Here is an alternate-history comic book series that will blow your mind, You have to check it out to believe it. It features a surreal ATL that starts with the American Civil War and ends in 2064....
East of West
- Thread starter Mr_ Bondoc
- Start date
Here is an alternate-history comic book series that will blow your mind, You have to check it out to believe it. It features a surreal ATL that starts with the American Civil War and ends in 2064....
Here is a larger scan of that page plus the next two. Click to make larger.
East of West page 10
East of West page 11
[url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/78202013@N02/8725078706/]
East of West page 12
East of West page 10
East of West page 11
[url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/78202013@N02/8725078706/]
East of West page 12
But one thing that can be said is that the ATL portrayed in the comic, certainly goes beyond the usual CSA survival tropes of the Genre. The map shown in issue #1 creates a different model of North America. It also makes me curious about what is taking place across the globe.
One of surreal moments is the inauguration of "Antonia La Vey" as President of the United States....
Okay, I'm calling it. Jonathan Hickman is the "Harry Turtledove of comic books" and it makes perfect sense if you think about it.
Just look at his other works besides East of West, he wrote the awesomeness that is The Manhattan Projects (it's worth checking out if you wanna see Einstein kicking alien ass) and Pax Romana (which I haven't read but it involves The Vatican sending an army to 312 via time travel).
And I think his work on S.H.I.E.L.D. could count despite it taking place in mainstream Marvel Universe with agents Nathaniel Richards and Howard Stark encountering Da Vinci, Nostradamus and the villainous Issac Newton in 1950s.
I can't wait for what he has in store for the future.
Just look at his other works besides East of West, he wrote the awesomeness that is The Manhattan Projects (it's worth checking out if you wanna see Einstein kicking alien ass) and Pax Romana (which I haven't read but it involves The Vatican sending an army to 312 via time travel).
And I think his work on S.H.I.E.L.D. could count despite it taking place in mainstream Marvel Universe with agents Nathaniel Richards and Howard Stark encountering Da Vinci, Nostradamus and the villainous Issac Newton in 1950s.
I can't wait for what he has in store for the future.
I would concur, especially after reading both Manhattan Projects (with a Werner von Braun with a cybernetic arm, and a FDR A.I.) and Pax Romana.
This comic is weird as hell. It's like Deadlands mixed with Rifts. I'm definitely digging the style.
If you like that, you have to check out Hickman's next series called God is Dead Avatar Press):
Like a thunderbolt from heaven, the epic launch issue of GOD IS DEAD is here! East of West and Fantastic Four author JONATHAN HICKMAN launches a fierce new series that stomps where others fear to tread. Mankind has argued over the existence of gods since the dawn of time. In modern eras it’s been fashionable to mock religious believers with taunts of scientific testimony and fact. But when the gods of old begin to reappear on earth and claim the domain of man for their own, the world is thrown into a state of utter anarchy. Now Horus walks the streets of Egypt, Zeus has taken over the Sistine Chapel, and Odin is coordinating the dissection of the earth among the returned deities. Mankind held sway over the world for thousands of years and their hubris over that time has made them powerful but when faced with the divine, can mortal weapons put an end to the second coming of the gods?
So, East of West is finally over. The finale was sort of... meh, to be honest. Along the way the world-building was shafted into vague prophecy and unexplained metaphysics, and the characters fell into paper-thin drama, and the final fights were... anti-climatic. There were better action scenes earlier on in the series.
If anything, I thought they should have focused on the world-building efforts. While it was about the impending apocalyptic event, almost zero effort was made to explain what was happening abroad or just along the borders.
I don’t even think we needed to know global geopolitics of the setting when fundamental questions like “why is America of mythical worth” and “what was the point of the Call” weren’t event answered. Granted, it’s mostly vague comic book-level myth, but doesn’t give a great understanding of the stakes.
If anything, I understand they were trying to do a cyberpunk version of Game of Thrones or Lord of the Rings , at least from the interviews with Jonathan Hickman, but they raised the stakes so high, yet failed to explore what was outside the borders, or fully develop, why the rest of the world viewed the Americas with such mysticism.
Pax Romana ended in only a handful of issues so it's not the first time Hickman has disappointed me... but at the very least, East of West had enough material that it becomes a great jumping off point to lead to new adventures or settings, and keeps the Weird West sub-genre alive.
Hmm, I should get working on The Ballad of Broken Borders again.
Hmm, I should get working on The Ballad of Broken Borders again.
Well Pax Romana was a mini-series, and Manhattan Projects was Hickman's first attempt at a ongoing series. My guess is that much like series The Walking Dead, the story eventually ran its course, and the writers didn't know where to go next...