Spotlight on Graphic Novels: East of West, Vol. 1
East of West is a feature I’ve struggled to pick up. It’s initial pages didn’t grab me and I put it down for a while. When I was finishing it this week, it grew on me, but I keep thinking about how long it took for me to get into the story.
East of West is an apocalypse story pitting Death against War, Conquest, and Famine. Death has been injured; the exact nature of the injury is unknown. He’s seeking revenge against the other three and trying to restore his life to what it once was. Death’s family, and the world, hangs in the balance.
The story features some interesting art. It relies heavily on shading and creates some serious depth in the characters. This can be very appealing, but also very abrasive. It blends a more traditional comic book style with some more Manga proportions and stylistic elements.
Fun moment! There are some characters that are ink-black and look a bit like Drow.
The story itself takes a long time to come together. I think this really contributed to my reluctance to continue with it. I’ll be honest, if I were trying this out as single issues, I probably wouldn’t have continued on with it.
Once the story comes together a bit, we see there is a great deal of complicated internal politics within the world and interesting plays on revenge stories. What’s interesting is the ways in which it is a bit similar to Pretty Deadly in subject matter. The stories themselves are different, but share a number of elements. I would say, as well, that East of West has a better sense of long-game plot building.
The characters are already interesting. Whether they’ll continue to be explored fully remains to be seen, but I’m hopeful.
Rating: 3.5
I received a copy of East of West for free in exchange for an honest review via Netgalley.
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