I panned East of West #1 last month because I thought it was cliché and dull. Now that Hickman’s had another issue to establish tone, however, I’m less nonplussed. Hickman’s brushstrokes in #1 were too broad for even a broad story in an often-broad medium. I couldn’t tell if the seriousness was supposed to be witty, and couldn’t take the wit seriously. In #2, however, he’s placed tongue firmly in cheek, and, at least currently, straightened East of West out of its wobble.

This review, like the back of my fridge, is full of spoilers. I wish that was a pun because my fridge smells like crap.

In East of West #2, the Three Horsemen of the Apocalypse (Death’s a solo act now) kill their way down the Presidential chain of command. War, Famine and Pestilence are looking for a politician who believes in doomsday prophecies, apparently failing to realize that Washington is full of economists and campaign strategists who have made a religion of this. The big three murder most of the Cabinet before finding that the Secretary of the Interior—Antonia LaVey—will play ball.

Hickman pulls the American Church of Satan trump card—Antonia LaVey’s a neon-sign explicit reference to ACoS founder/shaved head enthusiast Anton LaVey—and apparently signals that his story’s all in good fun, doom and gloom and gore aside. But then there’s more seriousness/exposition when the heads of the alternate history governments (the Republic of Texas, the Kingdom of New Orleans, the Duchy of French Lick) meet and marvel at the shady prophecy that’s driven this story since the first few pages. On one hand, East of West seems to be a send-up of alternate history, with the consciously stereotyped characters. Simultaneously, the buildup lends the story legitimate intrigue, and Hickman’s portrayal of Death as a stoic gunfighter is hardly comic. Serious or not, he’s investing himself as fully in this universe’s creation as he does in The Manhattan Projects.

Nick Dragotta and Frank Martin’s art lends credibility to Hickman’s world-building. The colors are beautiful. They come close to Tony Harris or Dave Stewart. I don’t know who’s responsible for the progression of colors in the issue, but the palette slides along the color spectrum—reds to orange-yellows to blues to blacks—in a way that involves the reader in the characters’ emotions.

Worth the Money? Skim it first. If you can handle copious beheadings, some scenes are pretty enough to possibly warrant purchase.