Just in time for your New Year's Eve book-burning party...



Get down to Aco Hardware right now, 'cause you know this ain't gonna last long!

Merry Christmas, y'all!

Just a quick note to wish you and yours a joyous holiday, and to warn those of you that are following my "Illustrated History of Jonah Hex" posts that the next one won't be up until February.  I've been delaying work on it, as I was hoping to interview David Michelinie about his 3-issue stint on the title, but I cannot seem to track the guy down (at least so far as Internet searches go...if anybody out there knows how to get a hold of him, let me know!).  There's a couple of other interviews I'm currently doing for this project that'll turn up in the near future, but since the Michelinie issues are to be covered in Part 3, my lack of success in that area kinda loused up the schedule, and I reckon I'll just have to do that part as best I can without the insider info I was hoping for.  So whist I bang away at my keyboard and play catch-up, gaze upon this lovely image from DC's 2009 Christmas card by Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez...man o man, I'd kill to see him do one more full-length Hex story!

It's not my fault, I got sucked in.

Had the day off today, and instead of doing constructive things like writing, cleaning the house, or reading a good book, I wasted far too many hours on the Internet jumping from one link to the next until I was at Catandgirl.com watching this video that made me laugh my butt off for no good reason.  I can't even remember what website I started at now, but the end result was good, I think.

Be careful out there, or the Internet will steal all your time next.  In fact, if you're reading this blog, it's probably too late...sorry.

Time to ruin the Christmas Pageant!

This is a new one on me.  My husband heard from someone at work that there's more lyrics to that old "Jingle Bells" parody we all learned as kids.  You know the one...

"Jingle bells, Batman smells
Robin laid an egg
The Batmobile lost a wheel
And the Joker got away!"

I picked this up at some point when I was still in the single digits, and my husband never heard it until The Simpsons did it in the late '80s, but neither of us was aware of a second verse.  So I did what we all do these days: I Googled it.  Turns out there's over a dozen varieties of this song, some with a Batman theme (which appears to have started around the same time as the Adam West TV show), others focusing on Santa and his gang, and a lot of 'em involving guns, busted skis, and bleeding to death.  Real holiday spirit.  Anyways, if you'd like to learn new ways to drive people crazy when you're out caroling, click here and scroll down the massive list of alternate lyrics.  Consider it an early Christmas gift.

An Illustrated History of Jonah Hex (Part 2)

1974-1977: Losses and Gains

“I begged Joe Orlando to let me write the series,” Michael Fleisher told reporter Mike Browning in Back Issue #42 (Aug. 2010).  Orlando, who edited Jonah’s stories in Weird Western Tales, had worked quite a bit with Fleisher already, so this wasn’t exactly a call out of the blue.  Nor was Fleisher one who needed to beg for work: he’d already done a series of Spectre tales for DC’s Adventure Comics, as well as three volumes of The Encyclopedia of Comic Book Heroes (which, for their time, were so exhaustively researched that they’re still being published today).  But when he found out that creator John Albano was leaving Hex behind, Fleisher was “very eager” to fill his dusty cowboy boots.  “I read the Albano issues and the idea of the character was somehow exciting for me, and when Albano dropped out of it I was overjoyed.  There was something about it that struck home for me, and I wanted to do it very much.”  Having grown up on a steady diet of Saturday matinee Westerns, Fleisher more than familiar with the genre, and was just as adamant as Albano and DeZuniga that Jonah Hex wouldn’t be a squeaky-clean gunslinger, because “the idea that you’re facing someone with a gun and you sort of have a moral code that prohibits you from actually hitting them with bullets is just so stupid.  Nobody would do that.  I liked it that Jonah Hex was serious.”  That seriousness showed in Fleisher’s first issue, Weird Western Tales #22, dated May/June 1974, as the bodies are falling left and right throughout (and not always due to Jonah’s gunplay).

Before we go any further, we should note the contributions of Fleisher’s friend, artist Russell Carley, who is listed in WWT#22 as “art continuity" (though DeZuniga is doing the actual art), then as “script continuity” all the way up to WWT#26, after which his name disappears from Hex lore.  Fleisher explains in an interview with The Comics Journal that “when I first began to write comics regularly, I really had no experience in coming up with the plots for example, or in breaking down the stories.  Those were both intimidating things for me to do.  So Russell and I would get together and we would work out a plot together.  We'd sit together on a Saturday afternoon and we would throw ideas back and forth and we would produce a plot.  And when I'd gotten the plot okayed, Russell would take the plot and he would make a breakdown of it -- that is, he would take sheets of paper and divide them into panels, and he would describe in each panel, very briefly, what was to take place, and then he would give me these pieces of paper and I would write the script.  When we started out we wanted to say, ‘Story by Michael Fleisher and Russell Carley,’ but Joe Orlando felt that we should distinguish between what he did and what I did...there was no standard title in comics for what Russell was doing, so we made up a term.”

The process Fleisher describes sounds like a variation on "the Marvel method", as well as bearing a strong resemblance to what John Albano himself did with the first Jonah Hex script.  No matter how they arrived at the finished product, the transition from Albano to Fleisher is nearly seamless: Jonah’s just as coarse as ever when dealing with “civilized” folk, and the touches of deadpan humor that peeked through in previous Jonah Hex stories are evident here as well, such as when an illiterate bumpkin asks Hex for his autograph, and he signs the paper “Buffalo Bill”.  The only sour note is an unfortunate bit of stereotyping on the part of the main bad guy, a huge African-American named Blackjack Jorgis, who repeatedly talks about how much he likes “watermelly”.  But what’s most notable about Fleisher’s debut is what he introduces to Jonah’s world in general: continuity.  Aside from the “Ironjaws Trilogy” of WWT#12-14, all Hex stories up to this point have been interchangeable, with no need to read them in a specific order, nor has there been much reference to his life before he became a bounty hunter, aside from the occasional acquaintance who’d turn up only to die by the end of the story (which also occurs here, the victim in question being a sheriff named Hank Brewster).  From this issue onward, however, we’ll begin to see ever larger swatches of Jonah’s past, and the seeds that are sown throughout these 20 pages will bear fruit for decades to come.

The glimpses into Jonah’s past begin when he hitches a ride on a passing stagecoach, and one of the other passengers (who bears a striking resemblance to Lee Van Cleef) recognizes him from an old photograph he’s carrying, which shows a much younger an unscarred Jonah standing in front of a Confederate flag.  Later on, the man meets up with a group of former Rebs and tells them about his encounter, who declare that they would’ve won the Civil War “if’n it hadn’t’a been fer vicious men the likes’a Jonah Hex!”  These men ride out and end up saving Hex from Blackjack’s gang...only to declare that they’re going to hang him themselves!  Jonah manages to give them the slip for a while, but by the end of the issue, there’s a nasty four-on-one shootout, and Jonah is nearly killed by an ex-Reb who decides to speechify a bit before finishing him off:

Jonah’s a traitor?  What the heck did he do?  We won’t get any answers here, as Hex promptly shoots the Reb and shuts him up.  On the very last page, however, we witness a scene between a colored servant and a man holding an eagle-headed cane -- we never see the man, but it appears that he wants Hex to be dead just as badly as those Confederates did.  In addition to the “traitor” subplot, we get reference to both Jonah’s disfigurement and his father, courtesy of an offhand exchange between Hex and Brewster.  We get no real details about either (Jonah gruffly cuts off Brewster’s inquiries the moment he makes them), but still, after 12 issues, this is the most we’ve ever learned about Jonah Hex, and we get it all in one gulp.  Overall, I dare say what Fleisher does here is the antithesis of what Albano ever had planned for the character, as he and DeZuniga almost seemed to pride themselves on revealing nothing about Jonah’s past.  That may have been one of the factors behind DeZuniga’s departure after WWT#23, the plot of which revolves around an assassination attempt of President Grant.  We also get more clues as to the identity of the mysterious man with the eagle-headed cane: apparently, he’s an important man in Washington, one of “the nation’s leading captains of industry and commerce” (no run-of-the-mill baddies for Jonah Hex, no sir!), and whatever it is that Jonah’s guilty of, it involved this man’s son.  Suffice it to say, Jonah manages to escape another attempt upon his life, but he later gets caught in an explosion while foiling Grant’s assassins, and on the last page, Jonah’s essentially declared dead!  He’s not, of course (the blurb at the bottom of the page even advertises Hex’s next adventure), but it’s an odd note for Tony DeZuniga to go out on: “killing” your creation as you part ways with him.

Noly Panaligan takes up the artist’s reins with WWT#24, making him only the second interior artist to draw Jonah Hex (a few other artists besides DeZuniga -- such as Luis Dominguez -- had already done various covers featuring him).  This story picks up not long after the previous issue, and we learn that, while Hex may have survived the explosion, it has rendered him temporarily blind.  Don’t worry, folks, he’ll be fine by the end of the tale.  We don’t hear another peep about the man with the eagle-headed cane or Jonah’s supposed treachery, though, and over the next few issues, that subplot is barely mentioned.  Not to say that the stories aren’t noteworthy: WWT#26 gives us a third Hex interior artist by the name of Doug Wildey (his only time on the character), and more importantly, it’s the very first rendition of Jonah’s now-infamous tagline, seen here in the upper-lefthand corner:

In later years, some people will mistakenly attribute this tagline to John Albano, but Michael Fleisher alone is responsible for it...though he does admit to cribbing the “acrid smell of gunsmoke” portion from (naturally) the TV show Gunsmoke.  Whatever the source, the entire paragraph sums up Jonah quite well, and it’s stayed with him ever since, his own warped version of Superman’s “Truth, justice, and the American way,” or Spider-Man’s “With great power comes great responsibility.”  WWT#27 focuses upon early attempts at getting women the right to vote (which Jonah isn’t in favor of at all, but the suffragettes pay him good), and WWT#28 is a tale based upon the true story of the Jake Hauschel gang, plus it’s the first time we get George Moliterni on the book -- he and Noly Panaligan will share art duties for the next few issues, each of them taking a turn on a two-parter running through WWT#29 and 30, wherein the subplot started in #22 over a year ago finally comes to a head.

It begins with a teenager confronting Hex out in the street, calling him a traitor and swearing that he’s going to kill Hex for letting his father die at Fort Charlotte.  The bounty hunter blows him off, and the boy tries to shoot him, but only succeeds in spooking Hex’s horse, which promptly whacks Jonah in the head with one of its hooves and knocks him unconscious.  We are then witness to a device that Fleisher will use many times over the next ten years: the flashback to Jonah’s past.  We learn how Jonah was friends back in1861 with a fellow Confederate named Jeb Turnbull, whose father, a wealthy Virginia plantation owner, is the man with the eagle-headed cane that’s been trying to kill Jonah over a decade later!  We also learn that Jonah is more of a “state’s rights” kind of Reb, and after the Emancipation Proclamation is passed, he makes a decision:

Jonah travels alone to Fort Charlotte  and, since he feels it’s “a point of honor tuh surrender tuh th’ top man”, sneaks into the C.O.’s quarters to do so!  We then find out that Hex is a lieutenant with the 4th Cavalry, and while he’s willing to turn himself in, he won’t betray the rest of his unit and give their location.  Unfortunately for him, the Yankees figure out for themselves where the Rebs are, and after they’re all captured, the C.O. “thanks” Hex for his help in front of all his friends.  This and the massacre that soon follows as the Confederates try to escape the fort is the reason why the elder Turnbull and so many others want Jonah Hex dead: his desire to no longer be a part of the War inadvertently led to the deaths of nearly three dozen people, including Jeb Turnbull.  After he wakes up from this issue-long flashback, Jonah finds the vengeful teenager again and lets him have his “showdown”, even going so far as to fall over in the street and feign death so the boy can have some closure.  But what of Jonah himself?  An incident such as the Fort Charlotte Massacre is sure to weigh upon a man’s conscience, and as the issue closes, the reader can be sure of one thing: under Fleisher’s tenure, there will be little allusion to Jonah Hex as some supernatural creature.  He’s a human being, with a soul scarred worse than his face.

The next issue has Jonah traveling to Virginia, ready to set things right between himself, Turnbull, and the few soldiers who survived the massacre twelve years earlier.  What he gets is more hate, more death threats, and one of the best splash pages ever.  To top it all off, Jonah is ambushed and forced to sit through a mock trial, with Turnbull as judge and his former friends as jury, who quickly find him guilty as sin.  Deciding to execute him by firing squad at dawn, they lock Hex up in a shed for the night, but he soon escapes, only to be confronted by Turnbull’s colored servant, Solomon, who’s holding a shotgun on him.  Lucky for Hex, Solomon is a kind-hearted sort, and actually listens to Jonah’s explanation of what really happened at Fort Charlotte.  Jonah manages to sway Solomon, but when Turnbull shows up, he won’t listen to anyone, and as he charges Jonah in a fit of rage, the bounty hunter (who refuses to fight Turnbull) steps out of the way, causing Turnbull to accidentally impale himself on an upturned pitchfork.  The reader (and possibly Jonah himself) is led to presume that Turnbull is dead, but in a few years, we’ll learn different.

After this high-point of a storyline, Jonah’s remaining appearances in Weird Western go back to basics, with no more massive reveals regarding his past.  Instead, we get tales like WWT#31, wherein he’s tricked by a dying friend into fighting him for the amusement of the townsfolk, and a two-parter in WWT#32 and 33 has Jonah trying to rescue a businessman’s daughter, who was kidnapped by an Indian named Joe Bigfoot looking for vengeance against the businessman for poisoning his tribe.  The latter story stands out not for its plot, but for the artist: Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez, who was still getting his feet wet at DC in 1976, having come to New York barely two years before with the phone number of Hex cover artist Luis Dominguez in his pocket (the two men had never met, but with both of them being from Argentina, they had some mutual friends).  Dominguez showed him the ins and outs of the city, as well as introducing him around the halls at DC Comics -- on his first day there, Garcia-Lopez met editor Joe Orlando, who would soon come to call the artist his “secret weapon”.  After numerous inking jobs, he was given a few Jonah Hex scripts to do, and the result is drastically different from every other Hex story up until then.  Whereas Tony DeZuniga started the mandate of “filthy and dirty” when it came to Hex, and both Noly Panaligan and George Moliterni carried on in that same fashion when they took over, Garcia-Lopez’s rendition is incredibly vibrant, with crisp lines and dynamic poses in nearly every frame.  And instead of the constant shadows the other three artists use, it seems like he’s gone to great pains to highlight every detail possible, both in terms to character expressions and backgrounds.  In short, he treats Jonah Hex in the same manner as he would DC’s spandex-wearing crowd, and the result is striking:

Moliterni is back on the job for the single-issue stories in WWT#34 and 35, and for a blink-and-you-miss-it moment, Weird Western Tales is cancelled once again!  My notation of it here is mere formality, though, as the book was revived so quickly there was no interruption in its bi-monthly schedule.  When it returns with WWT#36 Jonah faces Joe Bigfoot once more, a yarn handled by the triple-threat art team of Bill Draut, Oscar Novelle, and Luis Dominguez (his first time on interiors, but certainly not his last).  Something else returns in WWT#37: Jonah’s pimp hat, last seen in WWT#19!  It makes little sense for it to suddenly turn up after three years, but there are two possible explanations for it, the first being that the artists -- Rich Buckler and Frank Springer -- may have used outdated materials when looking for references to Jonah’s look.  The second possibility is that the story might have been among the first written by Michael Fleisher when he got the gig (which was rather close to the pimp hat’s last appearance) and had simply been held in reserve for all those years in case they needed a fill-in.  The latter seems most likely, especially considering that the artwork is below the quality we’re used to on the title, and a real shock if you’ve ever seen how good the art from either Buckler or Springer usually looks:

  The story itself is an interesting take on Jonah’s normally-gruff attitude, as he takes a young man under his wing and trains him in the ways of the gun in order for the young man to avenge the death of his parents.  It turns out to be set-up of sorts in the end, but keep that plotline in mind, as a variation of it will resurface in Jonah’s life a few decades later with much different results.

As 1976 comes to a close, the news breaks that Weird Western Tales #38 (dated Jan./Feb. 1977) will be Jonah Hex’s last issue, and its headlining slot taken over by a new character called “The Savage” (soon to be known as Scalphunter).  But fear not, fans, for in two short months, Jonah will be back on the stands in his very own self-titled magazine, courtesy of the "DC Explosion" (which would turn into the infamous “DC Implosion” by the beginning of ‘78).  Yes indeed, Jonah Hex has finally hit the big time, with even bigger adventures on the horizon.

<< Part 1 | Index | Part 3 >>
Appendix A  |  Appendix B

If you hear any helicopters overhead this Thanksgiving, RUN!!!

I wanted to put up the actual video clip of the infamous "Turkey Drop" from WKRP in Cincinnati (which may be an unknown show to some of you, as I don't think it's been shown in reruns for at least a decade), but alas, YouTube has failed me insofar as quality goes.  However, this animated version I found gives us the pleasure of seeing simulated turkey carnage!

Anyhow, Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

An Illustrated History of Jonah Hex (Part 1)

Introduction

In the world of comics, Jonah Hex has always been an oddity.  The Western genre he usually inhabits is constantly declared to be “dead”, yet he’s had his own title in every decade since his creation.  His sales figures have always been notoriously low, seemingly an indicator that no one cares for the character, yet whenever there’s a mention of the Old West within a DC comic book, he’s there more often than not, sometimes as the sole representative of the entire era.  And at a time when the trend is leaning towards updating or streamlining classic characters to make them more appealing to a modern audience, Jonah Hex unabashedly remains rooted in the 19th Century, and worse yet, he wears a uniform that is viewed by many as racist.  He’s a surly, murderous drunkard with a nightmarish visage, attributes that seem to go against every notion of mass-market appeal and longevity, yet here he is, four decades later, still sitting pretty in a world full of capes.

What follows here is neither a running tally of everything Jonah Hex, nor a summary of virtually every comic he's appeared in, though you’ll get a healthy dose of both along the way.  This is more like an unauthorized biography, focusing on the stand-out moments in his life, both on the page and behind the scenes.  You’ll get a glimpse of firsts, lasts, and what-might-have-beens.  You’ll learn the names of those who had a hand in his creation, as well as those who helped him live as long as he has without forgetting where he came from.  You’ll also see things that are probably best forgotten, but I’m going to drag them out into the light one last time, because sometimes it’s good to remember the mistakes we’ve made.  It’s what makes us human, and as you’ll find out, Jonah Hex is one of the most human fictional characters out there.

1972-1974: Birth of a Bounty Hunter

“Cold-blooded killer, vicious, an unmerciful hellion without feeling, without conscience -- a man consumed by hate, a man who boded evil...that was Cody Corbert -- better known as...THE COBRA -- and twice as deadly!”

This was almost the introduction to the lead feature in All-Star Western (vol. 3) #10, dated Feb./March 1972.  Luckily for Western fans and the world in general, writer John Albano crossed out all that “Cobra” nonsense (the first name of “Cody” is pure guess on my part, going by what little I can see of the original word) and wrote “Jonah Hex” in its place.  It’s just the first in a series of decisions that would shape the scar-faced bounty hunter into a character that would hang around the DC Universe for years to come.

Jonah’s life started with a conversation between Albano and artist Tony DeZuniga regarding the way Westerns were represented in comics (which, at the time, were dominated by clean-cut Roy Rogers/Lone Ranger types) versus the Clint Eastwood spaghetti Westerns that had become popular in the mid-1960s and were now reshaping the genre on the movie screen.  They both wanted to bring that same level of gritty realism to comics.  As DeZuniga told Michael Browning in Back Issue #12 (Oct. 2005), “John Albano, when we talked together, he was telling me, ‘Hey, Tony, let’s get away from like the Rawhide Kid and all those Western super-heroes because, you know, they’re shooting the guns out of the hands of the bad guys and all that.’  And I said, ‘I agree.’... Jonah Hex is an anti-hero, like John was telling me.  Even the towns in those days, they weren’t all asphalt roads.  They were dirt roads.  The cowboys really dressed really, really rugged -- I would say filthy and dirty -- and I liked doing it that way.”

With the direction of their project quickly decided upon, a character had to be made that best fit with their newfangled ideas.  As Albano worked on the script, DeZuniga submitted a few sketches of what this “Jonah Hex” fella should look like, with the one of a man with a hideous scar dominating the right side of his face being the most favored, though Albano questioned why the character was wearing a Confederate coat and hat.  As DeZuniga explains, “I said he was a Johnny Reb who was blown up by a cannonball.  I said, ‘He’s a comic book character and nothing’s impossible.’  But they said okay and they really liked the concept of that face.”  He has remarked elsewhere that the idea for the single flap of skin connecting Jonah’s upper and lower jaw came from anatomy illustrations showing the underlying musculature of the face.  There was one other element added at the request of Carmine Infantino, who was head publisher for DC at the time: he wanted Hex to be bulky, “like the Incredible Hulk.”  Though this idea was slowly phased out of Hex’s design over his first few stories, it’s most obvious in the promo ad that ran in some DC titles a month before his debut:

An interesting side note: in addition to writing, Albano worked as a cartoonist, and the very first Jonah Hex script was actually a hand-drawn affair, complete with panel layouts and dialogue balloons.  It currently resides in the collection of aforementioned Michael Browning, and I took the liberty of reproducing the first page of it here, next to the published version by DeZuniga (who followed Albano’s layouts almost to the letter):

It’s thanks to these surviving pages that we know of Jonah’s short-lived “Cobra” alias, as well as a bit of narration that didn’t make it into the first story:

“That was Jonah the gunfighter, but what about Jonah the man?  Was he really a wild, immoral, and incorrigible savage who had best be kept forever isolated from civilized human beings...?”

Though it never made it to print, that question pretty much forms the basis of every Jonah Hex story to come.  Albano and DeZuniga (and all the creators who will follow them) constantly put Jonah in situations where he can be an “incorrigible savage” one minute and a rather tender-hearted sort the next.  His debut story gives us a mix of both: as seen above, the first shot is of him dragging two dead bodies behind his horse as if out for a Sunday stroll, and all throughout, we witness him cutting down owlhoots left and right like a grey-clad angel of death.  Yet in the middle of the tale, Albano and Dezuniga use up half a page to show Jonah knocking a man out cold for whipping a horse -- a pure character moment, with no relation to the overall story -- and at the end, Jonah uses nearly all the reward money he earned to pay off the back taxes owed on a widowed mother’s farm.  Unaware of this, the widow later tries to blow Jonah’s head off with a rifle because her boy has taken a shine to him, but instead of trying to smooth it over by pointing out his altruism, he simply acts like the mean-spirited bastard everyone assumes he is the moment they lay eyes on him.  As we’ll see in the years to come, this appears to be a knee-jerk defense he’s developed when dealing with most of humanity, as more often than not, whenever the bounty hunter makes a new friend or we’re introduced to an old one, that person will be dead by the end of the issue.  With a track record like that, it must be easier to let everyone hate you than to show them otherwise and risk watching them die.

Another aspect of Jonah Hex that will wax and wane over the decades is also featured in his first outing, namely his implied “supernatural” nature.  With a name like Hex and a face like a hell-spawn, it seems an unavoidable notion -- to be sure, one of the men he hunts down in the story seems convinced that Jonah is a demon, and another gets spooked so bad he starts shooting at tree stumps -- but other than unerring tracking skills, Jonah never displays any unearthly powers, so you could write the outlaws’ behavior off as a lack of nerve.  Viable excuses like that constantly crop up in Albano’s Hex stories, therefore leaving up to the reader’s imagination to decide if Jonah is indeed “an immortal apparition” (as the intro to his tale in WWT#19 suggests) or just a very skilled hunter of men.  The closemouthed position that his creators continually take regarding both Jonah’s past and his scars only serve to add to the mystery.

Jonah’s preference towards animals over people comes back into the picture when he picks up a sidekick of sorts in Weird Western Tales #12 (All-Star Western’s new name starting with this issue).  Ironjaws was a pet wolf belonging to a little Indian princess who died at the hands of white settlers, a tragedy that riled Jonah up to a point we had yet to witness -- years later, we would learn that he has very personal reasons for his animosity towards anyone who hurts an innocent child.  Swearing that he’d look after the animal, Ironjaws tagged along with the bounty hunter until WWT#14, which also marks a slight change in Jonah’s appearance.  The story begins with Ironjaws suffering from a rattlesnake bite, and after Jonah leaves the ailing wolf in a doctor’s care, he’s ambushed by a few outlaws out for revenge.  They haul him out to the desert, strip him down to his blue jeans, then tie him up to die under the blazing sun.  Ironjaws somehow makes its way out to the desert to chew away the ropes binding Jonah before dying from a combination of snakebite and exhaustion.  Outraged, Jonah stalks back to town and demands the doctor give him some clothes and a gun so he can go and kill the skunks responsible.  When he leaves the office, Jonah has inexplicably acquired a new Confederate coat (maybe the doc just happened to have one laying around?) but the rest of his outfit is brand new: the gun holster rig, which has been left-handed since his debut, now rests on his right hip with a second gun tucked beneath his belt, and he now wears brown cuffed boots with rawhide stitching.  These features will be part of his standard look for years to come.  Luckily, he won’t grow so attached to the other item he wears for the first time here: a blue-black hat with a tiger-striped band, like he’s some sort of crazy cowboy pimp.  DeZuniga must’ve wised up to the fact that this looks rather silly on him, and by WWT#20, he’s back to his old officer’s hat.  This ain’t the last we’ve seen of Jonah’s pimp hat, though, so stay tuned.

Just before his change in attire, Jonah took part in an odd little adventure which wouldn’t see the light of day for another four years, when it was finally printed in The Amazing World of DC Comics #13 (dated Oct. 1976).  In the early ‘70s, as editor Paul Levitz explained in his preface to the piece, the company was in the process of cooking up some kind of humor/horror mag for their line of “Weird” comics (in addition to the newly-dubbed Weird Western, DC was already cranking out Weird Adventure Comics, Weird War Tales, and Weird Worlds).  By 1972, they were calling this still-unpublished title Zany, and one of its features was to be parodies of their own DC characters.  Sadly, when the magazine (now and forever known as Plop!) finally hit the stands in September/October 1973, that particular idea had been scrapped, but not before Albano and DeZuniga finished a four-page Jonah Hex story.  The result is something you have to see to believe, and I chalk it up to Albano’s cartoonist background that he so effectively knocks the piss out of his own character without being mean.

Though absent from WWT #15 (El Diablo takes the lead for this issue), Jonah gets back in the saddle with WWT#16, and by WWT#18, not only has Jonah taken over the front cover art, his name is also printed bigger than the name of the magazine (rather like how Batman’s name usually overshadows Detective Comics).  There’s no doubt now that Hex’s departure from the norm when it comes to Western comics heroes has won out.  More landmarks will follow, like the first dated story in WWT#19 (which takes place in August 1867), and WWT#20 features a story by Arnold Drake, the first person besides John Albano to write a Hex tale.  Drake also gives us a novel concept by introducing an old flame of Jonah’s by the name of “Widow” Lacey (she ain’t no widow, folks, she just calls herself that to sound respectable) and she actually lives until the end of the issue!   Unfortunately, Drake only does the one tale, and we never get to see this particular soiled dove again.  Albano comes back to the writer’s desk for WWT#21, but this will be the very last time he does so: after penning only ten stories, he decides to leave Jonah behind.  Before he moves on, though, he bestows upon us a glimpse of Hex before he got his scars, courtesy of a hallucination brought on by a bad head wound:

As I noted earlier, both Albano and DeZuniga preferred to leave the origin of Jonah’s scars a mystery (the “blown up by a cannonball” notion never making it into any story), so this is first time they even acknowledge that Jonah wasn’t just born ugly.  Overall, it’s a fine story for creator and creation to part ways on, and for a brief while, it was nearly the last one: despite solicits on the last page saying otherwise, Weird Western Tales was cancelled after #21 (dated Jan./Feb. 1974), due to a nationwide paper shortage -- considering its bimonthly status and the old adage of “nobody reads Westerns,” DC must have thought it a small enough book to sacrifice.  This marks the first time Jonah got the axe, and the book’s return four months later would mark his first resurrection.  Coincidentally, this also heralds the entry of a new writer, one who would make more than a few marks of his own upon the character: Michael Fleisher.

| Index | Part 2 >>
Appendix A  |  Appendix B

Should we call this "Thing 1" or "Thing 2"?

Our 13th wedding anniversary was this past weekend, and in addition to going out to eat (heck, we dressed up nice and everything...too bad this area is dominated by bar&grill-type establishments), my husband and I went to the movies.  And what did we choose to see on our special, romantic day?  The prequel to John Carpenter's The Thing.  'Cause ain't nothing more romantic than watching people turn into freaky, twisted monsters in the middle of the Antarctic.

For those who are doubtful, let me assure you, this is an A+ flick.  Solid special effects, great acting, and more importantly, it dovetails perfectly into the '82 version.  Virtually every question you may have had about what happened at that Norwegian base before MacReady and the others get there will be answered by watching this movie.  It even manages to give us a fresh take on how exactly "The Thing" takes over people without contradicting what we already know.  Best of all, they made me scream during one scene near the end -- just seeing the commercials for the original when I was a kid was enough to freak me out, so I was REALLY hoping to feel that same level of terror that I felt when I was eight, and I got it!  Whether you're a fan of the original or not, you should go see it...and if you do, then you should do like we did and watch the '82 version immediately afterward, just to boggle your mind at how many details the makers of the 2011 version worked in.  Again, A+ for this.  Can't wait for the DVD!

New fanfic: Shades of Gray #9

I'm way behind on WWQ, but I'm doing my best to keep Jonah Hex: Shades of Gray up to date.  Issue #9 just posted a few days ago, so go check it out!  And if you haven't tried it before, just click on the link over to the left there...yes, over there.  Nothing bad will happen, I swear.  Okay, you might lose a few hours reading, but that's it!

52 Pick-Up: The Final Shuffle (with spoilers!)

September has come and gone, so it’s time to give a rundown of the “New 52” I actually bought.  As I said back in July, I had one sure thing, a strong maybe, and a lot of look-and-sees.  In the end, I plunked down the dough for 5 books, one of which wasn’t even on my original list.  So who’s in the pull box and who’s out?  Take a gander below, and remember, spoilers abound!

ALL-STAR WESTERN: This was the sure thing, of course.  I have virtually everything else Jonah Hex, so it would take a serious foul-up for me to not buy his new series.  Luckily, it’s off to a good start.  Moritat does a wonderful job on the art, a great balance of fine details and heavy outlines...and I would be remiss to not mention Gabriel Bautista’s coloring!  When I saw the preview pages, I figured from the monochromatic tones that these were uncolored, but once I got the actual issue in my hands, I found that there’s a lot of subtlety going on with the palette here.  Sepia tones are prevalent, naturally, with other colors used sparingly, just to accent certain things.  A good example is this page about halfway through, featuring Hex and his new “partner” taking in the town’s seamier sights:

I think this is the only page in the whole book with any green in it, namely a lampshade and the absinthe, the presence of which helps to add to the reader’s mental picture of Dr. Amadeus Arkham.  And that brings us to the important part of any Hex comic: the story.  Palmiotti & Gray were true to their word and didn’t change Jonah Hex one iota -- the only difference between this and what they’d given us for 70 issues beforehand is the location.  By the by, let’s get that out of the way right now: Yes, Gotham is an East Coast town, and this is referred to as a Western.  Just deal with it and move on, because neither fact is all that relevant to the story.  There’s a Ripper-style killer on the loose, and Jonah’s been called in for his ability to track down just about anyone.  Also on the case is the aforementioned Dr. Arkham, a psychologist who gets little respect from many of the local authorities, save for one Detective Lofton, who also hired Hex.  The doctor and the bounty hunter get lumped together in order to put an end to the “Gotham Butcher”, but it’s obvious by the last page this won’t be so cut-and-dry as Jonah would like.

Overall, I’m digging the story.  Jonah’s discomfort with Gotham is already beginning to show (near the end of the issue, when asked about his opinion of the place, he declares, “Ah’d burn it to the ground an’ add some salt ta be sure nothing came back.”), and I expect it’ll become worse as we go along...that’ll be fun to watch.  And being an old Bat-fan, I’m enjoying the name-drops that’re turning up: there’s Arkham, of course, but also architect Cyrus Pinckney, the Gates brothers from the recent “Gates of Gotham” mini, one of Bruce Wayne’s ancestors, as well as a Mayor Cobblepot, complete with monocle!  Best of all, I’m hearing some new readers call this the best book out of the 52.  Gives me a warm spot in my tummy, like a shot of good whiskey.

DCU PRESENTS: I figured that I’d be buying this new anthology, since I have a weakness for such things.  Luckily, they opened it with a character that I’ve long had an interest in (Deadman) and worked in an angle from one of my fave sci-fi shows (Quantum Leap).  The story is mostly a retelling of how Boston Brand got to be as dead as he is, and gives his usual body-hopping more focus: now instead of just making up for being a selfish jerk while he was alive, he has to help specific people if he ever wants to balance out his karmic debt.  The fact that his latest mission is to help out a legless vet -- which was also the plot of a very good Quantum Leap episode -- hammers home for me the similarities between Boston’s new parameters and Sam Beckett’s old ones.  Hey, nobody was using the gimmick lately, so I’m not gonna fault Paul Jenkins for dusting it off.  And Bernard Chang does a fine art job here as well, especially with his rendition of Hindu goddess Rama Kushna:

My only complaint is that there’s no mention of Boston’s recent resurrection and second death in Brightest Day, nor his relationship with Dove aside from a barely-there shot of her face in one panel.  The two of them do hang out for a page in Hawk and Dove #1, though, but I passed on it.  I’m not buying that series on the off chance that Boston might pop up from time to time.  And on that note...

GREEN LANTERN: Welcome to “The Adventures of Unemployed Hal”!  I opened this one up while still at the shop and just started skimming, having no interest at all in seeing Sinestro with a GL ring, but wanting to give the book a courtesy flip since we still had Geoff Johns and Doug Mahnke on board (not surprising: Geoff orchestrated this whole Flashpoint thing, and I seriously doubt he’d kick himself off his own book).  GL book until I found even a glimpse of him.  Then I got to Page 6:

I started laughing out loud right there in the shop.  This was exactly what I hoped to find, and I nailed it on the first try!  That one page made me buy the book, and I’m actually disappointed that Sinestro shows up at the end, offering to help Hal get his ring back.  Boo, hiss!  I wanna see Hal beg his brother Jim for a place to stay, or worse get, Hal has to get a regular job like in the old days!  Let’s make him remember what life was like before he got a shiny magic ring! 

On a related note, I never got to look at GL Corps or New Guardians because they were sold out, but since I found Hal already, they’re superfluous to me.  And Red Lanterns didn’t grab me, despite having Dex-Starr the Rage Kitty right at the beginning.

BATGIRL: I wanted to hate this book on general principle.  They broke up the Birds of Prey for no reason, pulled Barbara Gordon out of the wheelchair through means unknown, then ripped the Batgirl mantle from Stephanie Brown’s hands and sent her into limbo (I only bought a handful of her issues, but I know she had a lot of supporters out there).  Add to that the grudge I still carry over their treatment of Cassandra Cain years before, and you have a serious amount of bad marks against this title right from the get-go.  I’m sure Gail Simone was aware of the uphill battle she had ahead of her, though, because all throughout the story, she confronts the biggest elephant in the room, right down to a one-page recap of how Babs got crippled in the first place.  There’s no details yet as to how exactly she’s waking again (other than referring to it as a “miracle”) but I’m going to guess that we’ll have the question solved by issue 3.  It can’t be avoided forever.

Ardian Syaf does a great job on the art, with an expressive style that’s complimented well by the watercolor-like touches of Ulises Arreola.  Action sequences and personal moments are treated with equal care, and while his rendition of new villain The Mirror doesn’t really stand out, it also doesn’t need to due to his whole M.O., which is apparently reflecting people’s mistakes back upon them right before he kills them...and since Barbara Gordon is on his lil’ list, I suspect it might tie into her whole “miracle” reveal.  Something else I want to keep an eye on is Barbara’s new roommate: no name has been given yet, but something about her reminds me of Dick Grayson’s landlord from Bludhaven, Clancy.  I can’t remember if she made it out of the city before it was destroyed, though.  Might have to go digging through the back issues.

Only bad marks I can give right now are the de-aging of Babs (it’s now been only 3 years since she was shot, and she’s apparently still living with her dad) as well as the way Batgirl acts...and I emphasize “Batgirl” here, not Babs.  Once she puts on the cowl, she seems to be channeling her inner Bruce, and it doesn’t fit her at all.  However, I was glad to see that facade shatter when The Mirror points a gun at her gut:

Again, Gail keeps turning our attention to the elephant in the room.  I’m sure that’ll fall away eventually as both us and Babs get used to the idea of her being up and about, but right now, it’s necessary, as the change is still too recent to be ignored.  As for the other big change in her life -- no longer being Oracle and running her own team -- there’s no reference to it here, but in the new Birds of Prey title, we get a cameo of Babs staring daggers at Dinah like they’re ex-lovers after a horrible breakup.  I really hope they explain this sudden shift in attitude, because they didn’t act like the same gals that have worked together for more than a decade...and they’d better explain it in BG, because I passed on BoP.  As for former member Zinda Blake?  Sorry, kids, but the Lady Blackhawk in that particular title isn’t her.  She might be gone forever, thanks to the new “no Golden Age” rule, but I hope she’ll land up on Earth-2, still fighting the good fight.

RESURRECTION MAN: This is the only wild card in my whole stack.  I had no intention of looking at it, but Tremo and Harry (fellow members of the “Wild Bunch” over on the DCMB) insisted that I give it a whirl.  And considering how many people I’ve talked into buying Jonah Hex over the past six years (I even got a guy in the shop to pick up All-Star Western #1 the same day I was picking up my own copy!) it seems only fair that I return the favor and try a new character.  Well, new-ish: Mitch Shelly has had his own series before, and I do own two issues of it, but only because Tommy “Hitman” Monaghan was doing a guest-shot.  So I knew the basics about him: regular guy who got experimented on and pumped full of nanites capable of bringing him back to life, as well was giving him a new superpower every time.  It’s like “Dial H for Hero of the Dead".  I was also familiar with writers Dan Abnett & Andy Lanning from their time on Legion of Super-Heroes (and no, I didn’t look at either of the new Legion titles, I’m kinda burned out on ‘em, just like I’ve gotten burned out on Batman) and knew they could deliver a good story with lots of twists and turns.  So I picked up the first issue and dove in.

Tremo and Harry were right, this is pretty good.  Mitch seems to be pulled around by some gut instinct that tells him where he’s needed, but not why  (shades of Deadman’s new angle), and his “just a regular guy who can do extraordinary things” attitude appeals to me.  Most of all, I’m intrigued by the idea that, as we find out halfway through the tale, both Heaven and Hell are tired of waiting for Mitch to permanently die, and are going to do whatever it takes to bring him in.  The art by Fernando Dagnino has a Butch Guice/Tom Mandrake feel to it, and he has a great eye for layouts, invoking both open spaces and the closed-off interior of an airplane with equal skill.  This page in particular is interesting, as he chose to use the plane’s windows to frame the sequence instead of traditional panels:

So, that’s it.  Five books out of 52.  There are more coming, of course (The Shade gets a new mini this month, and the Earth-2/JSA stuff will arrive eventually), but from their initial offerings, this is all I’m committing to...and that’s only so long as it remains good.  If you recall, I initially said that I was tiring of Green Lantern, so we’ll see how long they can keep my interest -- if Hal goes off questing again, there’s a good chance I’ll remove him from my pull-list.  And if the next DCU Presents character after Deadman’s arc doesn’t appeal to me, that could disappear too.  Sorry, DC, but I’m no longer the hardcore fangirl of 20-odd years ago that would buy anything with Batman on it.  You and your entire stable of characters have gotta work hard to earn my money.

Except for you, Jonah.  Just keep being a surly bastard and I’ll stay with ya.

In memoriam...

"Listen: there's a hell of a good universe next door; let's go."

That e.e. cummings quote was the first thing I thought of after I heard DC's latest announcement: the JSA is alive and well post-Flashpoint, it'll just be on Earth-2 is all.  Okay, it was the second thing I thought of.  The first was, "Holy crap, they're gonna use Earth-2 again?!?"

For those who don't know: Earth-2 is/was an Earth that existed parallel to the Modern DCU (also known as Earth-1).  On Earth-2, the Golden Age never ended.  Instead of Hal Jordan, Alan Scott is the only Green Lantern.  The Flash is Jay Garrick, who runs around in a Mercury-styled helmet instead of a bright-red Spandex cowl.  Superman and Wonder Woman have gray hair, and Batman's dead.  Sidekicks like Robin and the Star-Spangled Kid have grown up.  Almost all the heroes have kids, who in turn carry on their parents' legacies.  There was a tradition where Earth-2 would cross over with Earth-1 every summer, but other than that, they stayed in their own little world...that is, until Crisis on Infinite Earths, wherein DC mushed together all the parallel Earths and their histories.  Many aspects of Earth-2 disappeared in order to not conflict with Earth-1 history (old Supes and Wondy went bye-bye!), but overall, a lot of it stayed intact, and readers ended up with a DCU history that extended for decades, and Golden Age characters now regularly rubbed shoulders with the new kids.  That all ended yesterday, though, when DC slapped the "reboot" button again and effectively erased the very existence of both the Golden Age and the JSA in favor of a "streamlined" DCNu, where no superheroes existed before Superman...and since DC has barely done anything regarding parallel Earths (they may TALK a lot about "52 Earths" since Infinite Crisis, but have you noticed that we never SEE them?) it seemed as though all those scores of heroes and their legacies were gone for good.

Personally, I've only really been getting into the Golden Age heroes for the past five years.  I was aware of them for a long time, of course, I just didn't pay a lot of attention.  It was combination of my buddy David Charlton writing JSA fanfics over on DC2 and my growing interest Vigilante and Starman that made me dig a little deeper.  I've gotten a healthy respect for those mystery men and women, and the idea that DC would chuck their very existence out the window was akin to slapping your grandpa in the face.  A character here or there disappearing could be tolerated to a degree, but this was too much.  Both fans and critics alike were howling, and I think DC's recent announcement was a last-minute scramble to appease them.

Whether it was part of the "big plan" or not, I'm glad they did it.  I'm also glad that they've tapped James Robinson and Nicola Scott to work on the new JSA title.  Robinson knows the Golden Age like the back of his hand, and I've loved Scott's artwork since I first saw her on Birds of Prey years ago.  If they can pull this off, it'll be a pitch-perfect book.  Matter of fact, even though there's been no announcement of when this title will start, I've been sorely tempted to skip all the DCNu offerings (except for All-Star Western!  Jonah gets a free pass every time!) and wait for JSA to hit, be it a WWII-themed book or a continuation of the old pre-Crisis era.  You know, completely ignore this shiny new universe that's wiped out scores of heroes just so they can look hip and edgy, and instead move into one that's full of people who are more than glad to teach the next generation what it means to be a hero.

As the old song goes, it's just a jump to the left...

Tonight's movie: "Doctor Who and Chekov versus Bullseye and McLovin in 3D!"

Went out and saw the remake of Fright Night on Sunday, and unlike quite a few attempts to catch lightning in a bottle again, this was rather well done.  I'd say part of the reason is that it was written by Tom Holland, who wrote and directed the original movie.  If you haven't seen the original (aka "Cornelius and the Herman's Head guy versus Prince Humperdink and Marcy Rhodes in plain-jane 2D") then you might miss a few in-jokes, but otherwise it stands perfectly fine on its own.  It's funny and terrifying at the same time with some good "gotcha" moments (which are definitely enhanced by the 3D), and if you're a Doctor Who fan, you have the added pleasure of watching David Tennant swear and drink and do lots of other un-Doctory things that will have you howling with laughter.  Matter of fact, I'd say the twenty or so F-bombs they drop is what earned this movie an R rating, as there's no nudity (seductive moments, yes, but no T&A) and the gore is limited mainly to bloodsucking and the occasional contusion.  I suggest taking a Twilight fan to it and blowing their little emo mind with what REAL vampires are like.

Most of all, I'm glad my husband enjoyed it.  He loves the original Fright Night, and was very eager to see what they did with it.  We even met the first Evil Ed, Stephen Geoffreys, at a horror con earlier this year, and Jamin was thrilled for about a week afterward.  When the credits were still rolling on the remake last night, asked him, "What's the score here?"

"If there was something between an A- and a B+, that's what I'd give it," he said.

"And a comparative score to the original?"

Looking somewhat aghast, he replied, "How can you beat an A++?"  I should have known he'd feel that way, as we do have a decent amount of Fright Night merchandise in our collection: both movies (original on DVD, sequel on VHS), the soundtrack on CD, the novelization (which isn't all that good, really: Jamin says it's "the best worst book I've ever read"), and a few issues of the NOW Comics series (which rates lower than the novelization).  Aaaaand that's it, really.  Unless you get the movie posters or other swag like that, no one has made anything Fright Night related.  It's not a Freddy Krueger/Jason Voorhees money-making machine, honestly, and that's a shame, because it'd be great if NECA or someone would make toys of it, especially the original.  C'mon, you know you want a Chris Sarandon action figure that says "Welcome to Fright Night...for real!" or a Roddy McDowall that comes with an in-scale "Peter Vincent: Vampire Killer" kit.  Maybe if the box-office numbers go up (the flick ranked in 6th place for the weekend, despite good reviews) we'll get some toys later on.  Until then, I shall have to be satisfied with pretending to make our 10th Doctor action figure swear his brains out as he fights invisible vampires.

Got a hankerin' to go buy me some war bonds now.

Had a Cap-tastic day today.  Went to the comic shop for my bi-weekly fix, and while there, I found Captain America (vol.4) #1-6 on the 99-cent rack.  For those unfamiliar, this was the Marvel Knights revamp of Cap that began in 2002, roughly seven months after 9/11, and that tragic event forms the spine of the title's opening story arc.  It draws parallels between the World Trade Center and the Allied bombing of Dresden during WWII, as well as bringing up a few other nasty truths in the ongoing debate of "us versus them".  Overall, John Ney Rieber and John Cassaday deliver a story that is both action-packed and deeply moving, and I highly recommend picking it up if you missed it the first time around.

A few hours after devouring those issues, we went out to finally see Captain America movie (in glorious 2D, 'cause we're cheap).  I am soooooo glad it isn't as glossy-looking as some of the commercials made it out to be!  To be sure, it's leaps and bounds better than the Cap flicks I talked about a few weeks ago.  This had action and heart and enough fanboy in-jokes to keep me entertained throughout.  I did glance at my watch once, but that was only because it seemed like we were approaching the end, story-wise, and I was shocked to see that we'd only been in the theatre for an hour.  "Geez, if this is only the first half, what else is coming up?" I thought.  Turned out a whole lotta stuff was coming, and as we approached the real end of the movie and it looked as if Cap was going to die, I actually found myself getting a little choked up...even though I knew good and well that Captain America was gonna be in the upcoming Avengers movie!  Bonus points to Chris Evans for achieving that all-important connection with the audience.

Oh, and in case you haven't seen the movie yet, please remember to stick around for the extra scene after the credits.  Of course, everybody who's watched a Marvel movie in the past few years knows by now that you can't just get up and go when the house lights come on, there's always one last scene to see.

I'm famous on the Internet

As I mentioned a few months back, I'm a writer, or I at least fancy myself to be one.  I guess it depends on whether or not you define a writer as someone who gets paid to do so.  If you do...well, then I'm just some dope that's deluding herself.  But if you merely define it by talent and recognition of such, then I suppose that I've earned the title.  I've got fans that eagerly wait for me to put out another story, and I've received notes from published authors that tell me to keep up the good work.  But money?  Actual dollar-amount compensation for all the time I put into the craft?  I haven't made one thin dime yet, and some days I wonder if I ever will, seeing as how I've sent my 300-odd page manuscript off to roughly twenty different publishers and agents only to receive nothing but rejection slips in return.  Yet if you put "Susan Hillwig" into a search engine, my name pops up all over the place, with most entries acknowledging me to be an author.

How the heck did such a dichotomy come about?  Simple: I write fan fiction, a strange little offshoot of the usual sort of fan activity that genres like comics and movies tend to attract.  It's not something that the non-fans hear much about (though TIME recently did an article about fanfic), and even some who are well-immersed in fandom don't pay it any mind at all.  But it does exist, and for the past six years, as I've tried to get my original manuscript published, I've cranked out a score of stories that I cannot legally get paid for.  The short explanation is that, since fan fiction utilizes characters owned by other people, it's considered "fair use" so long as no one makes any money off of said fan fiction.  So I can write fics all the live-long day and be praised to high heaven for the results, but I can't make a living as a writer by doing so...at least not without getting sued.

You'd think the lack of monetary gain would scare off writers, but it doesn't.  There's all sorts of crazy things that fans do simply for the love of the genre, and that's where my involvement comes in.  I wanted to write a story that filled in a very large blank in a certain comic book character's history, namely Jonah Hex and his ill-advised trip to the future.  I had a very solid idea, and I knew DC most likely would never resolve the problem of their own volition, so I stepped up to fill in the blank.  The result was The Long Road Home, and it pretty much sealed my fate as it relates to fanfic.  The overwhelmingly-positive response encouraged me to keep going with this thing, so I wrote another Hex-related fic, then expanded into other DC Western characters, and before I knew it, I'd made a name for myself in this non-business, one that now seems to be inexorably linked with Jonah Hex.  I'm not complaining about that, mind you, but I don't think I really expected this outcome when I sat down to write my first fic.  To be sure, I never expected this, either:

No, that's not some Photoshop trickery, it's an actual panel from Jonah Hex (vol. 2) #34, wherein Jonah decides to leave his old life behind and live under an assumed name...and Hex writers Jimmy Palmiotti & Justin Gray decided to tip their hats in my direction by giving him the alias of "Hillwig".  I just about fell off the couch when I read that panel, and my husband (who has no real love for the character) went about for a week or so occasionally muttering "Mister Hillwig" with a smile.  That's not to say that other fans haven't gotten their names slipped into the series (I can think of about a half-dozen guys that I know fairly well who've been given that honor), but it's the way it was done here that tickles me so.  Over seventy issues, J&J have had Jonah use an alias on two other occasions: once as "Albano" (who created Jonah Hex along with artist Tony DeZuniga) and later as "Fleisher" (who wrote Jonah for about 15 years straight and established almost his entire history).  So forgive me if I'm reading too much into it, but having Jonah use my last name in such a way feels like J&J acknowledging me as a person who's contributed something of import to the character.  It's not money, it's not a byline, but it's the closest I've ever gotten to payment for my work.  Trust me, permanent enshrinement in the Jonah Hex mythos equals some serious coin in my heart of hearts.

Anyways, that's about all I have to say regarding "real fame" versus "Internet fame" and my place in it.  I realize the latter may be fleeting, and it doesn't really mean a dang thing to the world at large, but I'm having fun with it while I can.  And for those of you who are now interested and want to see what exactly I've been doing to earn things like name-drops in comic books, look over to the left and click on some of the entries under the heading "My Bibliography".  I apologize in advance if reading any of it curtails your work productivity (I've been told I have this effect on some readers), but if you like it, please send me an email.  Especially if you're a publishing agent, 'cause I've got something with a more profitable angle just sitting here collecting dust.

It was 30 years ago today...

...that MTV launched, corrupting children for generations to come.  In case you missed it, they were running a 30th anniversary marathon of classic MTV moments all weekend....on VH1 Classic.  No, that wasn't a typo: so far as I could tell, the formerly-named "Music Television" (MTV dropped the moniker years ago) made no move to acknowledge the day, choosing instead to run a Jersey Shore marathon while leaving all the hard work of actually noting the occasion to the only network that still plays videos all dang day.  Sad state of affairs, I think.  Best I can figure is that MTV doesn't want the teeny-boppers who tune in to watch their current slate of non-musical programming to know that they're 30 years old.  Because for those teeny-boppers, 30 is dust-fartingly ancient!  How can something that's been around for 30 years be relevant?  Well, in MTV's case, they really aren't, at least not to me.  You won't show videos anymore, old or new, then I have very little need to watch your channel.  I'll tune in when Beavis and Butthead return to the airwaves...wait, I forgot, that's going to be on MTV2.  Okay, I definitely have no need to watch MTV at the moment, then.

As I type this, VH1 Classic is showing MTV's first hour of programming, commercials and all, which just makes it even trippier (I just saw an ad for Superman II, now in theatres!).  Figure by now everybody knows what the first video shown was (if you don't, go look it up, it's the only thing the band's famous for these days anyhow), but do you know what the second video was?  Why, it was this little ditty right here:

Gawd, this was the best we could do in 1981?  I know we had better music than this!  Problem is, the concept of marketing a band by making videos was still rather new at the time, or at least not used with great effectiveness, so there probably wasn't a ton of variety in the beginning.  Give it a few years, though, and the entire music industry would be leaning on MTV like a crutch.  Matter of fact, thinking on this, I'd say that MTV's phasing out of videos is the real reason that the music industry is losing bucketloads of money these days.  It's not file-sharing, it's not changing tastes, it's MTV knocking away that dang crutch by discontinuing the very reason they were created.  The RIAA needs to sue MTV for loss of revenue!  Yeah!  Then MTV will be so broke, they'll have to go back to showing videos because they won't have the dough to produce crappy reality shows about sluts and goombahs in New Jersey!

Yeah, I'm really digging on this idea now!  Who's with me on this?  Huh?  Say it loud, say it proud...I WANT MY MTV!!!