East of West #10 – Review

by Jonathan Hickman (Writer), Nick Dragotta (Artist), Frank Martin (Colorist)

The Story: It’s never a good idea to get in the way of someone whose eye just got pulled out of its socket. Doubly so if it’s Death itself.

The Review: To read different books is to allow for our expectations to be adapted. A Geoff Johns book will have a particularly different focus than one written by Peter Milligan and so forth. With each writers having a particular approach toward building worlds, characters and stories, it would be silly to expect them all to be alike in their themes and their methods. It is a part of the game, yet it can be sometimes a bit frustrating if anyone forgets some specificity about some creators.

Case in point, Jonathan Hickman has always possessed a particular style that do not always makes for the most satisfying of issues. The monthly grind, in its own way, does not do a major service to the kind of stories the writer is trying to tell. With a mind set on expansive ideas, building worlds and setting up a unique mythology, the creative process behind East of West is certainly a fascinating one, yet it also suffers a bit from quite a bit of setup and not enough payoff. While the world itself was fascinating enough and the art always splendid, could this issue provide a crack in the plans of the book which might provide some sort of lesser form of enjoyment that this book could deliver before?

The actual answer is more complicated than that, as while the previous issue did seem to spin its wheels a good deal instead of actually progressing with some of the more fascinating elements, this one does so yet in a less obvious and unsatisfying manner. Without actually spoiling anything, the actual lack of payoff in this issue is part of the point, a rather brilliant one in fact, yet one that does still leave readers wanting more.