Who is Legend (All Dudes Edition)

As I’d hoped, my previous blog post did spark some conversation about who Legend really is, with at least one name tossed out that I hadn’t considered.  Since we’ve covered all the possibilities of the female persuasion (though I did miss a few the first time out…head on back and scroll to the bottom to see who I added!), I thought I’d go over all the men-folk this time, just in case I’m barking up the wrong tree with that “Don’t blame a girl for wishing” comment.

Now, before I get started, let me cross one name off the suspect list, despite having multiple run-ins with Hex: Swamp Thing.  Seriously, the two of them have crossed paths three times over the past 36 years, but if you’re gonna try and convince me that big ol’ Swampy squeezed himself into that armor without anything oozing out, you’ve got a serious uphill battle, kiddo.

And for those wondering why the Lord of Time isn’t on here, even though he’d seem like the #1 contender for Legend due to him fucking with Hex on two separate occasions…that dude was slaughtered within the first few pages of the Justice League: Dark Tomorrow Special.  Seriously, one of them Omega Demons punched a hole though his chest.  Seems he changed his name to Epoch at some point -- a fact I learned when checking up on his status for this post -- so I didn’t know it was him when I read the comic.  Damn shame, as I was formulating an “Iron Lad from Young Avengers” situation in my head.

Okay, same rules as last time, minus the presumption that Legend is female.  Here we go...

SUPERMAN: Only a single meeting near the end of J&J’s All-Star Western run, but we’re counting it.  I don’t know about you, but I seriously doubt it’s him, if only because we already have at least two Supermen running around by the end of the “We Are Yesterday” arc.  Why add another, especially one that appears to be rather non-super?  Also, Supergirl was listening to Legend’s heartbeat to see if they were telling the truth, and something tells me she’d recognize that heart as her cousin’s.

BATMAN: Bruce had a Black Lantern version of Hex as his righthand man during Dark Nights; Death Metal, they teamed up in the Batman Giant Walmart series, he sprang Jonah from jail during the aforementioned ASW, not to mention the bounty hunter’s associations with the Waynes during the 1880s…fuck, Hex is pretty much honorary Bat-family at this point!  All that being said, there’s the same issue here as with Superman -- multiple Bats running around, so why add another? -- plus Legend’s dialogue doesn’t 100% ring true as Bruce’s.  The real clincher for me dismissing Bruce as a suspect is how he talks about Helena Wayne aka Huntress as being “Batman and Catwoman’s daughter”.  Not his daughter.  So does Bruce compartmentalize his thoughts that damn much?  Maybe.  You know who might think of Helena that way, though?

THE BATMAN OF 2050: A longshot only in the sense that he was presumed dead after his last appearance in HEX, but there was no dead body shown, and know you the rules of comics, folks.  The idea of our time traveler being the historian who found the Batcave after Bruce’s death and resurrected his legend (pun intended) after the bombs dropped in 2045 seems very plausible.  If he could find the Batcave, he might also find one of the old Justice League HQs and some time travel equipment, then try to stop the apocalypse before it happens (see what I said about Stiletta in the previous post).  We’re also back to the “helmet points as bat ears” notion, which would also apply if Legend does end up being Bruce…yeah, I’m gonna keep bringing up this vague feature until we find out who’s under that helmet.

STANLEY HARRIS: This one was suggested by Dwayne Hendrickson of Matching Dragoons, and admittedly, this didn’t occur to me prior to my concentrating solely on female suspects, and I kick myself for not thinking of it.  The time-displaced Vietnam soldier who begrudgingly teamed up with our favorite bounty hunter during HEX, Harris would eventually be given superpowers and drafted into the Dogs of War (“As far as ‘rag tag’, ain’t nobody more rag tag than the Dogs of War!” Dwayne said, and I wholeheartedly agree).  Last seen taking off into space with his team in order to head off an alien invasion, there’s nothing to say he couldn’t have gone bouncing through time afterward.  However, I will dismiss one clue that Dwayne pointed out, namely the coffee-colored sleeves of Legend’s armor.  Dwayne believes that to be bare skin (Harris being African-American), but that same color is present on the lower half of the suit, especially over the crotch.  So unless Legend has the features of a Ken doll and is walking around pantsless, I’m presuming they’re completely covered, with no bare skin at all showing.  Damn shame, as narrowing down their race would’ve trimmed the list even more than narrowing down their gender.

BOOSTER GOLD: Another suggestion, this time by Darren Schroeder of the Jonah Hex Corral and founder of the Jonah Hex, Via Pony Express Facebook page.  While I personally dismissed Booster as a cheat since he’s already a time traveler, Darren pointed out that “he’s always doing that ‘fake ID cause I don’t want to get caught or break time’ Kind of B.S.”.   Good point, Darren.  I’d still consider it a cheat, but then again, Jonah slugged Booster real damn hard last time they saw each other in ASW, so yeah, I’d want to hide my face too and avoid a repeat.

THE FLASH: Barry Allen has encountered Jonah twice, and he certainly has more than enough time-travel experience, but unless he’s become depowered, I don’t know why he’d be depending on a timeship instead of just bopping through the Speed Force like usual.  Low odds.

GREEN LANTERN(S): My mind is mainly on Hal Jordan here, but John Stewart got to meet Hex during Crisis on Infinite Earths, so we’ll group the two Lanterns together.  For sure, both Hal and John have experience with “failure and redemption”, and there’s always the possibility of them losing their rings and having to rely more on tech.

HAWKMAN: Same rationale as Hawkgirl, this time via his former incarnation of Nighthawk.  On a side note, do you realize how damn nuts it is that Jonah Hex knows so many classic Justice League members?  I bet there’s actual people in the League that haven’t met as many as him!

STEVE TREVOR: In case you didn’t look back at the previous post for my revision, I added Wonder Woman and a few others due to Hex running into them in the Walmart Justice League/Wonder Woman Giant titles.  One of the few men in that storyline -- other than ol’ Jonah, of course -- was Steve Trevor, and though they barely even spoke to one another, I’m adding him to this list just to be a completist, as I seriously doubt he’s Legend.  Be a nice surprise, though, giving him some character development unrelated to the Amazon.

JOHN CONSTANTINE: Near-zero odds because Legend doesn’t swear enough, plus Constantine isn’t one to rely on technology.

Okay, pretty sure I’ve got all the angles covered this time.  Once again, comments are encouraged, and more posts will come when we learn anything new regarding Legend and/or Jonah Hex.  Really hoping we get something in the next JLU issue, because I hate waiting!

Who is Legend, and how do they know Hex?

 

Though I’ve been reading Mark Waid’s Justice League Unlimited since the first issue, I hadn’t planned on picking up the Justice League: Dark Tomorrow Special.  I’d already been skipping the other JLU spinoffs because they didn’t seem necessary to understand the main story, but when I took a peek at a preview for the Special, I saw our favorite bounty hunter would be present, and I am morally obligated as Jonah Hex’s P.R. agent to but virtually every appearance I can get my hands on, so…yeah, I bought it.

Up until reading this comic, I’d been a little miffed at Waid.  He told us way back in February that he’d figured out how to work Hex into JLU, yet the three dang issues the character appeared in so far had amounted to background filler and one line of dialogue.  Sorry, sir, I need more Hex than that to be happy, please and thank you.

And now I got freakin’ more.  I got ol’ Jonah shootin’ folks in the head, and I don’t care that they’re just faceless demon-shadow -thingies, it was still fun to see Jonah cut loose.  I also got some spot-on characterization when he straight-up told the Leaguers “No” in regards to joining their little excursion into time and space (even though he did in the end, the initial resistance is what counts), followed by him stating bluntly that he is not a hero.  So yay yay happy me!

I also got a mystery in the form of a new character referred to as Legend…or at least the appearance is new.  According to Legend themselves, they are a time traveler, and telling the Leaguers who they truly are under that armor and full-face helmet could supposedly lead to a paradox.  Luckily, nearly all the narration boxes in the issue come directly from Legend, and there are clues to be found there, with the biggest two coming at the bottom of the page revealing the time-lost folks who’ve been enlisted to help:

Legend privately admitting that they and Hex have a shared history jumped out at me like a neon sign.  Though Jonah’s been racking up some serious frequent-flyer miles in the past decade or so, his interactions with future-folk are still limited enough that I can pretty much make a list of who this Legend person may be, using the other clues scattered throughout to narrow the list further, starting with the “Don’t blame a girl for wishing” line Legend lets slip in regards to Marilyn Moonlight.  Throughout the issue, Legend is referred to with they/them pronouns, meaning they’re not even letting on what their gender is, so this internal dialogue implies that Legend is a woman (and possibly LGBTQ+, as it also implies an attraction to the newest cowpoke in DC’s Western stable).  Presuming our target is indeed female, that knocks quite a few people out of the running…and though Hex refers to Legend as “him” at one point, I doubt the bounty hunter can wrap his brain around the concept of gender-neutral pronouns, so I’m dismissing that.

Other clues are more vague but still potentially helpful: Legend’s manner of speaking (casual, the occasional swear or bit of snark), their statement about having experience with “ragtag” teams, their confession to Airwave that they know “more than a little bit” about failure and redemption, their throwaway line about Hex being “another satisfied customer” when the bounty hunter praises the powerful ammo he got from Legend’s timeship, the Waverider (yep, they just made the ship from Legends of Tomorrow canon), not to mention how incredibly well-versed they are in regards to DCU history, all the way up to the Legion of Super-Heroes.  Whoever they are, they’ve been bopping around the timestream for a good long while.

Speaking of the timestream, I want to make clear that I have no idea when in time ol’ Jonah got snatched up, much less what is still canon when it comes to his future-folk interactions.  Since Mark Waid is doing the writing, that says to me anything is possible, therefore I’m not discounting any character/storyline that may’ve been erased by retcons.  I’m also presuming that Waid isn’t crafting this Hex/Legend connection out of whole cloth (that’d be cheating, sir!), so all these guesses are based on documented interactions over the past 50+ years of Hex history.

Okay, ground rules are established.  Let’s look over the list, in no particular order…

BATWOMAN: After bopping around with the new version of the Outsiders (aka the low-key Planetary sequel) for nearly a year, the idea of Kate Kane becoming a time traveler somewhere down the line doesn’t seem far-fetched.  And I daresay the term “ragtag” does fit those Outsiders well, plus Kate does have a “failure and redemption” thing in her past.  There is also that fact that, from a certain angle, Legend’s helmet does come to two points at the back…not full-on bat ears, but it’s something I noticed.  As for her Hex run-in, it’s a little tenuous, seeing as how ol’ Jonah was a ghost at the time, but I’m counting it.

JINNY HEX: Speaking of Outsiders, the same issue where Batwoman ran into a ghostly Hex is the same where his many-times-great-granddaughter Jinny got introduced to the group, making that the second “ragtag” team she’s a part of (the first being Young Justice, of course).  I’d say being kin to the man qualifies as having “literal” history with him, and then there’s the matter of that trunk she inherited…Lord knows, there might’ve been a time-travel device buried inside!  When you add in the notion implied near the end of the Outsiders run -- that Jinny Hex may be a Century Baby, making her potentially long-lived -- the odds of her being Legend go up.

CHASTITY HEX OR “LADY HEX”: On the subject of descendants, I’m putting these two on the board as longshots.  Neither have been seen or mentioned outside of the respective titles that introduced them (the Bizarro miniseries and Superboy, respectively), but knowing Mark Waid’s penchant for obscure characters, I’m not discounting the possibility of one of them turning up.  I put higher odds on Chastity due to her heading off to space in her last appearance, plus her penchant for jetpacks and rayguns, but overall, I’d still be shocked if Legend was one of them.

HARLEY QUINN: Another longshot, as Legend’s dialogue doesn’t sound like how Harley talks whatsoever, but she recently went on a multiversal jaunt throughout DCU history, so maybe this is a much older Harley who’s a little more sane (like I said, it’s a longshot).  There’s also the fact that, when she met Jonah Hex during the Dark Nights: Death Metal event (a Black Lantern Hex, but it still counts!), the two of ‘em had a bit of a talk about doing more to fight for good than for evil, and to me that falls under the “failure and redemption” category.

HAWKGIRL: This one is a bit of a cheat, as I’m thinking specifically about her past life as Cinnamon, who has definitely met Hex, plus it’d be a nice callback to her being on the original Legends of Tomorrow team.  I also think the idea of having someone who’s lived so many lives also ending up as a time traveler is interesting.  And remember those two points on the helmet that I said could be bat ears?  They could also very well be a suggestion of the “wings” that both Hawks tend to have on their masks.

STILETTA: Of all the people I’m listing, this is the one I’m rooting hardest for.  I am not a big fan of the “Future Hex” era as envisioned by Michael Fleisher, but over the past 20 years, I’ve come to appreciate its potential.  I want to see Mark Waid take the idea and do this own spin on it.  Have Stiletta unearth her father’s time travel equipment and improve on it, then she puts it to good use by helping people in her own era and across time (that’s how the “another satisfied customer” line could fit in).  There’s the question of whether or not that would put HEX back into the DCU’s main timeline or remain an alternate future, but if it’s the former, it’d be a heck of a premise to build on: stop the nuclear holocaust of 2045 from happening (hard to believe what sounded like a far-off date in 1985 is just around the corner!).

***LAST-MINUTE ENTRY***: I can’t believe this one slipped my mind!  In the Justice League/Wonder Woman Giants released through Walmart back in 2018, Jonah got mixed up in an adventure involving Wonder Woman, Cheetah, Etta Candy, and an alien princess named Sibella.  The story is way too complicated to explain here -- suffice it to say it involves time travel shenanigans and alien fights to the death -- but it’s unusual in that nearly everyone Hex deals with is female (there’s also a military officer named Kate, but I think she’s just made up for the story…sorry, Wonder Woman lore is out of my area).  Anyways, I put even near-zero odds on Legend being Wondy, because while I’m no expert on the Amazon, she does have a particular way of talking, and it doesn’t match Legend’s dialogue one bit.  However, I could see Cheetah talking like that (and once again, those points on the helmet could be possible cat ears).  A presumably-reformed Cheetah would also fit the “failure and redemption” angle, the Legion of Doom qualifies as “ragtag”, and I bet dollars to dumplings that, even reformed, she’d take advantage of time travel to do a little business (hence “another satisfied customer”).  Etta Candy is also possible, but I seriously doubt it’d be Sibella, as she doesn’t exist outside of this story as far as I’m aware.  Her people do have some serious time travel tech, though…

So that’s what I’ve got.  If you can think of anyone else who might fit the parameters we know so far, let me know in the comments and I’ll add them to the list (or maybe make a whole new one!).  I'm also adding a "Legends" tag so you can easily look up any posts dealing with them, as well as any past/future Legends of Tomorrow posts.  I’m hoping we don’t have to wait too long for the reveal (maybe it’ll come during this DC K.O. event they mention at the end?), but in the meantime, let’s keep our eyes peeled for clues…and more Jonah Hex!

New year, new show!

Got a show to do this Sunday! I had a table at one of Martin Hirchak's last shows in Clawson, MI, but the venue closed, so he had to move house. I went to the Warren Elks Lodge last week to check it out...looks like a good place with lots of room, so we're all hoping for an awesome inaugural show!

Blue skies smiling at me...

 Thirteen years ago, after a stumbling start, I joined Facebook with the notion of using it to help promote my then-upcoming novel.  As I said at the time, I'm neither social nor do I network, so I didn't really have a desire to deal with the site, but hey, I wanted to sell books, and I reckon the Swords & Sixguns page I set up there helped to a small degree.  It also led to me to becoming admin for the Jonah Hex, Via Pony Express page because I simply asked Darren Schroeder if he ever considered setting up a FB version of the Yahoo group he ran (good thing I did, too, 'cause Yahoo Groups is long gone!).

Fast-forward to today: the S&S page has 334 followers and VPE has more than three times as many (the old buzzard has the advantage of name recognition).  Considering that I've never bought one ad on FB, I think that's pretty good, but I daresay those numbers may not get any bigger thanks to the algorithm actively working against virtually every page out there (and no, putting money into this won't help, as I've seen enough other, much-bigger pages report that ad buys no longer move the needle).  Still, I don't want to lose those numbers, so I keep on keeping on over there, but from what I've been hearing lately, it seems like the general environment at FB might reach a point where many folks abandon the place altogether.  In fact, over the last few months, I've seen that a good amount of people have been setting up accounts over at the Twitter-ish site BlueSky.

Now, I've been long resisting the pressure to set up on another social media site, but I've finally decided that having a backup isn't a bad idea.  That's actually why I started this blog: years ago, when the future of the DC Message Boards was in question, I set up here and let other Jonah Hex fans know about it in case that place went kablooey...and it eventually did, so good call by me.  So yesterday, I set up an account on BlueSky, which will serve as a combo of all three of the FB pages I have: my personal page, my S&S page, and a trimmed-down version of what I do over on VPE (the lack of a Photo section on BlueSky prevents me from doing much of what VPE has become known for).  It'll be a different vibe, to be sure, but I plan on keeping things fun, especially since I plan on unleashing the massive meme archive I've accumulated over the years upon the place.

So, if you're on BlueSky, look me up under "Susan Hillwig" and help me build this new venue into something special.

Kindled, then extinguished

 Got an email from KDP recently letting me know that they were discontinuing the Kindle Vella program, due to it not taking off the way Amazon expected since it began in December 2021.  Frankly, the response to the two stories I'd started on the platform was a bit underwhelming, as you can see by the graph here depicting every time someone read at least one chapter.  Most folks appeared to pop in, read one or two chapters, then leave.  Two ambitious folks read both stories in their entirety, but despite including my email at the end of virtually every chapter and damn-near begging people to drop me a line if they liked it, I never got any feedback save for getting some thumbs-up marks on the chapters (which I honestly didn't even notice until today).  Since they're shutting down the whole dang program, I imagine this was typical for most of the writers who tried it out.

On the upside, I made nearly twenty bucks thanks to KDP sending participants bonuses for contributing to the program.  It's a damn sight better than the royalties those two stories earned, which amounted to about forty cents over those three years.  Not exactly a hidden goldmine, right?

So, what now?  The stories will be finished eventually, so if you're one of the few who read them, physical copies will one day exist, but I wanna get the published version of my Jonah Hex history project done first, not to mention the second Swords & Sixguns novel.  Low response means low priority, unless y'all want to convince me otherwise.

And if you never read them at all, then you've got until February 2025 to read them on your Kindle.  You can find the first four chapters of Godheart here, and the first seven chapters of Forgotten Be Thy Name over here....and if you like them, for goodness sakes, tell me!

An EXPANDED History of Jonah Hex!

 

While the book version of "An Illustrated History of Jonah Hex" is not ready for publication yet, I have made enough progress to officially say that the edits on Chapter 1 and 2 -- encompassing the entirety of Jonah's time at All-Star Western/Weird Western Tales -- are 100% COMPLETE!  Unless something earthshattering is uncovered prior to publication or I stumble across a massive typo, I'm not noodling with those chapters anymore.

In celebration of this feat, the first two Hex history posts on this here blog have been expanded with all-new material, making them 2-3 times longer than the originals!  I've added a couple of new images as well, though I've decided to remove the hyperlinks since I no longer use Photobucket, as well as me doing my level best to get all the info "on the page" this time around since that's how it'll be in book form.

Okay, that's enough chatter.  If you want to read the updated chapters, you'll find the new Chapter 1 here and the new Chapter 2 over here.  Hope you enjoy them, and don't forget to wish Jonah Hex a happy 186th birthday!

Hex history update AND MORE!

Progress on the book version of "An Illustrated History of Jonah Hex" is still proceeding at a slow pace, but it has gotten far enough along that, this November 1st, I will be updating the first 2 chapters on this blog with BRAND NEW MATERIAL!  That's right, y'all will be getting a sneak preview of what the book version will look like!  I haven't decided yet if I'll update every single chapter, but the first chapter alone is now double its original length, so it didn't seem fair to hide all that new info in the book alone.

In related news, my work has once again been cited in another article!  Nathan Cabaniss of Screenrant contacted me a month or so ago after coming across my blog, as he was looking for some info about a 1980s write-in campaign to get Clint Eastwood to make a Jonah Hex movie.  I informed him that the Eastwood/Hex connection went MUCH deeper than he expected, which soon led to a full-fledged article with quotes from Yours Truly!  You can read all about it right here on Screenrant...and yes, this story will be covered in a much briefer form in Chapter 1!

Okay, I gotta get back to work.  Two weeks to go until the update drops!