"The things that divide us are stronger than the things that unite us."

I’ve always been fascinated by stories about alternate history. Books and tv shows like The Man in the High Castle are both at once horrifying in their portrayal of how history could have gone wrong and inspiring in their vision of other worlds that could’ve been. The attention to detail in the worldbuilding of these kinds of stories is what made me a fan of science fiction. That’s why when I heard the premise of the comic book series East of West I felt like it was a story written just for me. As with alternate history sc-fi, I’m also a fan of Civil War history, maybe because the scars of the Civil War are still evident in society today. But what if it’d never ended? What if instead of one united America, there were seven warring territories? This is the world imagined by Jonathan Hickman and Nick Dragotta. East of West presents a brutal free-for-all between the fragments of North America that mirrors our own split country of today.

It all started back during the Civil War as we know it, except in this alternate timeline the hundreds of Native American tribes in America are united under one chieftain, Red Cloud. The newly dubbed Endless Nation, comprising most of the entire Midwest, wages war against the Union causing a stalemate to be reached between the Confederacy and the Union. Slaves in the Confederacy revolt and take over land from New Orleans to Mississippi and create a new nation by and for African Americans, the Kingdom of New Orleans. Texas also splits off from the Confederacy and takes territory in the southwest with it, becoming the Republic of Texas. Because the Endless Nation is in the way of the Union’s westward expansion, the entire West coast is never developed by American pioneers and is instead colonized by Chinese exiles, leading that territory to become the People’s Republic of America. The Union, while being the faction we should identify most with, is unrecognizable. For instance, the White House is now an enormous monstrosity and an impenetrable citadel. All the nations have been shaped by years of unending war and while they are each interesting individually, the real fun of the comic is seeing these proud and advanced civilizations, each with their own distinct culture and motives, interact with one another with deadly consequences.

The genres this story encompasses are as diverse as the characters that inhabit it, it’s at once sci-fi, and a western, and dystopian, and a war story, but it’s rife with conspiracy, romance, and revenge. This is a world of robot horses, shape-shifters, laser cannons, demons, talking eyeballs and holograms. As if all the factions and technology weren’t enough, the story is framed by following the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse who have arrived to end this doomed world. We’re thrown into the story en media res by bringing the four horsemen out of the ground, except one of the horsemen is missing, Death. For reasons not yet known to the reader, Death is at odds with the other horsemen and wants nothing to do with them or the Apocalypse, instead choosing to go assassinate the President.

This storytelling technique reminded me of deep fantasy and sci/fi like Game of Thrones that put you in a world with history that has existed long before the reader that the reader isn’t aware of. This technique is great at worldbuilding but runs the risk of being too confusing to the reader. Like Monstress, there is a lot going on and the info dumps could be overwhelming but the art helps organize the reader’s thoughts and make everything smooth to read. The art of this graphic novel from Dragotta cannot be overlooked for how important it is to the story. The art keeps the story fluid and is extremely expressive. The text might lack character at times because it is so focused on exposition since it needs to explain this bizarre world, but the art makes up for it by depicting these characters in intriguing and beautiful ways.

Something that surprised me was the nuanced representation of minorities. Since they have their own country, you get to see Native Americans with actual political agency. They are among, if not the most, advanced technological faction and it was a breath of fresh air to see Native Americans not acting “savage” but instead being their own characters. Some of the best depictions of minorities empowered by having their own nation come from the Kingdom of New Orleans. Too many times in media that attempts to be progressive there is the existence of token black characters that exist solely to check off a quota or are black incidentally because if you looked purely at their dialogue or story arc you wouldn’t be able to tell they’re black. In East of West there are black characters whose blackness isn’t just incidental to their character but are extremely important to who they are and how they act in the story. Even though there is a lot of minority representation they aren’t simply good or bad either. In all of the factions there’s in-fighting and people who are good but do bad things and vice versa. There is nuance in other parts of the story too. The fact that the Civil War drags on in this universe because the Endless Nation unites against the Union shows how the Union wasn’t perfect. We like to think of the Union as the “good guys” in the Civil War, fighting against slavery. And while that was certainly the right thing at the same time the Union was exterminating and exiling Native Americans so they weren’t entirely good. The story at one point narrates “Soon the Union found itself fighting a war on two fronts- Righteousness and tyranny, and the resulting quagmire suited their hypocrisy.” The “righteousness” and “tyranny” being spoken of refers to the fact that the Union was being righteousness by waging a war to end slavery but at the same time was treating Natives as less than human.

The nuance and divisions in this story speak to how the author wrote all this with current events in mind. Even though it came out in 2013 it reflects our modern day political climate all too well, to the point that in 2016 the author, Hickman, tweeted out “I may not be the best writer in comics but I am the most prophetic” after Donald Trump won the election. The author’s mission statement for this story can be summed up as “The things that divide us are stronger than the things that unite us.” This is the tagline Hickman chose to advertise the story and it’s the perfect elevator pitch for the story he tried to tell. It’s a clever rework of a famous quote from President JFK’s 1961 address to Canadian Parliament and shows how different our country today is from the one in 1961. Today we actually live in a world where the things that divide us are stronger than the ones that unite us, as evidenced by just turning on the tv or looking at news headlines. So if you want to know what happens in that kind of world, pick up East of West, you won’t be disappointed.

WARNING: However, I wouldn’t recommend this to someone who doesn’t like graphic violence. On one hand there is a good amount of gore, on the other the violence, for as much of it as there is, isn’t something that is indulged in, instead violence is treated the way it is, ugly and sad and it is done in a stylish and tasteful way.