Monday, November 25, 2013

The Day After the Day After the Day of the Doctor

This stuff is all over the social media gobbledygook, so to Hell with spoilers!

You know you're a hardcore geek when you ask for the day off so you can watch a TV show.  To be fair, our good friends Bill and Chantell invited my husband and myself over to their house to watch the Doctor Who anniversary special, so I can at least lay the excuse of "We attended a party" on top of that...or does that make it worse?  Never attended a party for a TV show before.  Don't know, don't care, I had fun!

I'm not going to babble on about the brilliance of the whole thing -- those who saw it know already -- so instead, I'm just going to touch on certain things and my thoughts about them, starting with...


The Night of the Doctor: My first full-on exposure to Doctor Who was the 1996 TV movie.  Before that, my experience was limited to a couple of failed attempts to watch it on PBS (jumping into a random episode with no one to coach you through it is the worst way to learn about this show) and "Doctorin' the TARDIS" (a cool song that requires no knowledge of the Who-niverse in order to enjoy it), along with the occasional vague joke about multicolored scarves.  When this joint British/American production came down the pipe, I decided to give it a whirl.  It was good...not great, but good, and had Fox picked it up as a series, I would've kept up with it.  Most important, it gave me a better grounding in the whats and whys of Who than any previous attempts had.  Thanks to Paul McGann's Eighth Doctor, I now had a rough understanding of the basics, and that was important when the series came back full-force in 2005.  From the get-go, I knew what a TARDIS was and that it was bigger on the inside; I knew about Time Lords and Gallifrey and two hearts and regenerations; I knew about the Master and (kind of) Daleks; and I knew for sure that scarves were important somehow, but I still hadn't totally figured that part out yet.  Without watching the TV Movie back then, getting into Doctor Who right now would've been a little harder, even with having a husband who'd been versed in the stuff for decades.  Paul McGann may not be my favorite Doctor, but he was my first Doctor, the one that managed to get my attention in the right way, so I have a soft spot for him.  I'm glad he got another chance to strut his stuff in the audios, as well as the novels and comics, even if I've never watched or read them.

I say all this so you can understand how deeply moved I was by this little six-minute webisode.  They didn't have to do this, not one bit.  They could've let us assume John Hurt's character was the Eighth Doctor, terribly aged and scarred by the Time War -- it'd become a given in the fan community that #8 was the one who'd fought in the War, without question -- but no, they asked Paul McGann to come back and take his "one night only" turn one more time, and to top it off, they gave him a regeneration scene.  I was damn-near crying by the end of it all.  It certainly takes some of the sting off of the failed 1996 reboot, that's for sure.


An Adventure in Space and Time: Kind of an aside here, since this was a special in and of itself, but I just have to say how brilliant this docudrama was all on its own.  It helps you see the context that this show originated in, and how important it was to the people that made it (everyone talks about how groundbreaking it was to make Verity Lambert the BBC's first female producer, but no one ever talks about Waris Hussein being their first Indian director!).  I'm hoping for a nice DVD or Blu-Ray release of this, perhaps included with "The Day of the Doctor" itself.


"Code word 'Cromer'": With a throwaway line in "The Day of the Doctor", Kate Lethbridge-Stewart invoked the memory of previous multi-Doctor team-ups.  For those who don't remember, there's a scene in "The Three Doctors" where the Brigadier refuses to believe they're now on an alien world, saying, "I'm fairly sure that's Cromer" (a coastal town in northern Norfolk, England).  That he went on to label a file about the experience "Cromer" rings true to the Brig's dry sense of humor.  I was absolutely tickled by presence of that one simple word in the special.


"No, sir, all thirteen!": I'd hoped for perhaps a nod to Peter Capaldi in "The Day of the Doctor", but didn't really expect it.  I've even heard a few people suggest (after that fact) that it would've been cool to hold off on announcing Capaldi and just toss him out in the special.  Considering how anxious everyone had been getting before they finally revealed who the Twelfth Doctor would be, waiting another couple of months to do it might've caused some to crack under the strain...and let's not even think about the Internet shattering under the weight of the searches that would've been launched based solely on a pair of eyes!

Nope, I think they did it just right.  We were aware of Capaldi, but were told he wouldn't appear until the Christmas special...then we hear that exclamation, and we see those eyes, staring out of the screen so intently at us.  I do believe the Twelfth Doctor will be a force to be reckoned with.


The Curator: Even though Tom Baker had slyly told folks a few days before that he was going to be in "The Day of the Doctor", I'd figured it was just Tom being Tom, and he was actually referring to, say, a old clip of him inserted into the special.  When they had that big scene where all twelve (no, thirteen!) Doctors show up, TARDISes a-whirling, I more-or-less thought that was it.  Then Clara mentioned that the Curator had been looking for the Eleventh Doctor...and then I remembered Queen Elisabeth appointing him as "Curator of the Under-Gallery"...and then we got the slow reveal.

I daresay this was more than a little extra something to make fans giddy: the show now has a canonical way to bring in any actor that's ever played the Doctor.  Remember, the Curator (i.e. Tom) said that he was revisiting old faces in his later years, leaving the field wide open for Peter Davison or Sylvester McCoy or even Christopher Eccleston (should he realize in a few decades what he's missing out on) to step in should Tom Baker not be available at some future point.  It's been said that none of these guys ever really stops being the Doctor, and now they have a way to continue being part of the show without having to worry about the fact that their hair is thinning or they've got a a paunch (just as the audios allow you suspend disbelief, since all they need for that is a good strong voice).  Tom isn't the Fourth Doctor here, he's the First Curator, and who's to say that role requires him to be all teeth and curls?  He can be quieter, he can use a cane, he can lay his finger aside his nose like Father Christmas as he offers his younger self a glimmer of hope.  If they don't abuse and overuse the gimmick (I'm looking at you, River Song!), we can look forward to the Curator occasionally dropping in on the Doctor in perpetuity, so long as there's former Doctors willing to take on the role.  Imagine an elderly Matt Smith playing the Curator in the 100th anniversary special!

And if that notion doesn't blow your mind enough, try this one my husband brought up: the section of the Under-Gallery containing "Gallifrey Falls No More" has old-school roundels along one wall.  Any of you recall the legendary Fourth Doctor story "Shada", and how Professor Chronotis (another retired Time Lord hiding in plain sight) made his TARDIS look like a room at Cambridge?  Maybe the Doctor nicked the idea in his old age...


The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot: If "The Night of the Doctor" and "An Adventure in Space and Time" were appetizers, and "The Day of the Doctor" the main dish, then this 30-minute film was the dessert.  Rich, sweet, indulgent, and perhaps unnecessary, but darn it, this is a special occasion, so let's splurge!  I found some of the jokes near the beginning uncomfortable (the notion of classic Doctors begging for jobs doesn't strike me as funny), but when the piece hit its stride, I had to keep stopping the video because I was laughing so hard.  What sent me over the edge was the John Barrowman scenes...and if you missed this film for some reason, I will not spoil this particular gag for you.  Just go find it, and prepare yourself for the unexpected.

Now all we have to do is hang in there until the Christmas special airs.  Somebody start the countdown!

Friday, November 1, 2013

An Illustrated History of Jonah Hex (Part 10)



1984-1985: Last Days of an American Gunfighter

Things were hopping in the DC offices back in 1984: the company was gearing up for its 50th anniversary celebration next year, with lots of projects being created specifically for that event.  A fellow by the name of Bob Greenberger had just rejoined DC around that time to help with a few of them, and though his name isn’t one normally associated with Hex history, you’ll find out later that he had a front-row seat in regards to a big change in the bounty hunter’s life.

Before we get there, however, we have to go through a slew of small changes, starting right on the opening page of Jonah Hex #84 (May 1984): Jonah’s over at the local gunsmith shop replacing his prized Dragoons, which he’d tossed into a lake during the previous issue...though he’s reluctant to admit it.  “Ah just kinda had one nip too many, thet’s all!” he tells the gunsmith.  “An’ first thing Ah knowed, they’d kinda dropped in!”  Jonah is probably still coming to grips with the stupidity of his actions, seeing as how he’s owned those Dragoons since JH#18, but he eventually settles on replacing them with a Colt Peacemaker and Smith & Wesson Schofield .45 (but not until he’s made a few modifications).

Some time afterward, Jonah receives a telegram from the wealthy Mr. Sterling, offering him a job down in New Orleans.  Jonah arrives two weeks later, just as Mardi Gras is about to begin, and his told by Mr. Sterling that he fears his daughter, Adrian, may be kidnapped during the festivities, and wishes Jonah to act as bodyguard for Adrian and her fiancé, Clifford Mapely, who believes the bounty hunter’s presence to be unnecessary.  Despite Clifford’s objections, Jonah escorts the couple to a party, where the other guests proceed to ridicule Jonah to his face.  As you can imagine, Jonah doesn’t take this very well:



Clifford is aghast at Jonah’s actions, but Adrian stands up for him, saying as they leave the party, “And what exactly should he have done, Clifford?  Just stood there and taken that awful abuse--”  Her words are cut short as three men in skeleton costumes jump off a roof and attack them.  One of the attackers shoots Jonah while the other two grab Adrian -- Clifford flees during the commotion, leaving his fiancée and their unconscious bodyguard to fend for themselves.  When the attackers decide to finish Jonah off, Adrian bluffs them into thinking that he’s her fiancé, and Clifford was the bodyguard.  Figuring on a bigger payday, they kidnap both of them and stash the couple in a wine cellar somewhere within the city.  When Jonah wakes up later, Adrian confesses to him why she lied: She apparently fell in love with Jonah the moment she laid eyes on him!  Though surprised by this turn of events, Jonah frees himself and Adrian from their bonds, and together they take out the kidnappers.  After turning them over to the authorities, Jonah escorts Adrian home, where she tells the shamefaced Clifford that she never wants to see him again, then walks off arm-in-arm with Jonah!  Of all the relationships our hero has been involved in, this one seems the most mismatched -- he doesn’t have much in common with this gal and her high-society world -- but that may be what’s causing Jonah to stick around, the fact that this one is so different from what’s he’s previously gone through.

Speaking of previous relationships, we get a glimpse of them in this issue.  First is a brief scene between Mei Ling and Jeremiah Hart, where she chews him out for giving her son Jason a gun carved out of wood (perhaps a nod to the “Wooden Sixgun” tale in JH#27?).  Later, we look in on Emmylou Hartley, who’s still being held captive by bandits.  The leader, Brett, has kept her tied up and locked in a closet for the past few weeks in an effort to soften her up.  Whenever she begs to be let out, Brett tells her that it’s not his fault she’s tied up, but her own, and that, if she’d just promise to not try to escape every chance she gets, he’d gladly untie her (a textbook example of brainwashing).  It’s not until JH#85 that Emmy’s spirit becomes broken enough for her to give in when they ask her to help with a bank robbery (more on that later).

Meanwhile, Jonah’s spent the past two weeks playing socialite with Adrian, who’s set the two of them up in a house left to her by her grandmother.  She’s managed to gussy him up “like a blasted chimpanzee” (as Jonah puts it), and though he still seems fond of the attention she lavishes on him, he seems to have lost his taste for the non-stop partying.  As they get ready for yet another soiree, Clifford barges into the house and tries to get revenge on Jonah for taking Adrian away from him, an action that Jonah quickly makes him regret.  A spurned suitor is the least of Jonah’s problems, though, for unbeknownst to him, Quentin Turnbull has set yet another assassin on the bounty hunter’s trail: a masked man in Confederate togs called the Gray Ghost (no relation to either Colonel John S. Mosby, who bore the same moniker, nor the character from Batman: The Animated Series).  It’s said he was a Confederate officer whose family was slain by Union troops, and when the War ended, he refused to surrender, choosing instead to hunt down those he believed to be traitors to the Cause...and his newest target for vengeance is Jonah Hex!

That night, as Jonah and Arian ride home from the party, they come across a nicely-dressed man alongside the road, who tells them that his horse broke its leg, leaving him stranded in the middle of the night.  They offer him a ride in their buggy, and “Mister Gray”, as he’s calling himself, is grateful to take them up on it.  Whatever plan the Gray Ghost has in mind is soon scuttled when a trio of men nestled on a ridge further up the road suddenly begin firing upon the buggy, clipping “Mister Gray” in the head.  Hex takes up a rifle and opens fire, killing one of them, but the other two get away -- we later learn that these men were hired by the Clifford to eliminate Jonah so he can get Adrian back.  Unaware that there’s still a snake in their midst, Jonah and Adrian take the injured “Mister Gray” back to their home, and soon they all turn in for the night.  Before Adrian joins Jonah in bed, however, she decides to check in on their guest, only to find the Gray Ghost brandishing a gun in her face.  He shoots the woman, then goes after Jonah, who’s already out of bed and armed -- they briefly exchange gunfire in the stairwell before the Gray Ghost decides that it would be best to retreat at the moment.  Unfortunately for him, his exit is spotted by Clifford’s hired men, who mistake the man in Confederate gray for Hex and fill him full of lead!

The issue ends with Mr. Sterling and Jonah speaking with a doctor, who tells them that Adrian will recover from her wounds in a month or two, while reassuring them that the Gray Ghost is most certainly dead...though the reader soon finds out the Gray Ghost handsomely paid the doctor to lie.  This won’t be the last we see of him, but it will be two months before we see Jonah Hex in any capacity, as readers of the time learned when they reached that issue’s letter column.  “Writing these lines is a bittersweet experience for me,” Michael Fleisher said in a note that took up three-quarters of the page, “for reasons that will soon become apparent.”  He went on to inform readers that JH#85 marked his 100th Hex tale as writer (17 issues of Weird Western Tales, 81 of 85 issues of Jonah Hex, and the stories included in the Jonah Hex Spectacular and Super-Star Holiday Special) and his third as editor.  He spoke of his deep love for the character, and of the fans who’d stuck by Hex through thick and thin.  “In a comic book market increasingly dominated by costumed flying men, we have, together, managed to keep alive the spellbinding legend of one flawed, ordinary, extraordinary man,” he wrote.  “Whatever the future brings us, we’ve accomplished something together we can always be proud of.”

Then came the bitter part of his note: After seven years of monthly adventures, Jonah Hex was becoming a bi-monthly title again.  Fleisher told readers this was due to the burgeoning direct market (AKA comic book stores), which had a different sales demographic than, say, a spinner rack at the local drug store.  “Jonah has always been very strong on the newsstands, but in the comic shops, well, to be frank about it, he’s never been entirely comfortable squeezed in among all those flying men,” he wrote.  In DC’s eyes, a book that couldn’t perform well in both markets at once wasn’t worthy of monthly publication.  In an effort to turn the tide, Fleisher asked readers to not only buy Jonah Hex comics at their local shop, but also to introduce the character to friends in order to increase readership.  And two months later, Dick Giordano’s “Meanwhile” column, which was printed in all DC titles (including JH#86), featured a sidebar called "Spotlight on...Jonah Hex", praising the title’s uniqueness in the mainstream comics market (it’s uncertain whether Giordano or Fleisher was the author of this sidebar).
                                                                                                                            
As for the story presented in JH#86, life goes on as normal (or at least as normal as Jonah’s life gets).  He’s still in New Orleans, and still getting into brawls with anyone who pokes fun at his relationship with Adrian.  Even Adrian’s father is objecting to the affair: he must’ve had Jonah’s past investigated, for he tells Adrian that “the man’s married to a Chinese woman out West!!”  Adrian knows about this, but states that Jonah is no longer married to Mei Ling, then goes on to tell her father that neither she nor Jonah is entirely sure as to their feelings for each other:



Meanwhile, Jonah is out riding, probably trying to sort out in his mind the same issues Adrian is talking over with her father, when a familiar figure appears at the end of the plank bridge he’s crossing.  Holy Hannah in the mornin’!  He’s alive! Jonah thinks just as the Gray Ghost opens fire.  Earlier in the issue, we saw the Ghost stumble home, where his son, Jeremy Ashford, was waiting for him -- not only does the Gray Ghost now have a surname, but it looks like at least one member of his family survived the supposed massacre.  Still in bad shape from the gunshot wounds he suffered last issue, he spends a week recuperating before riding out again to finish the job he started.  He nearly succeeds this time around, peppering the bridge and Jonah with so many bullets that both fall into the water below.  Jonah manages to escape, but when he gets back to the house he’s sharing with Adrian, he finds that his foe beat him there, and managed to snag Adrian when she got home earlier.  Luckily, the Gray Ghost was kind enough to leave a note on the mirror as to where they’ve gone (which inadvertently leads to Tony DeZuniga drawing the scar on the wrong side of Jonah’s face).  When Jonah arrives at the slaughterhouse, the Ghost immediately pounces, leading to a three-page brawl and includes both men falling from a loft, as well as trading bullets at close range.  In the end, Jonah rescues Adrian, but the Gray Ghost vanishes once more, much to Jonah’s consternation.  “Whar in the Sam Hill is he?!?” he shouts when he goes to look for the body, only to find a couple of bloodstains on the floor.

Perhaps his foe’s seeming inability to die is one of the motivations behind Jonah suddenly deciding to leave New Orleans in JH#87, though he has another that he lays out for Adrian, namely how he’s beginning to feel “like some rich girl’s lap dog, goin’ out tuh fancy dress-up parties ever’ night.”  Jonah knows that a life of pampered luxury is not for him, just as he knows that Adrian would never be comfortable with him out on the trail, far away from “all them fancy dress shops an’ yore daddy’s heaps of money!”  It’s a low blow, but Jonah may have done that on purpose: considering that the Gray Ghost has already attacked Adrian twice to get to him (and the first attack injured her so badly she now has to walk with a cane), he might be trying to break her heart so that she’ll stay away from him, lest a third attack leave her dead.  If that was his intention, he did a damn lousy job of it, as we’ll discover later.

Around the same time, far from New Orleans, Emmy is having man troubles of a different sort.  She did indeed assist Brett and the other two gals, Camille and Sandy, with the bank robbery last issue, and though all the women were disguised as men, some people got a glimpse of Emmy’s face when her bandana fell down during a struggle with a bank customer, which led to Brett shooting him.  Now Brett thinks Emmy owes her for saving her hide, and he’s not above forcing himself upon her to get what he wants.  He keeps telling her how she’s a member of their “little family” now, and going by the way Brett cozies up to Camille and Sandy later on, this family is rather close, if you catch my drift.

Back on Jonah’s end of things, the bounty hunter has managed to hitch a ride on a freight train headed west.  Seeing as it has no passenger accommodations, he’s riding up front with the engineer and brakeman, so Jonah gets a perfect view of the dynamite a gang of outlaws laid on the tracks!  Though he survives the explosion that wrecks the train, he still has to hightail it into a nearby swamp in the hope of losing the outlaws.  What follows is typical “Hex versus a passel of skunks” action, with Jonah using the swamp to his advantage to take them out one by one, even going so far as to fill a covered pit with punji sticks:




After finishing off the last of them, Jonah hauls their carcasses to the nearest town, where the sheriff shows him the newest wanted poster to come in...and it just so happens to bear Emmylou’s face!  As if this wasn’t trouble enough, the readers find out elsewhere in the issue that the Gray Ghost (who was indeed fatally wounded) has managed to hang on long enough to pass his legacy onto his son.  The young man swears an oath to carry on his father’s cause, up to and including the death of Jonah Hex.  The subplots get even more complicated from here, to the point where they can’t fit the Gray Ghost stuff into the next issue.  Instead, JH#88, titled “The Saloon Girl and the Outlaw Queen”, focuses on Emmy and Adrian, who’s decided to travel west in the hope of finding Hex once again.  Before we reach her, though, we get a scene with a group of train robbers that’ve decided to use the wanted poster of Emmy to their advantage: the leader buys a blonde, pigtailed wig and forces of the younger gang members to wear it, the notion being that any job they pull will be blamed on Emmy’s gang instead.  As (mis)fortune would have it, the first train they decide to rob under this scheme is the one Adrian is traveling on.  During the trip, Adrian has struck up a conversation with a former tavern gal named Temple Starr.  Unlike Adrian, Temple is running away from a man, not after one, and she shows Adrian the man’s picture in an engraved locket he gave her.  In a contrived sequence of events, Adrian asks to try on the locket just as the robbers burst into the passenger car, killing Temple and striking Adrian in the head with the butt of a gun.  This results in Adrian losing her memory and (thanks to the engraved locket she was still wearing) later being led to believe that she’s actually Temple Starr!  Though Jonah later rounds up the robbers, he never learns of Adrian’s mishap, and aside from a couple of brief scenes in the next issue of an amnesiac Adrian working in a saloon, we'll neither see nor hear of the poor gal again.  For all we know, she spent the rest of her days waiting tables, unaware that she’d left friends, family, and riches behind in New Orleans.

After the false lead caused by the train robbers, Jonah finally manages to catch sight of Emmy with Brett and his gang.  He follows them into the town of Red Dog, where they try to rob the assayer’s office.  Not believing that Emmy could be a willing participant in all this, Jonah busts open the back door with the intent of rescuing her, and gets a nasty surprise:




Brett, Emmy, and the others get away clean, and the readers spent two months wondering whether or not Jonah survived.  It turned out that, while Jonah didn’t lose his life, he did lose Tony DeZuniga, who left the title after this issue.  There’s a strange symmetry to this, for when DeZuniga departed last time (after Weird Western Tales #23), the last scene he’d rendered was of Jonah “dying”.  As to why he left this time around, I was able to pose that question to him via a mutual friend back in 2006, and his reply was simple: his contract with DC had expired, and the company decided not to renew it.  Though we can’t say for certain why DC made that decision, the most likely reason is that, by this point in time, the company had already determined that Jonah Hex was to be cancelled.  As Fleisher had told readers months earlier, overall sales weren’t what they used to be, and with Crisis on Infinite Earths -- DC’s huge 50th anniversary event -- just around the corner, the time had come for sweeping changes across all titles.  To paraphrase the old tagline, worlds would live and worlds would die, and Jonah Hex’s world had fallen squarely on the “die” list.

This didn’t mean Fleisher was going to let Jonah go down without a fight, not after over a decade of writing a character that he identified with so strongly.  If the direct market didn’t favor Westerns, then he’d think of a different genre to slip the bounty hunter into.  This is where Bob Greenberger comes into the picture: as an editor for both CoIE and The History of the DC Universe project, as well as researcher for the 26-volume Who’s Who series, Greenberger was privy to much of the behind-the-scenes action during the mid-1980s.  I spoke with him at length on the subject in 2012, and he said this portion of our tale actually begins a few years before Jonah’s impending cancellation.  “In 1982, when Mad Max: Road Warrior was being brought to the United States after playing to huge box office in Australia a year earlier, several DC execs, including special projects guru Joe Orlando and his editor Andy Helfer, attended a screening. Andy was arguably in favor of licensing it for comics and Orlando, I was told, didn’t think DC should spend the money, just rip it off.”  Swiping a good idea from another medium and using it in a comic book wasn’t exactly a new notion: if you’ll recall, Jonah himself first came about as a riff on the Clint Eastwood spaghetti Westerns of the 1960s-70s.  Greenberger believes that Helfer, who was acting as “keeper” for Michael Fleisher in regards to his various projects, brought up the idea of dropping Jonah Hex into a Mad Max kind of setting (Fleisher credits his own viewing of the movie as inspiration, and it’s possible that Orlando, being a longtime friend of Fleisher’s, may have contributed to the idea as well).  Another thing to consider was the four-books-a-month contract that Fleisher was locked into at the time -- with Jonah Hex cancelled, another project had to be created to fill that hole -- so he was given the go-ahead to move Jonah to a whole new playing field, “with the out being that we knew he’d come back [to the Old West] so he could be stuffed,” Greenberger said.

With the destination set, all they needed to do now was build the road that would get Jonah there.  First priority was getting a new artist, and Mark Texeira was chosen for the task.  A relative newcomer to the comics industry, he’d worked mainly in the commercial art field before landing a few jobs on licensed comic titles and the occasional fill-in -- illustrating Hex’s upcoming adventures would be his first long-term gig, starting with JH#89.  This issue is less action-packed than usual, and for good reason: Jonah’s got “a king-sized hole” in his chest thanks to Emmy, and the doctor who patched him up has left him in the care of a Mrs. Crowley, who runs the local boardinghouse.  She’s been ordered to make sure that Jonah actually rests up for the foreseeable future, indulging in neither strenuous activity, spicy foods, nor any smoking or drinking.  In short, Jonah’s in Hell, and his need to rebel against Mrs. Crowley’s strict adherence to the rules causes him to sneak out one night and go to the nearest saloon, with comedic results:




The following afternoon -- with his porch privileges intact -- Jonah is sitting outside with Mrs. Crawford when Jeremy, the Gray Ghost’s son, rides up in plainclothes.  He’s come to avenge his father’s death, but he’s unaware of what Hex looks like, only that he’s staying at the boardinghouse.  Suddenly, Jonah catches glimpse of a rifle barrel from across the street: the loudmouth from the saloon last night has come gunning for him, and Jeremy’s about to get caught in the crossfire!  Jonah jumps off the porch, knocks Jeremy flat, then guns down the would-be assassin.  Jeremy’s gratitude quickly turns to dismay when he learns the man who saved his life is Jonah Hex, but that doesn’t stop him from putting on the Gray Ghost uniform and sneaking into Jonah’s room that night.  The bounty hunter is unaware of the intrusion, as he’s wrapped up in a nightmare where his ex-lovers come back to kill him.  While he tosses and turns, Jeremy stands over him, ready to put a bullet in Jonah’s brain, but he soon decides this is too cowardly an act, and instead waits until morning to face Hex like a man, unmasked.

Finding him out on a porch swing, Jeremy sits down across from Jonah and tells him who he is.  Jonah says he already knows, as he spied the uniform inside Jeremy’s bag when he saved him from getting shot.  Jeremy then draws his gun and holds it inches from Jonah’s face, but the bounty hunter doesn’t flinch, he simply says, “Yuh want muh two cents, boy?  Don’t do it!”  What follows is probably the most intense scene in a Jonah Hex tale ever:




Jonah’s calm demeanor causes Jeremy to lose his nerve, and the young man runs off.  Once he’s out of sight, Jonah breathes a sigh of relief, then reveals that he’d been holding a cocked pistol beneath the blanket on his lap the entire time.  Moments later, Jeremy, who can’t live with the shame of letting down his father,  puts his own pistol to his head and kills himself, bringing an abrupt end to the Gray Ghost saga (at least for the next few decades).

Around this point in history, we hit a somewhat muddled patch.  We know that work on Jonah’s new series was proceeding apace behind the scenes (as evidenced by the tiny ad slipped into that issue’s letter column), while at the same time, the events of Crisis on Infinite Earths were effecting nearly every DC title to varying degrees, from the simple presence of red skies up to being directly tied into the larger story.  According to Mark Texeira, he’d drawn a story back in 1985 that not only would’ve linked CoIE with Jonah’s title, it would’ve been the cause of him getting stranded in the future!  He’s related the tale to a few people over the years (including myself and journalist Michael Browning), giving a summary of what he can remember drawing: Jonah is riding through a snowstorm, apparently lost.  There’s a scene where, desperate for food, he digs beneath the bark of a tree and eats bugs.  The story ends when a bright white light appears before Jonah (similar walls of light are prevalent throughout CoIE) and he rides into it -- the first issue of the new series would have begun with Jonah riding out of that white light and arriving in the future.  Texeira claims the pages were completed and ready to print, but no story matching his description was ever printed, nor have the pages themselves ever turned up on the collector’s market.  When I brought up the tale of the missing pages to Greenberger, he said that he couldn’t verify their existence, but did offer an explanation as to why the story might have been abandoned: There was a mandate from DC at the time that all titles would feature the Monitor (one of CoIE’s big movers-and-shakers) in some capacity, so it’s possible that Fleisher had included the character in the story, but the idea was rejected after the art for the story had been completed.  As Greenberger put it, even though DC’s decision to send Hex into the future coincided with CoIE, the company “never intended to use the Crisis as the vehicle for his relocation.”  The fact that JH #90 is included on official lists as a tie-in book (even though it doesn’t feature the Monitor nor any other references to CoIE) lends credence to the “rejected story” theory, as they may have forgotten to remove it from the list after it was scrapped.

Despite all that hullaballoo, Jonah did actually participate in the Crisis, just not within his own title.  Crisis on Infinite Earths #3 (June 1985) features a scene where Hex, Bat Lash, Scalphunter, Nighthawk, and Johnny Thunder meet up with some modern-day superfolk and fight off the Anti-Monitor’s shadow-demons.  The most notable thing about the scene is the date: 1879, four years after the “current” time in Jonah’s own title, as well as a year after the events of Justice League of America #198-199, which Jonah makes reference to when he sees John Stewart is wearing a Green Lantern uniform.  Sadly, this was Jonah’s only real part in the Crisis, though he had cameos in issues #4-5, and was on the cover for #7.  There were also CoIE flashbacks featuring Hex in Green Lantern #195-196 (Dec. 1985-Jan. 1986) and Swamp Thing #46 (March 1986), but he added nothing to those particular stories.

Back in Jonah’s title, the end was slowly creeping up on him.  The final three issues were drawn by Gray Morrow, who’s probably better known for his work on another DC cowboy -- Greg Saunders, the original Vigilante -- but he’d also done a cover or two in the past for the bounty hunter.  It’s uncertain why Texeira didn’t close out the series, though we can speculate that his schedule was possibly full due to work on the new Hex title (and again, if a completed story had been rejected, drawing a whole a new one would put him behind), so Morrow was brought in to pinch-hit, with Texeira contributing to two of the covers.  There’s a feeling in these tales of Fleisher just biding his time until the end, shoehorning scenes that are relevant to the current storyline into scripts he perhaps had laying around.  It’s not to say these three issues are bad, they just mostly come off as “business as usual”.  JH#90 revolves around a young woman named Silver Ames, who’s decided to become the fastest gun in the West, and she’s got it in her head that the best way to do it is to kill everyone who’s faster than her.  When we meet her, she's just tracked down Jeremiah Hart, the second-fastest gun in the country according to folks.  I’m glad to tell you that the colorist finally got it right and made Jeremiah dark-haired again with tan-colored buckskins, but we don’t get to enjoy it for long because Silver shoots Jeremiah in the back when he refuses to draw on her.  We later see Mei Ling sobbing over Jeremiah’s dead body, and though it’s a terrible note to leave the poor gal on, this is the last image we’ll have of Mei Ling for the next 26 years.

Meanwhile, Jonah’s recovered well enough that he can go searching for Emmy again.  It’s a darn shame he doesn’t know Emmy just escaped from Brett’s clutches, as he could’ve saved himself a lot of grief out on the trail: first Jonah gets caught in a rockslide (which kills his horse), then he gets mauled by a mountain lion (which tears his Confederate coat to shreds).  By some miracle, he makes it to a farmhouse, where the owner lends him a horse.  This is where Jonah’s luck finally turns good again, as he just misses being hit by a “shootin’ star”:



Not giving the strange incident a second thought, Jonah heads back to town to get patched up by the doc (as well as borrow an ugly purple shirt, which would look great with the “pimp hat” he got from that other doctor over a decade ago).  A telegram is waiting for him (from Mei Ling, perhaps?) telling him about Hart’s murder, and just as he reads it, Silver Ames herself shows up, demanding a shootout.  Knowing what she’s capable of, Hex shoots her down before she can finish her three-count.  His attitude about it may seem blasé, but who knows how many times he’s gone through this same scenario...and unlike Jeremy Ashford, who was reluctant to kill when the time came, it didn’t appear that any amount of talking would make Silver back down.

JH#91 introduces yet another love interest for Jonah, and they’re not subtle about it either, showing Jonah in a lip-lock right on the cover, which imitates a Neal Adams Superman piece from 1971 (note that Jonah's boots are depicted here with flat heels and no spurs).  Jonah runs into Carolee while he’s out looking for Emmy (there must be a really fast tailor back in Red Dog, because he’s wearing his Confederate coat again), and she tells him a sob story about wanting to join the rodeo that just came into town.  Well, it just so happens Jonah knows one of the guys working that rodeo, and he says he’ll see what he can do about getting her a job.  Carolee is so overjoyed by the news that she pulls him down for a roll in the hay right then and there...which wouldn’t be so bad if she wasn’t seventeen and he wasn’t pushing forty!  Jonah is quite aware of how wrong this relationship is, but he doesn’t seem too eager to fight it.  However, it does turn out to be a good thing that Jonah’s hanging around the rodeo, as there’s a few former employees that’re fixing to destroy it.  While tracking them down, they ambush him, and though Jonah manages to kill one before the rest run off, the dead body vanishes in a beam of light while Jonah’s back is turned -- since he didn’t witness the event, Jonah doesn’t make the connection between this disappearance and the incident at the farmhouse, but the reader may have by now.

Back at the rodeo, Jonah decides the best way to smoke these skunks out is to make them think he’s moved on, so he raids the costume tent and disguises himself as a rodeo clown.  This has to be one of the most embarrassing points in Jonah’s career, especially when he’s forced to enter the ring and distract a bull.  As if that wasn’t humiliating enough, he also spies Carolee cozying up to the owner of the rodeo.  The only good thing to come out of Jonah’s greasepaint adventure is that he catches the bad guys before they can do any more damage.  The issue ends with Jonah punching a mirror in a fit of rage, and who can blame him?  Think of what’s happened to Jonah in the past year: He spent months in a hellish prison, he lost his wife to another man, he went on a major bender and had to go to a temperance farm to dry out, he burned through three girlfriends (the last one being more than half his age), and then there’s all the usual crap he has to suffer through on a daily basis like getting shot and stabbed and beat up and what-have-you.  It’s been a long time since Jonah’s had so much go wrong in his life all at once, and going by the ad in JH#91’s letter column, the new life waiting for him will be just as rough.

When we reach Jonah Hex #92 (dated August 1985), the cover says it all: “GUT-WRENCHING FINAL ISSUE!  Will it also be Jonah’s last gunfight?”  To tell the truth, the overall issue is far from gut-wrenching.  The story flips between scenes of Jonah protecting a young orphan girl who witnessed a murder, and scenes of Emmy on the run from Brett (just as she’s been doing since JH#90).  The parts with Emmy have the pace of a slasher film, as Emmy keeps thinking she’s reached a safe place, only to have Brett turn up and set her running again.  Meanwhile, Jonah seems to make a quick bond with the girl, Cindy, who’s quite eager to help out the bounty hunter, despite his best efforts to keep her safe.  There’s a point where Jonah actually considers taking Cindy under his wing, at the very least so he could “have somebody tuh talk to all thet time Ah spend on the trail,” and from the way things look after Jonah picks up his $5,000 bounty, it really does seem as though that’s where the story is heading, so it’s a shame when her definitely-not-dead parents suddenly show up to collect her.  Turns out Cindy is a habitual runaway, and perhaps Jonah sensed that, deep down, because he leaves the little girl with her folks with only a “So long, now!” tossed over his shoulder.  Still counting his bounty money, Jonah heads for the Red Dog Saloon, and that’s where Emmy finally finds him...as does the mysterious beam of light that’s missed him twice before:



And just like that, in the summer of 1985, the very last Western on the comics market came to an end.  The heyday of four-color cowboys had long since passed, and it would be decades before publishers would offer up multiple Western-themed titles again (though only a handful compared to the old days).  Along with the loss of an entire genre, readers would also be deprived of any knowledge as to what happened to Emmy after Jonah vanished: like Adrian Sterling, there has never been another mention of Emmylou Hartley in all the years since her last appearance.

As for Jonah himself, he would be given one last chance at survival, far from the genre that birthed him.  In a comics shop full of superheroes, Jonah needed a miracle in order to stand out amongst them.  What he got was HEX.

Tuesday, October 29, 2013

Big things are a-happening...

Still working on the details, but I might have a huge announcement for you guys very soon.  Stay tuned for that.  In other news, the tenth installment of "An Illustrated History of Jonah Hex" will be up this Friday, just in time for Jonah's 175th birthday (I may not be the most punctual person, but I'll always put up a history post on November 1st!).  And if you're not already reading All-Star Western on a regular basis, I implore you to do so.  Palmiotti & Gray are putting out one of the best titles DC has to offer, and I'm not just saying that as a fan: the recent reviews on it are the most-positive I've ever seen, but the sales numbers still aren't great for some unfathomable reason.  Please pre-order ASW and any other Jonah Hex stuff so DC's marketing department can see just how many people out there really like to read Hex's adventures (once it's on the shelf for general consumption, DC stops counting).  I want the old man to stick around for many more years to come...or at least until I can arrange a crossover with a certain younger cowpoke.

Sunday, September 29, 2013

New fanfic: Shades of Gray #13

I really thought I'd get this issue done faster, and as always, it just didn't happen.  But it's here now, so rejoice!  Be sure to click the link at the end of the issue for some info regarding this tale versus Jonah's current adventures in All-Star Western (which you should be reading as well -- yes, my stuff is free, but Palmiotti & Gray work too damn hard to be ignored!).

Also, if you want a more regular dose of Hex in your life, be sure to check out https://www.facebook.com/ViaPonyExpress -- we're working to be the best Hex page out there, so give us a "Like" and help us out!

Thursday, September 5, 2013

It pays to know your history.

You see odd things working in retail.  I'm not talking about the customers here, I mean what I find in the till.  People do strange things to coins like punch holes in them, or take tin snips and actually slice off bits, or just warp and bend them to the point where, if you put them in a change machine, it would jam the darn thing up.  Then there's the foreign coins that folks pass around without realizing it's not legal U.S. tender.  Since we're right next to Canada, we of course get our share of Canadian coins, but I've also found copper 2-euro coins in the penny cup, British fivepence mixed in with dimes (same diameter, but almost twice as thick), money from Thailand and Panama and all sorts of places.  Most customers don't think twice when they dole them out because many of the coins are roughly the same size and shape as U.S. coins, so I'll slide 'em back when they give it to me and let them know that this isn't going to work.  But some cashiers don't bother to look, hence how these oddballs end up in my drawer.  I remember somebody once took a 2-dollar Canadian coin, which looks like a silver dollar with a gold center...how could you not give that a closer look?  Then there was the time I found a plastic penny (the kind that come in "play money" packs at the toy store) sitting in the till.

And then you get what happened two nights ago.  My boss was collecting up drawers from the various registers around the store so he could count them in the back, and as he passed near mine, he said, "I need you to look at something."

"Sure, whatcha got?" I asked, having no clue he was about to drop these two curiosities in my hand:


Now keep in mind that it's a little after 9 o'clock at night, and I was getting pretty tired.  But I did recognize the "seated Liberty" image right off the bat.  Then I saw "1861".  Then I flipped it over and read "Confederate States of America Half Dol." but didn't notice the middle yet (which you might've picked out already).  I looked up at my boss and said, "It has to be fake."

"How do you know?  It could be real.  Look at it!"

"Yeah, and it looks too good for being 150 years old," I replied.  Keep in mind that, around five years before, I found two U.S. half-dollars from the 1890s in one of the tills, so this was plausible...but those other coins had also been worn down so much from being in circulation that the images on both sides were almost obliterated.  I bought 'em off the till anyways because they're still interesting and (more important) pure silver.  If you've got any silver coins, take one and drop it on a table, it'll make a very bright ping when it hits.  Modern coins have a slightly duller sound.  As for those two Rebel beauties... "If these were real, they'd be made of silver," I told my boss, then dropped one on the counter, where it landed with a metallic thud.  "Silver doesn't thud.  They're also a little thick for half-dollars."

He wasn't convinced.  "I don't know.  I've got some coins at home that..."

"And I've also studied up on the Civil War and the 1800s in general," I interrupted.  "Precious metals were scarce during that time.  The Union had to issue 'shinplasters' instead, little slips of paper with coin denominations on them.  And I know for a fact that the Confederacy was dead broke, so I somehow doubt they were minting coins.  Paper money, yeah -- I've got a few reproductions at home -- but I've never seen coins."  I held one up and flipped it so he could see the front, saying, "Plus it's got a 'seated Liberty' on the obverse.  Those were on Union coins.  Why would the Confederacy use a Union symbol?  I'm 95% sure this is a fake, probably a souvenir from a Civil War site.  I'll give you a dollar for 'em, since they were probably cashed in as half-dollars."

"Now hold on, what if they are real?" he said.  "They could be worth a lot of money!"

"Don't worry, I was going to check them out online tonight.  If they're real...and I'm almost positive they're not...you'll get half."

My boss still hemmed and hawed a bit, since he wanted one for himself.  Trouble was, he didn't have any cash on him, and I did.  He wanted to leave one in the drawer until tomorrow, but I told him, "If somebody was dumb enough to take 'em, they'll be dumb enough to give it out.  Then we'll have a customer complaining that we gave them fake money...or worse, they'll call us racist because it says 'Confederate'."  So he took my dollar, and since there were no customers at the moment, I continued to look over the coins.  When he came back around for my till, I said to him, "I'm now up to 99%."

"Why is that?" he asked.

"Because this coin has a seam."  I held one of the coins up edgewise so you could see the line running through the milling (which was in poor shape).  "That means this was done in a mold."

"What're you talking about?  I've seen that on quarters before."

"No, that's sandwiching: the little stripe on the edge of quarters is where the copper core is showing through.  Ever see how coins are made?"  The boss said he hadn't, so I put my fist on the counter and said, "They make one die with the reverse image on it, then place a blank coin on that."  I laid the coin on my fist.  "Then they take another die with the obverse image on it, and slam 'em together."  I took my other fist and brought it down on the coin.  "You've never seen a coin where the blank slipped and the image is off?"  Turned out that he hadn't.  "Also," I added, "this thing smells like a Slinky.  What do they make those out of?  Aluminum?" (I looked it up later: Slinkys are made of steel, so presumably these coins are as well)

The boss still had his doubts as to my assessment, and began to walk away with my drawer.  Before he got too far, my eyes finally fell upon the indentation in the middle of coin, which just looked like damage at a glance.  It was only when you held it at the proper angle that the evidence became clear, probably due to the florescent lighting in the store.  After checking the other coin, I ran up to my boss, holding out both coins.  "I'm 100% now!" I told him, and pointed at the "damage": the word COPY etched into the metal.  We'd both missed it every damn time we looked at the coins.  "You still want one?" I asked, and he said yes, so until he gives me fifty cents, I'm gonna be walking around with fake Confederate money in my pocket.

Before I wrap this up, I have to admit that it turned out I was wrong on one point: the Confederacy did have plans to make half-dollar coins, but they never went into circulation.  All that exists are 4 examples, which the copies we found are based on.  The reason why the "seated Liberty" is on the obverse is because they were made at the New Orleans mint, which the Confederacy took over when Louisiana seceded.  Since most engravers lived in the North and the mint already had a bunch of half-dollars partially stamped, they simply made a new die for the reverse and used the coins on hand to show what the finished product might look like.  In 1879, a man got a hold of the Confederate die and re-stamped 500 Union 1861 half-dollars to make replicas, which are worth thousands today.  There's also been many other replicas made since then out of high-grade metals, but the two we found are just what I thought from the beginning: cheap copies that you can get for around three bucks at historical sites.

I gotta tell ya, though, you should've seen the look on my husband's face when I got home that night and said, "Hold out your hand..."

Saturday, July 13, 2013

52 Pick-Up: And then there were two...

A few weeks back, I finally got the guts to drop Green Lantern from my pull list.  And since just about everything other title I was buying as of March 2012 has either come to an end or joined Hal by the wayside, I now only buy two DC titles on a monthly basis: All-Star Western and Batman: Li'l Gotham (more on those later).  This notion is still a bit of a shock for me.  When I started buying comics regularly over 20 years ago, I started with only two, and they were both DC.  Specifically, I bought Batman and Detective Comics, because I was obsessed with the character thanks to the Tim Burton movie.  DC was my comics foundation, and Batman my first building block.  The next title I got hooked on was The Demon, and I wouldn't have even looked at it if Batman hadn't made an appearance in it.  I slowly began to pick up other comics from other companies, but DC got more dollars out of me than anyone in the those first few years, to the point where, in the late 1990s, I had at least 10 DC titles in my pull box (half of which here written by Chuck Dixon, so they crisscrossed each other quite a bit, making one HUGE story).

I'd drop a title from time to time, of course, but DC overall never lost its luster for me.  That was home.  I lived in Gotham, commuted to Bludhaven, occasionally visited Metropolis (and Hawaii when Superboy lived there), spent time in Manchester, and would jump in a time bubble to travel to the 30th Century (with rare visits to the 19th as well to see how Jonah Hex was doing).  But then, not long after I made Coast City a regular stop, things got shaky for me.  After Infinite Crisis wrapped up in 2006, DC had their "One Year Later" event, wherein every title suddenly jumped ahead, and many readers found themselves in unfamiliar territory.  Friends became foes (and vice versa), characters changed for better or worse, and I began to develop a bad taste in my mouth when reading titles I'd once loved.  The Bat-family suffered the most, as I just stopped liking the people I'd spent the past 15 years with.  Nightwing went first, then DC made the hard choice for me and cancelled Robin and Birds of Prey around the same time they "killed" Bruce Wayne, an event I used as a good excuse to stop buying Batman and 'Tec as well.  The version of the Legion of Super-Heroes I liked had vanished months earlier, so I vanished from that era as well.  I kept trying to hang on to the DCU as best I could, but it was becoming harder to find something I enjoyed, at least when it came to new offerings.  I found myself diving into back-issue boxes, looking for titles I'd missed the first time around, and enjoying them much more than what currently populated the comics racks.

Then "The New 52" hit like a final nail in the coffin.  I tried like Hell to find something new to buy, I really did, but there's so many strangers with familiar faces looking back at me now when I peruse the racks.  I even tried the Earth 2 stuff, but I couldn't bring myself to care about these people who just happen to share names with Golden Age legends.  Congratulations, DC, you've done a lovely job of making me feel like an old woman with outdated tastes...except for the two titles that continue to entertain me.

All-Star Western: The current storyarc actually makes me giddy.  I managed to unload many of the feelings I had regarding "Future Hex" years ago, but that doesn't stop me from wishing that it could be done over again, and done right.  I think J&J are, so far, doing it right.  They familiarized Jonah with the notion of time travel in ASW#19-20 before chucking him ass-over-teakettle in #21, and though I wish we could slow down a little, Jonah's reactions to the situation so far are wonderful.  Plus I think the fact that we're dealing with here-and-now 2013 as opposed to blasted-to-Hell 2050 will help in the long run: there's no need to invent and explain everything to the reader, just to Jonah (if he cares to listen).  However, I am pissed off that there's no ASW in September.  Pardon my French, but I don't give a shit about Villains Month, and 3D covers ain't gonna sway me otherwise -- matter of fact, this whole event is what convinced me to finally drop Green Lantern.  I also pray that J&J don't repeat Fleisher's mistake of leaving Jonah in the "future" with no feasible way back.  That won't win any points with me or any other Hex-nut.

Batman: Li'l Gotham: This comic reminds me of Batman: The Animated Series, in that it can be serious when the moment calls for it, then it'll hit a humorous note without being overly silly.  All the characters are perfectly-distilled versions of themselves poured into chibi-style bodies, and Damien...I actually like Damien here!  I thought he was a little psychotic bastard in the regular Bat-titles, but here he's toned down to the level of a kid that just needs restraining from time to time.  But the most remarkable thing about it?  The cast is unaffected by all those "The New 52" changes.  Barbara is still Oracle and in charge of the Birds of Prey, plus both Stephanie Brown and Cassandra Cain make appearances.  I can live in this Gotham happily, with its turkey rampages and Mr. Freeze making slides out of ice because he likes slides.

My only fear is that Batman: Li'l Gotham will be a limited series, as it's actually reprinting a digital-first title.  If it comes to an end, then all I've have left is Jonah in All-Star Western, and if DC ever decides that keeping Hex-nuts happy isn't worth the title's low numbers, then I'll be left out in the cold.  No more DC titles, not unless things seriously change over there.  I won't be bereft of comics, of course.  I buy about a half-dozen other titles from various companies, so don't worry about me having nothing to spend my money on.  But still, it'll be a sad day when I go into the shop and my pull box has no DC offerings in it.

I don't want to lose my home, but I feel like I'm being evicted.

Saturday, June 1, 2013

An Illustrated History of Jonah Hex (Part 9)


1983-1984: Doin’ Hard Time

The comic book landscape is constantly in flux, with some changes coming and going so fast that they can, at times, seem inexplicable.  Take a simple thing like a book’s page count, for example: When Jonah Hex got his own title in 1977, each story was 17 pages long, same as in Weird Western Tales.  By JH#16, it had jumped up to 25 pages, then was slowly scaled back to its original 17-page status by the time we reached JH#28.  Starting with JH#40, a 8-page backup had been tacked onto the book in order to use up leftover stories commissioned for the now-defunct WWT, and though Jonah occasionally squeezed out his costars for an issue or two, the backups appeared on a fairly regular basis until JH#61 hit the stands.  With that issue, Jonah Hex once again became a 25-page-long, single-feature book.  So why is it that, after a full year of solo stories, we’re suddenly back down to 17 pages plus a backup El Diablo tale in Jonah Hex #73 (June 1983)?  Well, young’uns, we can chalk that up to an old tradition known as the fill-in: a continuity-light tale that’s prepared in advance and held in a file by the title’s editor (or done on-the-fly by whomever’s available at the moment) in case the creative team is running late or simply needs a breather.  We’ve speculated earlier that WWT#37 and JH#12 may have been fill-ins (due to art inconsistencies in the former and no mention of the then-current storyarc in the latter), but JH#73 and the two issues that follow it are the strongest candidates yet, mainly due to the shortened page count.

Okay, enough about the “why” and the “how”, let’s move on to the “what”...as in what a mixed bag JH#73 is.  On the plus side, we get art by Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez, who we last saw in JH#32 (in fact, when you consider that Garcia-Lopez was the artist on this title when it launched, it’s possible this story has been sitting in the file for years), but on the minus side, the story Michael Fleisher wrote becomes more unbelievable the further it goes on.  Our tale begins with Jonah getting caught in an explosion set by a gang he was trying to ambush.  They leave him for dead, but in truth, Jonah makes it through just fine...save for both of his legs being broken.  A young Mexican boy manages to get him to a doctor, who puts Hex in casts from his ankles up to his knees.  He realizes this will make him a sitting duck when that gang discovers he’s not dead, and sure enough, one of the owlhoots breaks into his room that night to blast him with a shotgun, but Jonah had already wrestled himself into a wheelchair and got the drop on him first.  From there, “The Wheelchair Bounty Hunter” and his new sidekick Manuel go riding across the countryside on a buckboard, tracking down the gang members one by one.  Jonah kills about half of them before the rest of the gang bushwhacks our duo, wounding Manuel and shoving Jonah off a cliff!  Thanks to some quick-thinking lariat work, Jonah survives, and after recovering his wheelchair, we are treated to one of the craziest stunts we’ve ever seen the man pull:



After that silliness, Fleisher gets a mite serious again with JH#74 &75, a two-parter drawn by regular artists Dick Ayers and Tony DeZuniga.  In addition to the short page count, the lack of Emmylou Hartley in this tale points to it being a file story.  Also of note is the cover to JH#74, done by Dick Giordano and Jonah Hex editor Ross Andru, which not only switches back briefly to the “classic” logo, it imitates a die-cut cover, putting “holes” in strategic places so you can see portions of the splash page beneath.  The effect isn’t perfect, but since it came out nearly a decade before such gimmicks became rampant in the comics industry, I’ll cut them some slack.  The story itself appears to be based loosely on the life of Frank and Jesse James: like the brothers, “Railroad Bill” Clinton (no relation to the 42nd President, I’m sure) rode with William Quantrill during the War, and now uses his talents to rob trains and banks.  These facts win him a lot of fans among the poor farmers in the area, who see those institutions as being just as oppressive as the Union they fought against a decade earlier, and therefore look upon Clinton as a Robin Hood figure.  A group of Pinkertons, led by Archibald Graphus, have been after him for a year with no luck, so the head of the Western Pacific Railroad has decided to hire Jonah Hex “off the books” to do what Graphus can’t.

One week later, Graphus and his men try to ambush Clinton’s gang as they rob a bank, but the impetuous Pinkerton orders his men to take them out before the civilians can clear the street, leading to a shooting gallery that kills eight of the outlaws along with a handful of innocents.  As the remaining outlaws escape town, Graphus shoots Clinton’s horse out from under him, thereby finally capturing his quarry.  He’s not interested in arresting Clinton proper, however, and makes ready to hang the man on the spot.  Luckily, Jonah rides up at that moment and tries to talk Graphus out of it, saying that Clinton deserves a trial.  Seeing as how Jonah’s hanged a man or two himself in his day, one has to wonder if he’s stopping this so he can collect his fee, or if Jonah, like the farmers, commiserates with ex-Confederate Clinton.  To be sure, Graphus thinks it’s the latter, and when Clinton escapes, he shoots Hex in the back when the bounty hunter rides after him.  Despite knowing who Jonah Hex is (and why he’s most likely shown up), Clinton turns his horse around to help Jonah out.  The two men ride off together, eventually stopping at the house where Clinton’s mother and sister live -- Jonah gets patched up there with the understanding that he won’t pursue Clinton any longer.  Jonah not the one he should be worrying about, though: after night falls, one of Clinton’s gang members (who arrived at the house before them) sneaks out and meets up with Graphus.  This two-timing skunk is the reason the gang got ambushed during the robbery, and now he’s arranging for a slaughter.

When the traitor gets back to the house at the beginning of JH#75, Clinton is waiting for him, having realized too late that there was a snake in their midst.  Clinton’s gunshots wake up the rest of the house, and as he explains that it isn’t safe to stay there any longer, Graphus and his men sneak up to the house and begin lobbing in sticks of dynamite -- the explosion kills Ma Clinton and his sister along with a couple more gang members.  Hex and the other survivors manage to escape Graphus’ deathtrap, and once they’ve put enough distance between themselves and the Pinkertons, Clinton tells Hex that it’s time for them to part ways, and that the bounty hunter had best steer clear of him from now on:



Jonah agrees to Clinton's terms for now, but three weeks later, he stops Clinton and his diminished gang from robbing a train.  Clinton passes up a good chance to kill Hex and instead rides off, an action that causes one of his men to declare that Clinton’s “gone sweet” on Jonah.  That doesn't sit well with Clinton, and he tells them to hole up in Briar Springs for a spell, while he goes off alone to kill Jonah Hex.  Four nights later, we find Jonah sitting alone by a campfire, himself wondering why he allowed Clinton to get away scot free.  Unbeknownst to him, Clinton is peering down upon him with a rifle, but before the man can pull the trigger, Graphus shows up at Hex’s campsite demanding to know where Clinton is!  With two enemies in his sights, Clinton has to decide to shoot first, and wouldn’t ya know it, Graphus is the one he chooses, killing him with one shot.  Jonah quickly dives for cover as Clinton peppers the campsite with lead, but he soon runs out of ammo and tries to escape, unaware that Jonah has snuck around behind him.  Jonah demands that Clinton surrender, to which the outlaw replies, “Ah’ve told yuh before thet Ah ain’t ‘bout tuh let no man put me back inside a prison!”  He then cocks the rifle, bluffing Hex into thinking that it’s still loaded so that he’ll shoot Clinton dead.  When Jonah realizes he’s been had, it doesn’t sit right with him at all, but as he’ll soon learn, “Railroad Bill” Clinton was right in his assertion that death on the trail was better than life in prison.

Jonah’s normal 25-page count is back with JH#76, as well as his normal problems, namely what to do about Emmylou Hartley.  His love for the gal has dissipated, but he can’t bring himself to tell her so.  Meanwhile, Emmy seems to have fallen back to her old role as a warrior’s squaw, setting up camp for Jonah and preparing the game he brings back, and even wearing a buckskin dress and moccasins like she was when they met in JH#50 -- faced with devotion like that, it’s easy to see why he’s having a hard time talking with her about their relationship.  Still, his diminished feelings don’t stop him from throwing Emmy to cover when three unknown skunks open fire upon them.  Jonah wipes them out fast, and is left to wonder who they were and why they were shooting at them.  The reader soon finds out that this was Turnbull’s latest attempt on Jonah Hex’s life, and he’s none too happy that his agents have failed him once more.  As he rants to his manservant, Solomon, about the situation, he observes a possum Solomon had caged earlier in the day.  “This is what I’ve been waiting for!” Turnbull tells him.  “An inspiration for achieving a fitting vengeance on Jonah Hex!”

That very evening, Jonah and Emmylou ride into town, and as Emmy gets them a hotel room, Jonah takes their horses to the livery, where he’s bushwhacked by some fellas who drag him into the woods.  Seems the governor of the state, McKinley Phelps, wanted to meet with him in private (nobody ever asks nicely in these stories, do they?) to discuss business.  According to Phelps, the state penitentiary is hopelessly corrupt, and he needs a man like Hex on the inside in order to gather evidence against the warden and his staff.  The idea is that Hex -- a man whose profession is already slightly questionable -- will commit of series of crimes so that he can be sentenced to the penitentiary and therefore begin his investigation without suspicion.  After a month, he’d be released, his record cleared, and collect a well-deserved fee.  Jonah didn’t just fall off the turnip truck, however, and wants something more than the governor’s word that everything will be peachy-keen once this is over:



With his true innocence set down in writing, Jonah tells Emmy that he’s going away for a while.  She demands to know where he’s going, but he tells her it’s a secret and that she’s probably better off without him anyhow, which leads to her snapping at him in public that she’s tired of being a stand-in for his wife.  Jonah doesn’t attempt to patch this over, and instead rides off, most likely thinking that this incident will finally shake him free of Emmy.  Two weeks later, Jonah begins his sanctioned crime spree, brazenly robbing trains and stagecoaches until he’s finally bagged by the law.  Charged with four counts of armed robbery, Jonah is sentenced to twenty-five years in the state penitentiary.  The news is soon splashed all over the papers, one of which ends up in the hands of Mei Ling’s brother, who proceeds to berate her with the fact that the father of her son turned out to be a no-good criminal.  Emmylou, on the other hand, isn’t so accepting of the news, and intends to get to the bottom of this.

Jonah is transferred to the penitentiary the following day, where he’s stripped of his distinctive Confederate gray and given prison stripes.  Over the next few days, he learns quite a bit about how corrupt his new home is, and when he comes to the aid of a fellow prisoner that collapsed from being overworked and underfed, the guards beat Jonah within an inch of his life, then chuck him into solitary confinement.  But it’s all worth it, right?  In a month, the governor will order his release, and Jonah can see to it that these skunks get what’s coming to them.

Wrong.  As JH#77 opens, we find Jonah’s gone half-mad from having spent several weeks in the hole with nothing but rats for company.  Then after a quick recap, we get a scene reminiscent of The Shawshank Redemption as Turnbull himself shows up at Jonah’s cell door to gloat over his predicament.  Seems Governor Phelps is a longtime friend of Turnbull’s who just happened to owe him quite a few favors, so Turnbull coerced the man into helping him with his mad scheme to get Hex thrown in jail...and unlike the situation Turnbull engineered that led to the “fugitive” storyarc in JH#2-16, Jonah is actually guilty of these crimes.  “You’re going to rot in here forever, my young friend,” Turnbull says, “can’t you see that?  You’re going to be hemmed in by these four dank walls until your mind turns to jelly and your body to dust!”  Too bad all this gloating blinded him to the fact that Jonah wasn’t restrained:



The guards come in and pummel Jonah before he can harm Turnbull, then lock him away in solitary once again.  Unbeknownst to either Hex or Turnbull, Emmylou Hartley is meeting with the warden at that very moment and doing her level best to arrange a visit with Jonah (thankfully, she had the sense to put on a nice proper dress as opposed to the buckskin she’d been running about in earlier).  The warden is blocking her request, however, saying that Hex has been sentenced to a full sixty days in solitary, and that it’ll be two weeks before he’s allowed any visitors.  Emmy vows to be back once the time is up, but she’s in the shock of her life when the warden tells her upon her return two weeks later that Jonah Hex is dead, even going so far as to show Emmy the grave -- this is all a ruse, of course, in order to continue torturing Jonah down in solitary without fear of anyone else looking in on his welfare.

After news of Jonah’s “death” reaches the papers, one of the guards taunts Jonah with the notion that, since everyone thinks he’s dead, “we can keep you locked up here just as long as Mr. Turnbull wants us to--”  Jonah responds by bashing the guard’s skull into the wall, a remarkable feat considering that Jonah himself admits that he feels worse now than when he had cholera back in JH#63 (no wonder, since he’s been in the hole subsisting on nothing but bread and water for over two months).  Still, he manages make his way to the prison storeroom to retrieve his usual duds and weapons, then takes out a passel of guards before hightailing it out of the prison on foot, intent on reaching the governor and making him straighten out this mess.

At the governor’s mansion several days later, Phelps tells Turnbull (whom he calls Quentin, making this the first time we learn the full name of Hex’s longtime foe) that Jonah has escaped and, even worse, he mentions the letter Jonah made him write last issue declaring his innocence.  Turnbull is livid, brandishing his eagle-headed cane at Phelps, who backpedals so fast he trips and smacks his head upon a marble fireplace, killing him instantly.  Such things are of no consequence to Quentin Turnbull, and he’s already planning his next move as he departs the mansion...while Jonah Hex watches him from a nearby tree.  Jonah doesn’t know what transpired inside until someone rushes out yelling that the governor is dead, and when they spot Jonah, the blame is quickly pinned upon him, and he runs off before he can be shot.

At a hotel that night, Emmy is still holding on to the hope that Jonah is alive, and when someone knocks upon her door saying they have a message for her, she presumes that it’s from him.  In reality, it’s Turnbull and three cronies demanding to know where the governor’s letter is!  Thank goodness Jonah shows up at the beginning of JH#78 to save the day -- presumably, he tailed Turnbull after he left the mansion.  While he’s busy taking out Turnbull’s cronies, the old man escapes, and Jonah tells Emmy to go hide out in the next town south of there until all this blows over...but not before he bestows a very passionate kiss upon her lips (there goes that notion of not really being in love with her, but then again, he did just spend over two months in jail).

After a brief scene with the warden of the prison having to explain to the press why he’d told them earlier that Jonah Hex was dead (“a slight mix-up in our record keeping” is his lame excuse), the story meanders a bit, first to a couple of hayseeds-turned-bounty hunters who decide to go after the $10,000 reward on Hex, then to Hex himself riding out to wherever he hid the governor’s letter, only to come across a bunch of massacred Ojibwa women and children beside a river, and finally jumping to Mei Ling and her son out in the family garden as J.D. Hart rides up.  Neither we nor Mei Ling have seen the marshal since JH#44, and her exclamation of “Is that really you?” is certainly called for: though previously depicted as dark-haired, Hart is now inexplicably a blond, and his fringed buckskin clothes have turned a lurid shade of blue!  We could dismiss this easily if there had been some change in the staff, but the issue was done by the exact same people who worked on JH#44, and the error will persist throughout this storyarc, so it’s a serious fumble on everyone’s part here.  On a more positive note, Jonah’s baby boy finally gets a name -- Jason -- and Mei Ling states that he’s nearly two years old now, so even though the comic’s still in a constant state of 1875, time’s been moving along at a regular pace for lil’ Jason Hex.  As for the reason J.D.’s dropping in out of the blue, he’s concerned about the mess Jonah has gotten himself into and wants to help -- I don’t know how going to see Jonah’s estranged wife is supposed to help things, but there he is.

Back on Jonah’s end of the story, it appears that one of the Indians survived the massacre: Little Raven, the bossy twelve-year-old son of the chief.  He insists that Jonah help him avenge the death of his fellow Indians, and together they track down the men responsible before Jonah returns the boy to the Ojibwa.  In a ceremony that night, the chief makes the two of them blood brothers, and Jonah gets back on the trail the next morning, where he runs into those two hayseeds that’re out to collect the bounty on his head.  They almost get the drop on him at the beginning of JH#79, but Jonah gets away with a bullet in his side after blasting one of them in the face.  What follows is an issue-long chase through the desert, with Jonah’s pursuer, Walter, slowly chipping away at his quarry with a high-powered Sharps rifle.  First he shoots Jonah’s horse out from under him, then Walter blasts a canteen out of Jonah’s hand when he pauses for a drink.  Jonah comes across a water hole hours later, but in a cruel twist, there’s a sign posted next to it reading “Poison”, which he destroys in a fit of rage.  Delirium sets in not long afterward, and he imagines his parents hovering above him, ashamed by his weakness:



It getting near dusk when Walter finds Jonah collapsed near the poisoned water hole -- with the sign destroyed, Walter doesn’t know it’s unsafe, and takes a deep victory drink.  Not until he’s doubled over with pain does he realize that Jonah didn’t collapse there by accident, and he finally dies just a few feet away from Jonah.  J.D. Hart (who’s been following Jonah’s trail for quite some time) rides up moments later, but it’s not until JH#80 that we learn Jonah is still alive.  A sheriff and his posse soon arrive as well, and take Jonah into custody despite Hart’s protests.  After being deposited in the local jail and looked over by a doctor, Jonah manages to tell Hart about the letter, and as the marshal sets out to go fetch it, three of Turnbull’s men tail him, and he gets jumped once they’re out in the wilderness.  Sometime later, Jonah gets a visitor: Emmylou Hartley, who read in the paper about Jonah’s capture.  He reassures her that everything will be right as rain soon, unaware that Mei Ling has also come to visit -- she walks in just as Hex and Emmy are in a lip-lock, and though the sight of them together  upsets Mei Ling, it’s Emmy that leaves, saying, “I-it’s always been you he’s loved anyway!  Not (sob) me!”

Later on, Turnbull joins his men at the shack where they’re holding Hart, and gives the marshal until sundown to cough up the location of the letter, or else suffer the consequences.  Being a man who detests violence, Turnbull doesn’t stick around to watch them work Hart over, and instead returns to town, where an inventor is lobbying for Hex to take a ride on his newfangled electrocution device instead of being hanged (unfortunately, it requires a lightning strike to spark up, so we’ll have to wait another decade or so for the AC-powered electric chair to take its first victim in 1890).  Hex isn’t keen on being killed in any sort of fashion, so he’s glad to see Little Raven show up outside his window, all ready to free his blood brother with a lit bundle of dynamite!  After collecting up his gear, Jonah bolts out of town alone on horseback, unaware that Turnbull is following not far behind.  There’s a brief aside wherein J.D. Hart manages to overpower his captors, then we’re back to Jonah out in the wilds as he approaches a pile of rocks -- finally, we’ve reached the place where he hid the letter.  Turnbull suddenly appears, gun in hand, and demands that Jonah step away from the rocks.  Keeping his eyes fixed on the bounty hunter, Turnbull thrusts his free hand into a hole in the rock pile, then screams.  “Thet’s whut’s alluz bound tuh happen when yuh go an’ stick yore hand in a rattlesnakes’ nest!” Jonah says as he picks up a forked branch to pin the rattler with, thereby letting him retrieve the letter within.  The proof of his innocence secured, Jonah turns to leave, not caring that his longtime enemy will most likely die  from the snakebite.  Turnbull isn’t about to go down so easily, however, and aims his gun at Jonah’s turned back.

This cliffhanger becomes somewhat anticlimactic when we get to JH#81, as the story backs up to when Turnbull and Hex first arrive at the rock pile, then unspools in a slightly different order: Turnbull gets bit, then he tries to shoot Hex, but passes out cold.  Only after this does Jonah retrieve the letter, but as he turns to leave, Jonah has a change of heart about letting Turnbull die, and instead sucks the venom out of the unconscious man’s wound, then bundles him into Turnbull’s surrey to drive him back to town.  When the old man comes to, he’s rather surprised by Jonah’s kindness, but he doesn’t have long to contemplate it before the two of them are attacked by El Papagayo, last seen rotting in jail back in JH#72.  The bandito and his men open fire upon the surrey and drive them into a cave, where Turnbull decides  that his own hatred of Hex should exempt him from Papagayo’s vendetta.  Jonah knows better, and when Turnbull tries to surrender, Jonah yanks him away from a fresh volley of gunfire (though he admits that he debated with himself about whether or not he should let Turnbull get killed!).

While the two men are occupied, the ladies in Jonah’s life begin to move on without him: Emmy arranges to leave town on the stagecoach to St. Louis, and Mei Ling shares a meal with J.D. Hart who, after getting back to town and explaining to the local law about Turnbull’s plot, has decided to start courting Mei Ling!  Such things are the least of Jonah’s concerns at the moment, for after fending off a direct assault from Papagayo’s men, he and Turnbull make a break for the surrey, only to discover as they drive away that Papagayo had previously snuck over and strapped dynamite to the undercarriage!  They manage to leap to safety at the beginning of JH#82, landing on a ledge jutting out from the cliff face they were riding alongside -- the bandito spots Hex and Turnbull down there when he comes over to examine the wreckage, and inexplicably decides to leave them be for now, promising to kill him next time they meet.  “Good grief, Jonah!” Turnbull says to him.  “What is all this, anyway?  Some kind of crazy game you two play?”  As they make their way back to town, though, Turnbull tells Jonah that he’s in the bounty hunter’s debt for saving his life so many times over the course of the past day, and swears he’ll file a sworn affidavit saying the death of Governor Phelps was an accident.  Between this and the governor’s letter, the criminal charges against Jonah will be dropped...but their old feud still stands, and Turnbull declares, “For your role in bringing about the death of my only, beloved son, I hereby renew my vow to put you in an early grave!”

All these threats fade into the background for Jonah once they reach town, because when he catches sight of a commotion in front of Mei Ling’s hotel, he immediately fears the worst.  And he has good reason to: a passel of skunks called the Riordan brothers kidnapped Mei Ling right outside the hotel in order to lure out Hex.  They winged J.D. Hart in the process, but he insists on coming along with Jonah as he tracks them down.  They ride out so fast that Jonah never thinks to ask what Hart was doing with Mei Ling in the first place, though he figures it our real quick when he sees the marshal -- who rescued Mei Ling while Jonah took out the bad guys -- holding the woman a mite too closely.  Jonah doesn’t even bother to ask for an explanation, he simply begins pounding on Hart with one hand behind his back (he wants to be fair about it, ol’ J.D. being wounded and all).  After knockin’ the stuffing out of Hart, Jonah storms off, leaving behind any notions that he and Mei Ling could ever again be a happily-married couple.  Of course, he’s still got Emmylou to fall back on...or he would if she hadn’t taken the stage to St. Louis, remember?  Emmy thought leaving Jonah would bring an end to her problems, but a new one arises when the stagecoach gets stopped by bandits before it reaches its destination, and along with the strongbox on board, they decide to take Emmy as well!  She demands in Jonah Hex #83 (April 1984) to know why she was abducted, to which the man in charge replies, “‘Cause you were the only good-lookin’ female in the bunch, that’s why!”  We then discover that the other two bandits are women, though whether they were kidnapped as well is uncertain.  To be sure, the man seems intent on beating up Emmy until she learns to obey him, but considering the treatment she got during her years with the Crow Indians, she may be able to endure whatever punishment he puts her through.

Jonah returns to the hotel they were staying at, then throws a fit when the desk clerk tells him that Emmy checked out yesterday and left on the stage.  Despite knowing that she was heading to St. Louis, Jonah chooses to go to the local saloon and get drunk all day, pausing only briefly to gun down a couple of idiots looking to make their reputation off of him.  By that night, the townsfolk have decided they don’t like the idea having of a drunken, trigger-happy gunfighter hang around, so they set fire to the barn Jonah’s sleeping in (the hotel refused to rent him another room).  Jonah escapes, and eventually settles down by the edge of a lake, cursing the mess his life has become.  He decides right then and there to devote his life to being the best damn drunkard he can be, tossing his prized Colt Dragoons into the water for good measure:



Considering the number of  times he’s risked his neck to recover those Dragoons, this turn of events is rather shocking -- I seriously doubt he would’ve done such a thing if he’d been sober.  Jonah falls asleep not long after, and wakes up the next morning to find a lady named Catherine Rebecca Smollett berating him for his slovenly state.  She talks him into accompanying her back to the a nearby temperance farm, where she plans on making a God-fearing teetotaler out of him.  Considering that Hex was probably suffering from the mother of all hangovers, it’s surprising that he didn’t just cuss Smollett out and stumble off in the opposite direction, but perhaps there was some unpickled part of his brain that realized he really couldn’t go through life like this (if nothing else, there may have been a small desire to not end up like his father).  Jonah spends the next few days working on the farm, trying his best to remain sober as well as put behind him all the grief he’s gone through over the past few months -- this is the first opportunity he’s had to relax since getting thrown into prison back in JH#76, and though he most likely has to sit through Bible readings and temperance lectures every day, the man desperately needs the break.  Too bad it doesn’t last long, for soon some friends of the two men Hex gunned down show up looking for revenge.  Jonah quickly makes short work of them with his Bowie knife and various farm implements, and afterward, Smollett reluctantly asks him to leave the farm.  “I do wish you could have stayed here with us long enough to be truly saved, Jonah!” she says as he makes ready to ride off.  Jonah replies that he figures he’s been pretty nearly saved already, silently adding, Leastways as saved as Ah’m ever likely tuh be!


It’s doubtful that Jonah’s time at the temperance farm has truly changed him on a personal level, but out in the real world, Jonah Hex the comic book was undergoing changes that would have a long-term effect on the character, the first of them beginning this issue, as Michael Fleisher became both writer and editor of the title.  Fleisher exercised his newfound powers right from the get-go, making Tony DeZuniga the main artist (no more sharing the byline with Dick Ayers) and hiring Ed Hannigan to do the covers.  The logo also switched back to its classic look for good with this issue, but whether it was the doing of Hannigan or Fleisher is unclear.  All this was just the tip of the iceberg, for as Fleisher himself said in a note to the readers two issues later, “Jonah’s got some surprises up his sleeve you wouldn’t believe if I told them to you!  Because if I get my way, there are things that are going to start happening in this magazine that’ll scramble your brains around!”  By the summer of 1985, readers will know he ain’t just whistlin’ Dixie.