Mark Allen reviews East of West #28…
“THE FALL OF THE WHITE TOWER” The end of the Union, the fall of the Chosen.
It’s becoming increasingly hard to tell what East of West is actually about any more. Jonathan Hickman, Nick Dragotta and Frank Martin’s apocalypse saga has been loafing towards its thematic conclusion with a frustrating apathy and a tendency to digress into flashbacks and ambling subplots with little sense of narrative thrust. It’s been over three years since the first issue and all of Hickman’s story machinations seem to have resulted in simply moving the pieces around on his chessboard.
That’s perhaps unkind; after all, every once in a while he adds some new pieces to said board. Continuing East of West’s tradition of introducing new characters with distinct yet inscrutable personalities, in issue #28 we meet the hunters tasked with tracking and killing Death’s son, Babylon. These are mysterious, hard-bitten western archetypes – like much of the cast – and they act accordingly. Predictably so, in fact. It’s a safe bet that someone will get shot in any given issue, usually after exhibiting a) cowardice, b) stupidity, or c) pragmatism or just plain self-preservation. This is a world that doesn’t have patience, mercy or a respect for common sense, and the archness of that narrative tendency has been wearing thin for a while now.
Meanwhile their target wrestles with friendly giant boars and shows the floating robot controlling his every move that he’s capable of learning things on his own, much to his “Balloon”’s dismay. As mentioned in a previous review, some plot strands are more compelling than others, and Babylon’s warped coming of age as both the Antichrist and a brainwashed prisoner of political leaders is probably the most intriguing. Sadly, because of East of West’s overstuffed narrative his story is given only a few pages to allow other elements to align themselves (namely a one-way conversation between the boy’s parents, one of whom is the all-but-forgotten central character).
Dragotta and Martin do their best with the dialogue and exposition-heavy scenes, but no amount of striking character design (one of the hunters is flying cyborg disturbingly lacking in human features, but his uncanny qualities are undercut by Hickman’s staid dialogue) or dusty, evocative colour can lift this issue above its plotting-by-numbers feeling. It’s clear that East of West is heading towards a conclusion of some kind, but it looks like we might hit the real apocalypse before we reach it.
Rating: 3/10
Mark Allen
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Originally published July 28, 2016. Updated April 15, 2018.
