East of West #16

Sixteen: Let It Burn
written by Jonathan Hickman
art by Nick Dragotta
colors by Frank Martin

Texas falls.  It falls quickly.  Bel Solomon, still with the seditious spirit of the assassinated Cheveyo whispering in his ear, and his Rangers do their best to stave off the onslaught of the Endless Nation's machines of war, but they are overrun.  And War, Famine, and vaunting Conquest come to glory in their victory and the devastation that the war leaves in its wake.

These three Horsemen are crude instruments.  Like the self-aggrandizing humans they scorn—foolishly imagining themselves above the petty, animal motivations that instigate such savage conflict—they think themselves great, above the self-flattery and self-deceit that governs the "meat," the "apes," drinking blood from the sun-bleached skull, Conquest riding his bicycle-bars-bridled giant.  If Conquest is triumphant, War is seductively blissful.  Satisfied, and luxuriating in the blood of the battle-slain.  So begins the second year of the Apocalypse.

The White Tower of the Union is besieged from within.  Still fighting semi-organized insurgencies and widespread political unrest, still financially weak and beholden to the Kingdom of New Orleans for credit, and now unable to broker any peace with the Endless Nation, who beheaded their diplomatic emissary, President LeVay with her untrustworthy Chief of Staff Doma Lux finds herself vulnerable to the interference of foreign powers, who may very well be supplying insurgent efforts with weapons.  But from her office in Washington, LeVay might very well exist in an entirely different world from the hangings in Texas.  It's a testament to Hickman's storytelling that the commingling of such disparate genres blend with as great an ease as they do, that a political thriller could sit alongside public lynchings.

The last Ranger, formerly tasked by Solomon to kill the Chosen, returns to save Solomon from the gallows...for the time being.  As ever, his robot dog is the charismatic lead in the rescue, slinking among the crowd in a cloak shitting decoy and distraction bombs, lassoing Solomon and dragging him away from danger.  Hickman's mechanical Nation representative, spouting ironic doctrine and decrying the tyranny of the former governor, is a worthy villain for the moment.  When the Ranger later chastises him—Where was I born, Bel?  Did I not wear the star?  It's not your nation... It never was.  It was the people's" (East of West #16: 26)—his arrogance is laid bare.  Whatever Solomon's crimes, the rest of Texas did not deserve its fate.  But Dragotta's near-wordless account of the rescue is spectacular.

Meanwhile, the most welcome return, spotted on the horizon—a metaphor that Premier Xiolian is likely to entertain, like hope or an illusion—is her husband Death.  "I think hope will be the death of us" (24), she thinks.  But the Nation have come calling.  Unsurprisingly, they too overestimated their power, and underestimated the need for soldiers as well as weapons in their war. 

[December 2014]