(courtesy Alterna Comics (c) Evan Young & Lou Iovino)
Alternate histories are a flourishing genre and a really creative way to already established events that we now take for granted but which substantially changed the way our world is and how it works.
The Last West by Evan Young & Lou Iovino with illustrations by Novo Malgapo does an arrestingly good job of giving us a whole new perspective on a pivotal historical event, wondering what might’ve happened if the first test of the atomic bomb in 1945 didn’t work and as a result, World War Two never ends, all progress, whether it’s technological, cultural or artistic & social simply grinds to a halt and the bold, seemingly unstoppingly forward momentum of humanity runs its an obstacle too great to overcome.
This essentially means that the world is plunged into aspic, preserved as it was on that fateful day in 1945 with no internet, no computers, no new music etc etc.
Given our nature is to enquire and stretch and grow, often times productively but alas sometimes not, what does that do to who we are and the kind of people and society we want to be?
As author Jonathan Wood observes in his sagely thoughtful introduction to Volume 1 of The Last West, it doesn’t do us much good at all, with the writer observing that “Things cannot be preserved forever. Repetition grinds them down.”
The result is a world that is functioning but barely, robbed of its power, zest and progress, all of which is captured with graphic realism by Malgapo who gives us a world that looks like a museum of 1940s war and life sprung into motion, but one that feels sluggish and bruised and bereft of any sense of things changing or growing.
The world-building of The Last West is immaculately and immersively good, offering us both in words and art, a place that suffers under the hand of a people convinced that this is it and no more can be done; hope is there but it’s fainthearted and perfunctory, the utterings of a society that wants to be believe things can change but which has long given up the idea that it actually will.
As a study, and a story, examining what happens to the human spirit when all it does is spin the wheels and mark time, The Last West is brilliantly done, taking a little of what we say during COVID lockdowns when the world stopped in its tracks and people had nothing to do beyond keeping the engines turning though with no discernible change or progress.
(courtesy Alterna Comics (c) Evan Young & Lou Iovino)
While those lockdowns over two years felt like they lasted a lifetime, they are nothing compared to the sixty or so years of the world in statis that is explored in The Last West.
People are tired and want something new but no one has the strength or vision anymore to ask what that could look like?
Except for one man, a lecturer at a science institute in Manhattan, Professor Whittenheimer, and the grandson of the man behind the bomb tests in 1945, who begins to wonder why a particular man, Stephen West, was suddenly absent on that fateful day and why that seems to have changed the course of history.
His initial enquiries usher in a detective hunt of epic proportions, with someone, somewhere seemingly intent on erasing all mention of Stephen West and his family from history which might stop lesser enquiring minds but which fails to dent the enthusiasm and tenacity of the lecturer to get to the bottom of things.
What then unravels breathlessly and with fascinating mix of historical fact and imaginative what-ifs in The Last West will keep you turning the page with alacrity, eager to see what happens next in a universe where “next” has a habit of looking exactly as every other moment that’s gone before it.
The big question throughout this fantastically good story and its accompanying superlatively good artwork which brings the life voraciously and graphically to life, is what might have happened if Stephen West had been there and is he or his family the key to jumpstarting humanity’s stalled upward climb to glory?
No one can know for sure, but as far as Professor Whittenheimer is concerned, it’s better than simply existing as is which is doing no one any favours and which is reducing to a weird Xerox of itself, condemned to fade over time into a pale imitation of what drove it forward previously.
As stories go, this is up there with the best, augmented by art that brings emotions and big questions to the fore, with The Last West daring to wonder what we would be like if the world lost its spark and whether that would see us flourish still or lose our heart and soul to enervation.
As stories go, this is up there with the best, augmented by art that brings emotions and big questions to the fore, with The Last West daring to wonder what that would do us as a species and what might happen if someone finally decided this could go on no longer …
(courtesy Alterna Comics (c) Evan Young & Lou Iovino)