An Illustrated History of Jonah Hex (Part 7)

1981-1982: Reunions and Regrets

Poor ol’ Jonah.  His wife has left him, taking their newborn son along with her, and he’s all alone in the world again.  You can’t help but feel pity for him.  Well, maybe “pity” is too strong a word, as when we find him at the beginning of Jonah Hex #54 (Nov. 1981), he’s enjoying a hot bath in a cathouse whilst being attended to by a lovely gal in a corset and garters.  Seems he found a good way to get over his heartache.  This relaxing moment is soon interrupted by a couple of owlhoots hoping to catch Hex with his pants down (literally and figuratively).  Our hero makes short work of them without even getting out of the tub, then gathers his things and leaves as the madam of the house complains about the mess he made.  As he rides off, an agent of Hex’s old enemy Turnbull spots him and runs to the telegraph office to send a wire to Virginia.  At the moment, Turnbull’s having a meeting with members of the Fort Charlotte Brigade, who’re telling him about how they blew Jonah up back in JH#36.  Of course, we know they didn’t really blow him up...and Turnbull himself should know that as well, since he’d sent men to kidnap Jonah’s wife Mei Ling in JH#47!  So not only did these fellas drag their feet when reporting back to Turnbull, but the old man’s forgotten all about the incident in-between, as evidenced by him smashing a liquor bottle in a fit of rage when Solomon comes in to tell him that Jonah’s alive and well in Clementine Springs.  Thus begins another chapter in Turnbull’s long-standing vendetta against the bounty hunter:

Meanwhile, back in Clementine Springs, Jonah’s having a palaver with Colonel Sanchez, who hired him back in JH#9-10 to protect a load of gold bullion from El Papagayo.  Well, it looks like the Mexican government needs Jonah’s help once more, this time offering him ten thousand dollars to bring the bandito in, since Jonah is the only one who’s ever escaped El Papgayo’s stronghold alive.  After riding down to Mexico, Jonah disguises himself and sneaks into the stronghold, but El Papagayo soon flushes him out.  He then cooks up an elaborate way to kill his “good friend”: Jonah is lashed to a wooden shaft in an old dry well, with a burro (which Jonah calls a “burrito” in an amusing misprint) harnessed to the shaft in order to turn it -- whereas this action would normally draw up water, it will now slowly strangle Hex to death!  Lucky, Jonah still keeps a knife hidden under his collar, and he cuts himself free.  When he climbs out of the well, he’s met by a woman who’s also in the pay of Colonel Sanchez, and together they sneak out of the stronghold...only to be met by four members of the Fort Charlotte Brigade!

When JH#55 opens, we find that the woman has also been paid by these men to bring Jonah to them, though she doesn’t get to enjoy it for long, for El Papagayo has already found out about the double-cross, and shoots her from afar.  The bandito figures that the Fort Charlotte men must be in cahoots with Jonah as well, and begins to chase all of them as the former Rebs try to escape Mexico alive.  One by one, the survivors of Fort Charlotte are picked off, until the only ones who make it safely across the Rio Grande are Jonah, a man named Daltry, and Tim, a teenager who, while too young to have actually been in the War, has joined up with Turnbull’s group in his late father’s memory.  Unlike the others, his hatred of Hex comes secondhand, and when the bounty hunter saves his life, he begins to have doubts about what he’s been told.  Unfortunately, Daltry’s opinion of Hex hasn’t changed at all, and now that El Papagayo’s no longer after them, he decides to finish the job he came down to Mexico for: killing Jonah Hex.  Tim tries to dissuade him, which causes Daltry to call Tim a traitor and shoot him in the chest.  Jonah draws  and kills Daltry in turn, then attends to the dying boy, who offers up forgiveness from both himself and his father, absolving Jonah of whatever he may have done at Fort Charlotte:

After that poignant ending, Fleisher, Ayers, and DeZuniga give us JH#56, wherein Jonah has to save a gal who’s been unfairly committed to an insane asylum, and later that same month, Jonah may have considered committing himself after experiencing the events of Justice League of America (vol. 23) #198 &199.  Yep, after four years, writer Gerry Conway has managed to wrangle Hex into a another story with them long-underwear folk, but at least this time the bounty hunter didn't have to leave home.  Our tale (rendered in stark lines by Don Heck & Brett Breeding) opens in 1878, with Jonah tracking a man across the Arizona desert...who is really of no consequence to the story, as he's never mentioned again once the bounty hunter crosses paths with Green Lantern Hal Jordan.  Hal nearly blasts Jonah's head off with his ring, then passes out -- seems he's suffering from a touch of heat stroke, and considering that he almost killed Jonah a few minutes before, the gunfighter shows a remarkable amount of compassion by tending to the man until he regains consciousness.  We soon find that Hal can’t remember anything about himself or how he got there, though he can recall vague images of a man laughing at him.  “Sounds like you’ve got a real problem there, stranger,” Jonah says, his gun drawn just in case Hal gets trigger-happy again.  “Don’t add to your problems by makin’ me an enemy.”  Hal agrees, and the two men sit down to a campfire supper.  This is the last we see of them for a while, as the rest of the comic focuses on other JLA members -- whose memories have also been erased -- running into other DC Western folk.  First, lady gunslinger Cinnamon saves Zatanna from a saloon full of drunk cowboys, then Elongated Man keeps Scalphunter from being munched on by a cougar, and finally we see Bat Lash meet the Flash (Barry Allen, that is) right before the story shifts to “present day” 1981.  Superman’s searching the Grand Canyon -- the last place the missing Leaguers were seen -- when he runs afoul of a Kryptonite-laden trap set for him by the Lord of Time, who’s been laying low since the train-wreck that was JLA #159-160.  His newest plot involves an antimatter bubble that will explode over the Grand Canyon in 1878: in order to harness its power, the Lord of Time kidnapped these four superheroes and sent them to the Old West, believing that, even in their amnesiac state, they’ll see the antimatter bubble as a threat that must be contained and keep it from exploding, after which the Lord of Time will collect it up and harness its power to make himself (in his own humble opinion) “master of the world!”

The next issue centers around the Leaguers and their new friends meeting up and comparing notes.  Considering that they’re guest-stars in this book, the Western folk actually come off pretty good, possibly due to Conway’s many years of writing Scalphunter’s adventures in Weird Western Tales (which he manages to sneak in a brief reference to).  Hex and Jordan are the last ones to join up with the party, and due to this, they get a little extra face-time as they ride across the desert (with our emerald knight galloping along on a ring-generated horse, no less).  There’s a good two-page scene wherein they discuss the importance of a man’s name, in the sense that it’s the basis for your reputation (about which Jonah knows a good amount), and not long after, we get down to some gunslinging when Jonah spots someone who’s been following the duo as they make their way to the town of Desecration.  Hal immediately chastises Jonah for the gunplay, calling him a “crazy murderer”, to which Jonah coldly replies, “Watch who you’re calling crazy, son.”  We soon discover that Jonah was justified, as his target in the cowboy duds turns out to be a robot sent by the Lord of Time to keep tabs on Hal...and, apparently, eliminate Jonah!  Still adamant about not killing anyone (or anything, in this case), Hal tries to restrain the robot, while Jonah figures restraint isn't worth the trouble and dispatches it posthaste:

They soon meet up with the rest of our heroes, and as they try to sort out what in blazes is going on, Scalphunter spots three more cowboy-bots riding north -- as they follow the bots (and Flash accidentally destroys one of them!), they soon get the suspicion that they’re being led into a trap.  They’re half-right: they end up at the Grand Canyon, which is where the antimatter bubble that the Lord of Time wants them to capture is supposed to hit.  Then, without any noticeable provocation, Jonah declares that he’s going to scout around for their quarry, and the other three Western folk soon follow, leaving the four Leaguers scratching their heads.  Turns out the locals put two and two together faster than the tourists, and have decided to turn the tables on the bots, luring them away from the Leaguers and destroying them so that the long-underwear folk can get on with the reason they were brought to this time.  Once that’s done, the story wraps up rather quick: the Leaguers manage to keep the antimatter bubble away from the Earth so it can explode in space (which, thinking about it, would change history, since the Lord of Time said that it originally exploded directly over the Grand Canyon and wiped out all life for miles around...oops?), and Superman apparently defeated our villain off-panel before the energy could be collected, then brought his friends back to their proper time period (along with their memories, somehow -- this tale is very short on explanation in a lot of areas).  As for Hex and his pals?  They never even got a chance to bid farewell, and are left to wonder just who those masked men (and lady) were:

After Hex’s newest brush with the future, he gets a visit from the past in JH#57, dated February 1982, meaning a decade has passed since Jonah Hex made his debut in All-Star Western #10.  And what a way to mark the occasion: seems he got a letter from his mother, Ginny, whom he hasn’t seen in 27 years (and we haven’t seen since her first and only appearance in the Super-Star Holiday Special two years back).  After Jonah meets up with his mother, he finds that she’s fallen on hard times: living in a dingy room adjacent to the local stable, and two thousand dollars in debt to a gambler named Dirk Jagsted, who will mostly likely kill her if he doesn't get his money soon.  Jonah takes it all in stride, promising to have a word with Jagsted first thing in the morning.  While his mother sleeps on the small mattress in the corner of the room, Jonah sacks out nearby on his bedroll and thinks back to June 1848, the last time he saw her.  The flashback begins with a young Jonah defending his mother’s honor: a group of boys insist that Ginny is a tramp, and have no qualms about beating the snot outta Jonah in order to enforce their opinion.  The boy later makes his way home, where Ma tends to his bruised face and Pa berates him for fighting before leaving to make a moonshine delivery.  Sometime afterward, a travelling salesman with the impressive name of Preston W. Dazzleby shows up and, after showing off a few of his wares, Ginny tells Jonah to go off to bed, but Jonah finds he can’t sleep, he’s still too angry about those boys insulting his Ma.  The thought that anyone would dare to call his wonderful, caring mother  a tramp actually makes him consider taking his father’s shotgun and seeking vengeance upon them.  It just makes what’s to follow all the more heart-breaking: when he hears laughter coming from the hall, Jonah gets out of bed, sneaks down to his parents’ bedroom, and sees Ginny and Dazzleby kissing and flirting while she packs a suitcase (wearing a new dress from Dazzleby’s own sample case, to boot).  Going by the shocked look on her face, Ginny wasn’t planning on saying goodbye to her son, but now she has no choice:

As you’ve probably guessed, Ginny’s promise to send for Jonah went unfulfilled, and within three years, his Pa would sell him to the Apache, therefore severing any theoretical chance of her reclaiming her son.  We will eventually get more answers regarding Ginny’s life after leaving Jonah, but those won’t come for another three decades, and even then, the question of whether or not Ginny Hex really was the whore many claimed her to be won’t be absolutely clear -- her decision to leave with Dazzleby could have been spur-of-the-moment, with no infidelities beforehand.  At any rate, it’s the actions of a grown-up Jonah that now concern us, for Jagsted and his cronies have come a-knockin’ on Ginny’s door.  Jonah cuts them all down within seconds, and when his mother dares to peer out the door, he tells her, “You don’t gotta worry ‘bout the debt no more, Ma!  It’s been repaid!”  He then presses a roll of bills into his mother’s hand before saddling up.  She asks if he’ll come back to visit her sometime, and Jonah replies, “Sure, Ma!  Ah be back to visit!  Be back real soon!”  She smiles up at him as he says it, but we know that he’s chosen those words with care, echoing the last thing she’d said to him before abandoning him to his father’s wrath, which surely must have increased once Ginny was gone.

One has to wonder if this childhood incident made Mei Ling’s sudden departure from Jonah’s life all the more painful, like a twisted replay of events from a new perspective.  If so, then seeing his mother again -- and the memories it invoked -- most likely caused the opening scene of JH#59, a three-page-long dream sequence centering around Mei Ling being captured by Indians, then dying just as Jonah swoops in to rescue her.  Once the nightmare’s over and Jonah’s awake, he finally admits to himself that “Ah ain't hardly been the same man since Mei Ling an’ the baby pulled up an’ left me!”

As Jonah leaves the hotel to get some grub, he’s accosted by six gunslingers, who he makes short work of, unaware that it’s a set-up to showcase his talents to a mysterious Chinaman watching from the shadows.  Later, while Jonah’s in the midst of his meal, the Chinaman comes up and begins making small talk with him, during which he hands Jonah a white lotus blossom, the fragrance from which soon knocks Jonah out cold!  More Chinese show up and, after locking Jonah’s unconscious form inside a trunk, sneak him out of town.  Meanwhile, we learn that, since leaving Jonah, Mei Ling and the baby have been living with her brother and his wife, which means Mei Wong must’ve taken back his whole “disowning” statement from JH#45.  The day after Jonah’s kidnapping, Mei Ling receives a letter, along with another white lotus blossom (not drugged this time).  Though we don’t know the contents of the letter, it alarms her enough that she leaves the baby in her brother’s care and rides off, promising to return soon.

Jonah doesn’t wake up again until the beginning of JH#60, and after he KOs a bunch of Chinamen who try to restrain him, he soon finds out he ain’t in the West no more:

Before we go any further, let me inform you that the “Chinese” word balloons featured throughout this storyarc are filled with gibberish, a fact that’ll eventually leak out in the letter column when a fan writes in to complain.  Lucky for us that Wu Bong Phat, the man who drugged Jonah and put him on a slow boat to China, speaks English.  “Your services are sorely needed by the secret society which I serve!” Wu informs Jonah, and suggests that the gunfighter cooperate if he wishes to make it home alive, though what exactly his services are needed for goes unsaid.  Months pass, wherein Jonah’s put to work on the boat, until one day when they’re attacked by pirates and the boat sinks.  Jonah miraculously makes it to dry land where he’s found, exhausted to the point of delirium, by a Chinese fisherman.  He and his wife spend weeks nursing Jonah back to health, but their kindness is repaid by bullets when the foot soldier of a local warlord finds them harboring this gwailo.  Taken into custody, Hex once again finds himself in the presence of Wu Bong Phat, who escaped the pirates in a lifeboat.  Seems the warlord is a member of the White Lotus Society -- the ones responsible for Jonah’s little trip -- and they are still insisting that the bounty hunter perform an unknown service for them.

After a pause, Jonah tells them, “Ah sorry to take so long answerin’, Mr. Wu!  But yuh see...Ah never did learn how tuh say ‘Cram it’ in Chinese!”  Undeterred, Wu then ups the ante by having a guard drag Mei Ling out from behind a curtain!  We find out in JH#61 that the letter Mei Ling received previously said Jonah was in danger, and she had to save him -- once she arrived at the place stated in the letter, members of the White Lotus captured her.  While Jonah finds hope for their relationship in her willingness to come to his rescue, there’s bigger concerns afoot, as it turns out the White Lotus Society wants Jonah to assassinate the current Chinese emperor.  By using an Occidental of such lethal renown, they think their hand in the affair will be unseen.  Mei Ling’s been pulled into this not only to ensure Jonah’s cooperation, but to help him sneak into the emperor’s palace: a White Lotus spy will slip her into the emperor’s seraglio, or harem, thus putting her in a prime position for the two of them to complete the task.  Jonah has no intentions whatsoever of killing the emperor, and when he’s escorted to the palace in Peking, the only thing on his mind is finding Mei Ling (who’d been placed inside days before) and high-tailing it outta there.  Unfortunately, the spy who’d gotten Mei Ling inside was captured not long after and ‘fessed up to the whole plan, so Jonah walks right into a trap as soon as he breaches the palace wall.  When JH#62 begins, Jonah has literally been backed into a corner by a squad of gun-toting soldiers, who take him to the emperor.  He knows that the bounty hunter wasn’t acting alone, and since Jonah refuses to divulge where Mei Ling is, the emperor has him dragged off to be tortured.  They work him over pretty good, but he manages to polish off one of them just before Mei Ling busts in, armed to the teeth and ready to rescue her husband:

The couple make good upon their escape, which includes swinging from a chandelier and fighting off a snow leopard in the emperor’s private garden, and manage to lose their pursuers in the city, where a burly sailor by the name of Barnaby Sledge comes across them laying low in an alley.  He offers to smuggle Jonah and his wife back to America, under the auspices of “us white men have gotta stick together in a pinch.”  Jonah appreciates his help, but Mei Ling doesn’t trust the man, and tells Jonah so once Barnaby leaves them alone for the night.  “There’s something wicked about him, Jonah!  I-I can’t help it!  He...he frightens me!”

“How ‘bout me, Mei Ling?” he asks, pulling her close.  “Do Ah frighten you, too?”

“Yes, my darling!  You...you frighten me, too!” she sobs, but lets him kiss her despite this.  It’s the first tender moment they’ve shared since this whole mess started.  The next day, as Barnaby takes the Hexes to the ship he serves as first mate upon, the emperor’s soldiers are waging war against the White Lotus followers.  Their warlord leader drinks poison rather than admit defeat, and Wu Bong Phat escapes once again, this time vowing revenge against both Jonah and Mei Ling...which will go unfulfilled to this day (sorry to spoil it for you).  That doesn't mean our happy couple is out of the woods just yet, because while they’re hiding out in the ship’s hold, they stumble across the cargo: opium!  Now, before you go wondering why these drug smugglers would risk discovery by helping out a couple of strangers, we find out in JH#63 that they had already planned on adding Jonah to the crew (involuntarily, of course) and making Mei Ling the shipboard entertainment (most definitely involuntary!).  Jonah manages to crack open Barnaby’s skull for getting them into this mess -- which earns Jonah a whipping -- but that only spares the sailor from the grief to come, for as we find out a few weeks into the voyage, this here is a plague ship.  One by one, the men come down with cholera, and soon even Jonah is laid up in his bunk, delirious.  Fleisher takes this opportunity to slip in a flashback to the winter of 1848 (and by “winter”, we’ll have to presume January or February, as this involves Jonah’s mom, and we now know she’ll be gone by June of this year).  Woodson’s so angry at Ginny for “makin’ doe eyes” at another man that he’s fixing to carve her up with a broken bottle, but Jonah intervenes, which just earns the boy a beat-down of his own.  Only the real-life screams of Mei Ling rouse Jonah from his nightmare, and he finds the ship’s captain assaulting her.  Big mistake, one which the captain pays for with his life.  Unfortunately, this leaves them without anyone healthy enough to navigate the ship, for the only other able-bodied crewman left is the ship’s doctor.

For twenty-two days and nights, the ship meanders across the ocean, until a storm smashes it against some rocks -- Mei Ling makes it safely into a lifeboat, but Jonah has to fight his way past a pair of hungry sharks (and nearly lose his leg in the process) before he can reach it himself, and the two of them are picked up a week later by a ship headed for San Francisco.  Once Jonah’s wounds are properly tended to and they’re certain that no more disasters are lurking on the horizon, Jonah and Mei Ling finally have a serious talk about whether or not their marriage can be saved:

While the ending of this five-part tale isn’t exactly unexpected -- did anyone really think Jonah and Mei Ling would become a couple again after this? -- the overall story does break Fleisher’s rule of “character moments trump action”, because while there were pages and pages of crazy action sequences, the amount of panels devoted to their troubled relationship are rather scant.  I can tell you that, despite Mei Ling’s insistence, this matter isn’t completely resolved, and she’ll fall back into Jonah’s life in a couple of years.  As for our hero, when we see him again in Jonah Hex #64 (September 1982), he’s still hanging around San Francisco and pining away for his absent wife, even as a lovely eighteen-year-old gal with a penchant for fibbing keeps throwing herself at him.  Hex manages to resist his baser nature until halfway through the issue, but this is only a one-time fling.  There is another gal, however, who’ll be occupying a good amount of Jonah’s time in the year to come...a ghost from the past who’s never been spoken of before, yet may have influenced many of his actions since.

ERRATA: Some elaboration on David Michelinie's previous work with Michael Fleisher has been added to Part 3, and there is now an Index for the entire History available at the bottom of each entry.  You can also access it at any time from a link on the left-hand side of the main site.

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Appendix A  |  Appendix B