The Good
As inventive and genre-bending as EAST OF WEST is, it's still a story, and like almost all stories about humans or their constructs, love is at its core. Destructive, world-altering love, in this case.
I wasn't expecting payoff for following along with Hickman's deliciously complex story quite this early, but it's here. Love is the driving force behind Death's impatient, violent course, and since War, Famine, and Conquest are out looking for Death, it's ultimately driving them as well. There's something almost mythological about a human being at the center of this conflict-of-gods, and that this human is tied into a conflict of her own familial love makes it downright literary.
Dragotta's art shifts from beautiful and serene to visceral and violent with amazing fluidity, and it's his panels that make this book truly feel like a Western. The flashback confrontation between Hu and Xiaolian, just before War, Famine, and Conquest descend into an ambush, might as well be a frozen frame from a somber moment in a classic gunslinger, just before things get bloody.
The Bad
In a rare move for such a complex, cerebral series, Hickman takes an aside to sledgehammer readers with the core concept. The conversation between Death's witch companions seems almost out of place, since we've been left to our own devices to source out themes and navigate complicated plot threads thus far.
The Verdict
EAST OF WEST has been fast-paced and jammed an incredible amount of world-building into the first two issues, but this third slows it down a hitch to dive into the story's core. It's a welcome shift in pace and tone, because the emotional backbone of this story is worth savoring. And, like a slow breeze in a Western, this issue feels like a signal that dangerous, exciting things are on the very immediate horizon.