this suave motherfucker yap yap yap yap yap yap yap.

“Shoot him, Bel. Right between the goddamn eyes,” says Cheveyo. He’s totally talking about Archibald. It’s very obvious.

Archibald continues to yap. Of course he does.

Do my dirty work for me, Bel. There’s a good lapdog.

At the last second, Bel turns his gun toward Archibald and pulls the trigger…

*click* *click* *click* *click* *click*

“I won’t lie.” Archibald looks toward Bel with an air of disappointment. “You wound me, friend.”

Cheveyo actually didn’t want Bel to shoot Archibald between the eyes, as it turns out. I was fooled! “Do you know what you’ve done?” he asks the petrified Bel.

“Couldn’t risk giving you a loaded gun – the man who does that deserves what he gets… But you coulda been a bit better bait, Bel. This is just ingratitude. And I will suffer that from you no longer.” Archibald shoots the mope. Cheveyo yells that Bel has just killed them both.

Quick as a wink, Archibald turns to Thomas the Justice Hunter for Justice and they both simultaneously shoot.

Ahhh, reminds me of childhood. Friends shooting each other with live rounds. Memories…

Archibald catches Thomas in the ribs below his heart. A miss!

Thomas catches Archibald in the left side of his chest. A hit! Right through the lung, it is!

“The indignity of it…” Archibald whines. “Being struck down by a do-gooder. I just might die of shame before I bleed out.

“I doubt that.” Thomas pulls back the hammer and aims. “Any last words?”

Of course Archibald has last words! He has enough last words to cause Thomas to die of starvation and exposure right here on the spot. He basically asks for everyone to remember him as someone who made a difference. Then he gets shot right in the head.

Exactly. Pretending anything matters now is meaningless! Bye, Archibald.

I remember way back when that Thomas promised two things: a) he’d make sure all the Chosen were dead, and b) he’d make sure Bel was the last he’d kill.

Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but we still have Freeman and Xiaolian walking around breathing and living. So Thomas is going to break his Prhomas! Er… I mean, promise.

Archibald’s talking eyeball looks frantic! “Before you act, do you think? Do you ever doubt, do you ever blink? Have you considered your actions’ cost? Rethink what you’re doing before all is–”

“Shut up.” Thomas blows the fucker up with a gunblast.

Bel remembers Thomas’ promises. He’ll kill him last (again, not really, but whatever).

“Once… once I was a great man, wasn’t I?”

“Yes, Bel, you were… I remember.”

“Once great… and now what am I?”

BLAM

“Chosen.”

“We die exactly like we lived.”

“It has always been this way.”

Death and the Oracle are riding Death’s bug horse to the Valley of the Gods. As I recall from two issues ago, two or more Horsemen need to be around to take the shortcut. Death’s gotta go the long way. So it goes.

“Nice name for an awful place. Not one good thing has ever happened there…”

“And that won’t change today,” Oracle responds.

Ok. You smell bad.

There’s nothing but death in the Valley of the Gods, and even Death can’t escape it. Really makes you think, doesn’t it? Maybe? Yes? No? Yes? No? Yes!

They arrive, and the little brat is waiting for them. “Dad!” says the little brat. “Ha! I knew you’d come for me.” They hug. Babylon says he’s actually been having fun! “What happened to your eyes?” he says, and he’s one to talk. Death says it’s just a scratch or two, but he’ll need Babylon’s help to get around. Please and thank you.

“War, Conquest, and Famine are just over there. I told them that you guys don’t have to fight – that you’d forgive them if they asked for it.”

“Okay,” Death responds in the smallest voice imaginable.

“You think that’ll happen?”

“I do not.”

lol

The three other Horsemen are waiting like Death is some sort of delicious Thanksgiving dinner. Death tells the little brat to step aside; there’s work to do.

Famine thinks that they’ll be able to bring the Death part of Babylon out of him if they kill the source first! Fight time! Famine leaps with her Mickey Rourke from Iron Man 2 electric whips. Death blasts her with his bug horse. Famine loses her legs, but the fight’s not over yet! Another lunge, and Death cuts off her head.

“You don’t have to fight him, Conquest,” Babylon whimpers as he sits on the now spent bug horse. “Just let us go… Please? You’re, like, my second favorite Horseman.”

Nothing doing.

Conquest looks like one of those gross John Kricfalusi close-ups.

Conquest becomes a giant Hellbeast-lite with a big, visible butthole. His true form, as it were. Let’s get it on, homie.

Death immediately shoots some gun bullets through Conquest’s sword-holding arm. He then picks it up and disembowels his blue friend. Conquest looks gross – grosser – now, and dead besides.

“I’ve said it before, and I meant it – I have always loved to watch you work…. But you have never really appreciated mine.”

War flings his stupid red hat like a boomerang. It slices off Death’s sword-holding arm. War then duel-wields pistols and starts hammering bullets through his chest. “HRRKKK!!” he says gurgly. Babylon gets worried. Balloon assesses Death’s condition: hurt badly! “Dad! Dad! You have to get up!”

War becomes his/her true form: some hulking, sinewy reptile thing. War says he’s/she’s teaching Babylon a lesson… one Death taught him/her.

Let’s just call War a “she/her”.

Death orders Balloon to lift Babylon up in the air, and Balloon complies.

War’s lesson is this: love won’t keep someone from being taken from you. “The only thing that matters is can you protect them – can you save them if they need saving?” War impales Death with one of her weird appendages. “See, Babylon… running – hiding – is never really an option. You’re just prolonging the inevitable.”

Pfffft, that’s barely going to hurt, right? Eyeballs are bouncy, right?

Balloon had lifted Babylon over War’s head, and now Babylon descends toward her with a large knife. “YYYAARRRR!” he yells. Knife right in the ol’ eyeball, baby.

THUNK! BOOM! War implodes into a mess of fire and, like, vapors and stuff. Balloon’s assessment of Death is now inconclusive. Babylon rushes over to him to see if he’s ok, but Death cares more about Babylon’s wellbeing instead of his own. Like a real dad! Not a deadbeat like you, the reader.

“Are you hurt?” Death asks.

“No. Just a little grossed out by all the Horsemen muck.”

“Then let’s get outta here… sound good?”

“Sounds great!”

Death and Oracle are done now. “Now… ask me your last question before we part and never speak again,” Oracle says with a wry grin. Death doesn’t want her to make him come out and say it. It’s embarrassing!

Which way to Xiaolian?

West. But also east. You know. East of west. As it were. Nah, just kidding. Go west. “West, toward the setting of the sun… and the death of light.” Very poignant.

That’s east, stupid.

*intermission*

*Perfect Strangers theme music plays*

Xiaolian stands in the middle of a desert; a ruined shell of a woman, praying to her gods of choice. Speaking to Death, telling him she failed miserably at everything she ever set out to do, including win a war. She’s not dead, though, so that’s a plus. Not very many Chosen can say that right now. “Oh god… please be alive,” she says in a quiet voice. And she prays that her son is with him right now.

The rest are ready for her. The ruined Armistice, where the Chosen once convened for civil discussion. John Freeman VIII presides over the group which now includes, besides Xiaolian, Wolf, Crow, King Freeman, Sharra, Constance, Bodaway, and Chevy Chase. These are the End Times, now. Everyone shut your yaps and listen to your Prophet.

*clears throat* Ahem, good evening ladies and germs. I just flew in from Las Vegas, and boy are–

Wolf pulls out a large, boring sheet of paper and starts a’speechin’. Old world is dead, let’s make something new. We’ve destroyed each other with violence, yada yada yada. Wolf pulls out a quill. The Endless Nation now controls the Union, and with it comes a treaty of peace. “If the elders see it in them not to object.”

Yeah yeah, whatever you say. Can we go home? Football is on. Football yo.

Bodaway agrees.

Constance is worried that Archibald’s recent actions lately might not spur any truces with Confederacy. No reciprocity there.

King Freeman has already paid his debts.

Xiaolian is like “let’s just do this, you proud chucklefucks.”

Ok.

They all have their own reasons in the end, but they all sign the treaty.

Politics!

Xiaolian leaves on a ship with the intention to find her weird, white husband. She’s a broken, beaten woman. But she’s alive and Archibald isn’t! That’s a total win in my book. Fuck Archibald, that snakey snake in the snakey grass.

Babylon drags his decrepit father across the plains, promising they’ll be there soon! Balloon corrects him that it’s actually another several hundred miles, but who’s really counting? Right? The bug horse bumps into a rock and Death collapses to the ground. Babylon is frantic, but Death is on his last legs. All that dopamine and serotonin shooting to his brain is nice and soothing, son. Just leave him there to decompose into well-placed bones.

“Balloon?” Death gurgles.

“Yes?”

“You… you know what you have to do now, right?”

“Yes I know. You can depend on me. We will find Xiaolian.

“That’s not what I mean. And you know it.”

“…”

“Dad…” Babylon interjects. “Dad, I tried. I just… I couldn’t stop them. I’m… I’m sorry I couldn’t save you.”

THAT’S OK, SON! HARDY HAR HAR, BUT WE SURE HAD FUN DIDN’T WE?!

Babylon sobs and kisses his dying dad. After covering him with rocks, Balloon sends Babylon up in the air.

The population is gathered around in the Machine City of the Endless Nation. “Do you hear the cheers… they are for you, Wolf. And they are well-earned.” Crow congratulates Wolf on his Wolfy diplomacy. Freeman comments on how loud it is outside.

Let’s not let people wait! Wolf puts on his dumb crown that looks like the sun and Freeman introduces the benevolent one. “BORN OF THE EAST! CHILD OF THE WEST! THE ONE! TRUE SON! OF AMERICA!”

*yay* *woo* *hooray*

Oh no no no, you haven’t convinced me yet!

Fireworks go off! Everyone commemorates the dawn of a new age! Pants all around get filled with celebratory poop!

While everyone revels in the Endless Nation, Babylon flies with Balloon to ruins of New Shanghai looking for mommy dearest.

“Babylon, do you remember how Death said there’s something he needed me to do?”

“Yeah.”

“Well. We have to talk about how you see the world.”

Of course, as you know, a landfill covered with used condoms and radioactive waste would look like a flowery meadow through Babylon’s visor eyeballs. He ain’t know the difference, obviously.

“Uh, infrared. Night vision. Thermal. I see just fine. Always have.”

“Actually, you don’t. That helmet you wear – the one that connects you and me, it’s… it’s…”

“I know what it is. You run simulations. You teach me what I’m really seeing when I look at the world. It’s how I learned everything I know. You taught me.”

*tugs collar nervously*

“Yes. But I was programmed to show you the world the way that the Chosen wanted. As a broken thing that needed to be destroyed. I was programmed to lie.”

Well, I’m glad we were able to sidestep that one gracefully! What’s next? Oh, look, in the distance! A terrifying-looking harpy! “Babylon? Babylon?” the creature yells as it rushes toward him like a banshee in heat.

And as long as Babylon is wearing the helmet, that’s what she looks like.

NOW HOW ABOUT A KISSSSSSSS??

Balloon yells for Babylon to take the helmet off, but Babylon wants to run! Run far, far away!

“No. You have to take it off. I promised your father. Trust me! Trust him! TAKE IT OFF!”

Ok, he listens. And it looks like it tears off half his skin at first, but it doesn’t. Just a bunch of connectors, I suppose. He looks like a normal boy, head full of hair, cherubic cheeks that I just want to pinch. Just noogie the crap out of him. He takes one look at his mother and the hellish landscape around him…

“Everything is so… so…”

They hug.

“Beautiful.”

We end with the rebuilding of New Shanghai. When things fall, they get rebuilt. Society goes forward. It’s called progress.

“Here’s what your father would’ve said: It’s easy to destroy things. To break them. Toe even kill them. Nations. Buildings. People… Everything in the world is just… fragile. But what holds it together ain’t at all. Love. It’ll outlast everything on this planet. It’s what formed the Earth. It’s what shaped it… Love’s what makes someone give their life for another – makes them do it without ever thinking twice. It’s what makes this world home.”

“And don’t you ever forget it.”

Final Thoughts

After 44.85 issues of pessimism, nihilism, war, destruction, death, betrayal, torture, and suffering, I didn’t expect that ending at all. I liked it! Legitimately touching, and I was always rooting for Xiaolian anyway. She never gave a shit about the Chosen hoodoo, and she tamed Death! Xiaolian’s a badass!

So good for her.

I’m sad to see this story end, but there are always other stories. Looking forward to finding the next great thing. Toodles.