East of West

East of West
Cover of East of West 1. Art by Nick Dragotta.
Publication information
Publisher	Image Comics
Schedule	Monthly
Format	Ongoing series
Publication date(s)	March 2013 – present
No. of issues	31
Creative team
Created by	Jonathan Hickman, Nick Dragotta
Written by	Jonathan Hickman
Artist(s)	Nick Dragotta
Letterer(s)	Rus Wooton
Colorist(s)	Frank Martin

East of West is a monthly comic book series published by Image Comics which debuted in March 2013. Created by writer Jonathan Hickman and artist Nick Dragotta, the book is a science fiction Western set in a dystopian version of the United States whose fate rests with the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

At the 2012 New York Comic Con, Image Comics announced East of West as one of the publisher's new titles in 2013. The series reunited writer Jonathan Hickman and illustrator Nick Dragotta, who had previously collaborated on Fantastic Four for Marvel Comics. In an interview with Comic Book Resources, Dragotta recalled: "I remember a few email exchanges where we said we should work together again sometime, maybe do a creator-owned book. That was kind of it. It gestated for a little while when we worked on FF and our relationship grew tighter. We met at the last Image Expo and sat down for lunch. He told me he had this great idea for a Western, and I said I wanted to draw science fiction. We merged it into a sci-fi Western, and that's how the idea was born." The first issue of East of West was released on March 27, 2013.

Hickman told Previews catalog that the tagline of East of West is "The things that divide us are stronger than the things that unite us." Hickman explained, "The end times are imminent and we all hate each other too much to come together and solve our problems. Our final destination is imminent, and it is the Apocalypse. And then, in the face of all that despair and gloom, somehow there is still hope." The series, a science-fiction Western set in a dystopian America, casts the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse as heroes. Of these four characters, Hickman describes Death - a "Clint Eastwood-y" man wearing a suit, cowboy hat and skull bolo tie - as someone who feels "betrayed", and the others (War, Famine and Conquest) as feeling "abandoned". The second arc, according to Dragotta, focuses on the Chosen, "a group of elites from the Seven Nations who are working to bring about the end of the world."

East of West is set in a dystopian future of the present-day United States. In this timeline, the Civil War never ended and there was almost eternal strife between the Union, the Confederacy, African slaves, Native Americans, Chinese exiles, and Texan separatists. This strife comes to a sudden halt when a comet hits present-day Kansas on November 9, 1908. The six warring parties meet at Armistice- the location of the comet's impact- and make a truce, thereby forming "the Seven Nations of America": Armistice, The Union, The Confederacy, the Kingdom, the Endless Nation, the Republic of Texas, and the PRA of Mao. On the same day as the comet impact and the signing of the treaty, there were two simultaneous, yet independent prophecies: 1. Elijah Longstreet was a soldier in the Confederate Army under Stonewall Jackson; he wrote his part of the prophecy down and then collapsed and died. 2. Red Cloud had become the chief of chiefs to the Endless Indian Nation by defeating the many Indian chiefs and uniting all of the Indian tribes under himself; he transmitted his portion of the prophecy orally and then he too collapsed and died.