East of West

Jonathan Hickman and Nick Dragotta launched East of West at Image Comics in March 2013. This science-fiction western imagines a dystopian America divided into seven nations while powerful figures work to bring about an apocalypse. The Four Horsemen are central to the conflict, though their roles are far from straightforward.

The series stretches a western's familiar tensions—territory, vengeance, alliances—across a speculative political map. Its large cast moves through competing plans for the future, making the coming end feel manufactured as much as foretold.

The comic ran to issue #45 in December 2019. Its length gave Hickman and Dragotta room to make the divided continent more than background for a single quest. Image described it from the start as a story in which influential people collaborate to manufacture catastrophe.

That idea gives the apocalypse an unusual moral shape. Doom is not merely descending from outside history; it is also being organized by people with power. The series' epic scale is built from political choices and private motives.

The seven-nation future turns the American landscape into alternate history. Technology, western imagery, and religious prophecy operate together, making no single genre sufficient to explain the world.

The Horsemen supply mythic pressure, but the setting continually returns to institutions and borders. Its speculative future asks how a society might divide itself until the end seems easier to engineer than cooperation.

Dragotta's pages move between dusty open country and cramped political spaces. Image highlighted his intricate treatment of both. The contrast keeps the series' western scale connected to its plotting rooms and cities.

Figures are sharply staged within those environments, giving scenes a strong sense of confrontation. The art can make a landscape feel mythic, then narrow attention to a face or gesture that reveals the human decision behind the spectacle.