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, his attire usually consists of 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, 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.

1 - Birth of a Bounty Hunter

(Text updated November 1, 2024)

In the early 1970s, comic-book cowboys were beginning to ride off into the sunset.  The number of Western titles being offered by various publishers in the United States was on the decline compared to previous years, with an average of 5 titles on the newsstands every month at the beginning of 1971 (a marked decline from two decades earlier, when roughly 50 Westerns were published in January 1951 alone).  The genre’s dominance in other media was dwindling as well: in 1959, there were 29 different Western TV shows strewn across the various networks, prompting the Emmy Awards to create a one-time “Best Western Series” category to deal with the problem, yet by 1970, only three of those shows -- Gunsmoke, Bonanza, and Death Valley Days -- remained on the air, along with a few newer Westerns like Here Come the Brides, Lancer, The Virginian, and The High Chaparral.

One of the exceptions to the downturn at this time was at the movie theatre, thanks to Sergio Leone’s “Dollars Trilogy” featuring former Rawhide star Clint Eastwood.  Its success led to the worldwide popularity of the subgenre commonly known as the Spaghetti Western (though some prefer the less-derogatory Western All'italiana, Italo-Western, or Euro-Western), the style of which soon bled over from the quickly-shot international productions and into Hollywood, which was already moving away from depictions of the clean-cut Roy Rogers/Lone Ranger type of cowboy on the big screen.  Spaghetti Westerns were violent, morally ambiguous, and not afraid to show how unfair life could really be: not everything in the world was easily separated into black hats and white hats, sometimes there was lots of gray.

Unfortunately, due to the Comics Code Authority’s stringent guidelines encompassing nearly every title published, those gray areas were hard to depict in comic books, at least prior to 1971.  Fueled in part by the efforts of Marvel Comics legend Stan Lee -- a former Western hero himself, thanks to his appearance on the cover of 1950’s Black Rider #8 dressed as the titular character -- the CCA revised its guidelines that year for the very first time, allowing comics companies operating under the CCA’s watchful eye a little more freedom than they’d been allowed since the Code’s inception in 1954.  While this revision is mainly remembered for allowing comics to present stories about “socially relevant” topics like drug addiction, there were a few other notable changes.  Unsavory depictions of government and law enforcement officials were now allowed, so long as these corrupt individuals were “declared as an exceptional case and that the culprit pay the legal price.”  A criminal lifestyle could be glamorized so long as “an unhappy ends results from their ill-gotten gain.”  Lawmen could now die if the story ended with their murderers being brought to justice. The rules regarding marriage, sexual relations, the portrayal of family life, and the depiction of physical deformities were relaxed somewhat, as were the restrictions on certain horror tropes.  Even use of the word “weird” was given the green light.  While far from perfect, the 1971 Code revisions can be seen as one of the first bricks in the foundation of what was to come at the end of that year.

Another brick had been laid months prior, when DC decided to relaunch All-Star Western, a title that had been cancelled back in 1961 after 10 years on the racks (not counting the 11 years it had previously existed as All Star Comics -- birthplace of the Justice Society of America -- before shifting its focus from superheroes to cowboys).  Considering that the first volume debuted such frontier heroes as the Trigger Twins, Strong Bow, Super-Chief, and Madame .44, one has to wonder if fans at the time were disappointed that All-Star Western (volume 2) #1 (August/September 1970) only contained a pair of decade-old Pow-Wow Smith stories reprinted from Western Comics (which had been cancelled around the same time as ASW’s first volume), along with a single-page text story by Gerry Conway (under his given name of “Gerard”).

Thankfully, the ad for the next issue promised that “THE BEST IS YET TO COME!”  And indeed, ASWv2#2 gave us the first appearances of “Outlaw” Rick Wilson and the supernatural horseman El Diablo.  While El Diablo’s legacy would eventually reach all the way into the 21st Century, Rick Wilson was one of many Western characters whose fame never went any further than the handful of stories they appeared in.  In fact, the only reason I’m bringing him up here is due to a certain pair of creators who worked on the feature, starting with the artist on the first “Outlaw” story, Tony DeZuniga.

Born in Manila on November 8, 1932, DeZuniga had worked in the Filipino comics industry for many years before coming to DC in 1970, where he quickly proved himself adept at depicting both romance (inking Ric Estrada’s pencils in Girl’s Love Story #153) and horror (full pencils and inks on Gerry Conway’s tale in House of Mystery #188) prior to landing the “Outlaw” assignment.  Working on Westerns was a natural for DeZuniga: in a 2004 article about his work, he mentioned that “I was seven years old when my dad took me to a Western.  He saw me drawing the cowboys the next day and brought home boxes of paper.  I was lucky to be encouraged by him.”  It certainly paid off, as DeZuniga’s incredibly-thin linework allowed him to render even the smallest details with perfect clarity, a marked difference from the heavier inks of Gil Kane and Jim Aparo, who illustrated the “Outlaw” stories in ASWv2#3-4 and #5, respectively.  DeZuniga returned to the “Outlaw” feature in ASWv2#6 (June/July 1971), which would now star a new character due to Rick Wilson’s arc wrapping up in the previous issue.

The artist would also be working with a new writer, as Robert Kanigher bowed out and John Albano stepped in.  Born September 12, 1922, Albano’s scripting duties at DC up to this point had been on humor titles like Date with Debbi, Binky’s Buddies, and Angel and the Ape, the latter of which also utilized his skills as a cartoonist (coincidentally, his art also appeared in HoM#188 as a single-page strip called “Cain’s Game Room”).  According to his grandson, Jared Vian, Albano even worked with fellow artist and ASW editor Joe Orlando on creating the classic Sea Monkeys ad that graced many a comics page in the 1970s, though as Vian put it, their collaboration was likely not always smooth, since apparently Albano “drove the poor guy crazy because he always turned his shit in after deadline.”  When Orlando called the house, Albano would have his daughter fib that he wasn’t home, and if the editor did get him on the line, “[Orlando] would ask him what the story was about and he would make something up on the spot.  Then he would hang up and be like ‘Damn!  Now I have to write a story about XYZ,’” Vian said.  After a long walk with the dog, though, the story would come together in his head and he’d get it down on paper.  Despite how haphazard this sounds, Albano was talented enough to win the 1971 Shazam Award for Best Humor Writer, not to mention that Orlando trusted him with revamping the “Outlaw” feature.

Back in 1968, Orlando had been one of the people responsible for ushering the infamous gambler/womanizer Bat Lash into the world, and he felt the time was right to shake things up in the Western genre again, this time with Billy Jo, a young woman dressed like a man -- earning them the moniker “Billy the Kid” -- who is searching for their father’s killer.  There were a few humorous moments slipped into the tales Albano wrote for ASWv2#6-8, but overall, his work was filled with both drama and poignancy, along the sort of twist endings he would come to be known for, and DeZuniga rendered it all with his impeccable style, dressing Billy Jo in a loose buckskin coat to help conceal their feminine figure.  Looking back with five decades of hindsight, an argument could be made that Billy Jo was one of comicdom’s first transgender characters (a word that came into existence only 6 years prior), though it’s unlikely this was the intent, since the CCA still had a rule in place bluntly stating that “sexual abnormalities are unacceptable.”  In any case, it’s obvious that the two men clicked on a creative level from the beginning, but sadly, the stories weren’t well-received.  In an interview printed in Amazing World of DC Comics #6 (June 1975), Orlando said it failed “because the hero turned out to be a girl and there was reader resentment of that.  Little boys don’t like their heroes kissing girls in Westerns and they especially don’t like their heroes when they turn out to be women.”

Like Rick Wilson before them, Billy Jo -- along with the “Outlaw” feature -- quickly faded into comics history, which was bad news for the title.  Despite all the new characters already created, All-Star Western was still slipping in reprints on occasion.  In fact, due to a production delay on the issue, ASWv2#9 consisted entirely of stories from the 1950s-60s, with the only new material being DeZuniga’s cover.  If the title was to survive, something truly special would have to be brought to its pages, and an American humorist and a Filipino artist would be the unlikely source.  The final bricks were in place, and the work of building a Western legend could begin.

According to Orlando, “John came in with the idea of doing a bounty hunter…an anti-hero.  I didn’t mind the bounty hunter part, but I wanted to establish that he was still a good person…mean because he had been screwed at one time.”  DeZuniga concurred that Albano came up with the initial idea, for as he explained it to 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.’...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.”  Thanks to the CCA’s recent loosening of certain guidelines, the idea of bringing those Spaghetti Western sensibilities to comics was now possible, and the two men were eager to do it.

Likely owing to his cartoonist background, Albano hand-drew the first script starring their new creation onto looseleaf paper, complete with dialogue balloons, sound effects, and panel layouts that DeZuniga would follow to the letter.  That script still survives, revealing to us that the character was initially dubbed “Cody Corbert -- better known as…THE COBRA”, but by the fifth page of the script, Albano began referring to him as “JONAH HEX”.  This was one of the few alterations made to the story, which opened with the same narration as the final published version: “Cold-blooded killer, vicious, an unmerciful hellion without feeling, without conscience -- a man consumed by hate, a man who boded evil...”

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 in the sketch was dressed in a Confederate coat and officer’s hat.  As DeZuniga explained in Back Issue, “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 also remarked in other interviews 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.

According to DeZuniga, 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”.  Orlando claimed that Infantino went so far as to do some sketches of what he wanted to see, which were then passed on to DeZuniga.  Though this idea was slowly phased out of Hex’s design, it’s most obvious in the promo ads that ran in both Our Army at War #240 and Batman #237 a month before his debut, which featured a “proto-Hex” with wild hair, a fanged visage, and a body like a linebacker.  “HE’S WILD…HE’S SAVAGE…HES COMING IN THE NEXT ISSUE OF ALL-STAR WESTERN On Sale Dec. 7th”, the ad touted, pounding even harder on the idea put forth in both Albano’s words and DeZuniga’s design that Jonah Hex was a monster terrorizing the citizens of the Old West.  Perhaps that’s why this bit of opening narration from the original script didn’t make the cut, as it would’ve made readers second-guess themselves before the story even began: “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...?”  Despite being left out of his initial appearance, that question underpins virtually every Jonah Hex story ever told.  Albano & DeZuniga (along with all the creators who will follow them) would constantly put Jonah in situations where he could be an “incorrigible savage” one minute and a rather tender-hearted sort the next.

“Welcome to Paradise” -- Hex’s debut story in All-Star Western (vol. 2)  #10 (cover-dated February/March 1972) -- opens with shot of him riding into the town of Paradise Corners with two dead bodies dragging behind his horse, his mere presence intimidating just about everyone he comes across.  One of the few exceptions is a little boy who accidentally trips him up when the bounty hunter runs out of a saloon after a fleeing outlaw: Jonah threatens to whup the boy, and the boy threatens to get his pa to whup the man right back (this will prove important later).  Immediately after, Jonah heads to the blacksmith to fetch his horse, only to find it getting whipped by the man, who gets knocked out in one punch by Hex -- one could see this as the bounty hunter letting out his frustration on the first available target, but it’s also the beginning of a decades-long trend wherein Jonah tends to strike back at anyone who’d dare hurt an innocent animal.

By nightfall, Hex has tracked the outlaw to a cabin where he meets up with his boss, Big Jim (who looks like Lee Marvin in some panels).  When the underling goes out to fetch some water, Jonah confronts him, leading to the first time the reader sees the scar on Hex’s face -- prior to this, every shot of his face was either covered in shadow or angled so that you could only see the left side.  In an interview for Comic Book Artist #1 (Spring 1998), Orlando stated that “John and I had rules about Jonah Hex.  You were only supposed to see his face when he was terrorizing somebody.”  He then lamented that, as time went on, the premise was dropped “and Hex went around looking like the Phantom of the Opera all the time”.  For that very first story, though, saving the reveal of Hex’s true visage until the moment he lights a match for his smoke is incredibly effective.

As Hex guns down the outlaw, Big Jim escapes, so the bounty hunter pursues him to a farmstead, where Big Jim takes a woman hostage.  As Jonah starts to say that he doesn’t care what happens to the woman, the boy from town suddenly appears, begging Jonah to save his mother.  Seems all that talk yesterday about the boy’s pa was a fib, so Jonah drops his gun so Big Jim will let her go, then the second the man turns his back, Jonah pulls a knife out from under his coat collar and throws it right between Big Jim’s shoulder blades, killing him.

After all these scenes of Hex acting like a gray-clad angel of death, the next couple of pages take a different turn.  As Jonah makes ready to haul the dead outlaws back to town for the reward, the boy invites him to stop by later for some of his ma’s apple dumplings, which the bounty hunter surprisingly agrees to.  Then, after collecting said reward from the town leaders, he asks about the boy’s father and finds out that not only is he dead, but his widow owes $300 in back taxes, so Jonah pays for them out of his own bounty money without a second thought.  The “unmerciful hellion” has decided to let his guard down, but it comes back to bite him when he inquires about an apparently-empty house on the outskirts of Paradise Corners, telling the town leaders that this seems like a nice place to settle down.  “Uh -- that house was sold -- er -- just this morning,” one of them stammers, followed by the assertion that there are no houses available in the entire territory.  Jonah takes the hint right quick, declaring that he wouldn’t want to die in this place, much less live in it.  Things don’t get much better when he returns to the farmhouse: the widow tries to blow Jonah’s head off with a rifle because she doesn’t like that her boy has taken a shine to Hex.  Instead of trying to smooth things over by pointing out his altruism, he simply acts like the mean-spirited bastard everyone assumes he is, going so far as to declare that he hates the boy “like poison” when the youngster tries to run away with him.  The story ends with Jonah shattering the town’s welcome sign with one punch as he heads out.

As we’ll learn in the years to come, Jonah’s attitude at the end isn’t just a flash of anger in the moment, but rather a defense mechanism 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 either be dead or a new enemy by the end of the issue.  Jonah likely believes it’s better to let everyone hate you from the outset than to risk heartbreak.  Another aspect featured in this first outing that will wax and wane over the decades is Jonah’s 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 outlaws in this tale is convinced that Jonah isn’t human, and Big Jim gets spooked so bad at one point that he shoots a tree stump -- but other than unerring tracking skills, Jonah never displays any unearthly powers, so you could write their behavior off as a lack of nerve.  Viable excuses like that constantly cropped up in Albano’s Hex stories, leaving it up to the reader to decide if Hex was indeed a demonic force or just a very skilled hunter of men.  The closemouthed position that his creators continually took in those early tales regarding both Jonah’s past and his scars only served to add to the mystery.

Jonah lets his guard down again in ASWv2#11, as he’s not only led to believe that the young man he rescues from a group of cattle-rustlers is innocent, but that the man’s wife is actually his sister, thereby allowing her to charm Hex into helping them.  The “lighting a match to reveal Jonah’s face” gag is repeated here, this time to let the woman “know whut kind’a critter yo’re huggin’”, after which he turns away and pulls his hat low, muttering about how “repulsive” he knows he is.  Reckon her betrayal just one page after she kisses him probably reinforced all those negative thoughts he has about himself (which we’ll discuss further down the line).

With Jonah’s third appearance came a slight change, as All-Star Western was re-titled Weird Western Tales starting with issue #12.  DC was grouping quite a few anthologies under the “Weird” banner around this time, beginning with Weird War Tales in 1971 and followed by the debut of Weird Mystery Tales and Weird Worlds not long after ASW’s title conversion.  Now that “weird” was A-OK with the CCA, Orlando said that he’d “started using the word and Carmine [Infantino] decided that ‘Weird’ sold anything.”  While the content of this first story under the new name isn’t all that weird, it does feature the first twist ending for a Hex tale, which starts off in an amusing fashion: Little Fawn, the young daughter of a Pawnee chief, becomes separated from her tribe and, after she and her pet timber wolf, Ironjaws, come across Hex bathing in a mountain stream, Little Fawn grabs his gun and demands that he help her get home!  Though they have a mishap with a rickety bridge, Jonah gets the deed done, bringing her back to her grateful father.  The girl suddenly falls ill right afterward, and the chief explains to Hex that a man named Craig -- whom Jonah had a run-in with earlier in the story -- gave the tribe some blankets infested with smallpox in the hope of wiping them out.  The chief fears that Jonah might also become ill, but the bounty hunter replies that he’s already had a cowpox vaccination, so he volunteers to fetch a doctor and bring him back to treat the tribe.

Mounting up on his horse -- named General here for the first time -- Jonah spends the next couple of days searching for help.  Considering that we’ve already seen two instances where Jonah’s attempts at compassion have backfired on him terribly, it may’ve seemed odd to the reader that he’d go to such lengths to help this little girl, much less her whole tribe, but we’ll learn in later years that Jonah has a certain affinity for both children in need and Native Americans.  Sadly, neither fare well in this story, for when he finally returns to the Pawnee village with medicine, all of them are dead: once the smallpox had sufficiently dwindled their numbers, Craig’s men finished off the rest with bullets.  Staggering through the village, Hex finds Ironjaws standing guard over Little Fawn’s lifeless body.  Jonah cradles the child in his arms for a moment, promising that he’ll look after the wolf, and after he buries her, Hex’s face twists into a snarl as he swears that “the man thet was responsible fer this…will pay!  By God, he’ll pay!”

When Hex tracks down Craig, he discovers the man’s plan worked too well, as everyone in town now has smallpox, Craig included.  Noting that he’s not “uncivilized”, Jonah offers Craig the bottle of medicine he’d brought for Little Fawn…and shatters it to pieces with a gunshot the second Craig raises it to his lips (this method of revenge will come up again many years later).

Now accompanied by a furry sidekick, Jonah travels all the way up to Wyoming in WWT#13 to visit Windy Taylor, an old friend who -- according to Windy himself -- taught Jonah how to shoot in the first place.  This is one of the few hints Albano & DeZuniga offered up in regards to Hex’s past, but we don’t get much beyond that, as the story focuses on a rich man named Fenrick who wants to add Windy’s ranch to his own vast land holdings.  Hex tangles with some of Fenrick’s men -- one of whom believes Jonah is not only immortal, but can “cast spells” over people, once again implying that the bounty hunter is something more than human -- but Hex isn’t fast enough to save Windy from getting killed by Tod, Windy’s own son!  Seems the young man felt his father had always treated him poorly, so he cut a deal with Fenrick, and when he goes to collect, Tod gets greedy and kills Fenrick as well.  Hex and Ironjaws soon pick up on Tod’s trail, though, and the bounty hunter avenges his old friend’s death in a permanent fashion.

Things take a sad turn in WWT#14, which also brings about an alteration in Jonah’s duds for the very first time.  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 two outlaw brothers 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.  Luckily, Ironjaws somehow makes its way out to the desert to chew away the ropes binding Jonah, but then the poor animal dies from a combination of snakebite and exhaustion.  It was sad that the wolf’s time in Hex’s life was so brief, but according to Jared Vian, there was a simple reason why: Albano couldn’t figure out how to keep working Ironjaws into the stories, so he decided to kill the wolf off.

To be sure, losing Ironjaws upsets Jonah just as badly as Little Fawn’s death did.  “Blazes!  Ah never felt more in a mood for killin’ than Ah do now!” he bellows, then stalks back to town and demands the doctor give him some clothes and a gun so he can go hunt down 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 has flipped sides, going from his left hip to his right (in both cases, the spare revolver is tucked under his belt), and his trouser legs are now tucked into his boots, which have brown cuffs with rawhide stitching and silver conchos on either side.  The “classic” Hex look is now solidified…with one exception, for while he’s got another rebel-gray coat, his officer’s hat has been replaced a blue-black hat with a tiger-striped band, like he’s some sort of crazy cowboy pimp.  Luckily, this wardrobe malfunction doesn’t throw off his game one bit, and the issue ends with Jonah leaving one of the outlaws -- who’d been mauled by a rabid mountain lion -- to die in the desert, with the body of his dead brother draped over him.

At some point 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 Amazing World of DC Comics #13 (Oct. 1976).  In the early ‘70s, as editor Paul Levitz explained in his preface to the piece, DC was in the process of cooking up a humor/horror mag to add under their “Weird” banner.  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, by the time this magazine -- now and forever known as Plop! -- hit the stands in 1973, that particular idea had been scrapped, but not before Albano & DeZuniga finished a four-page Jonah Hex story.  The result is something you have to see to believe, as it puts the bounty hunter in satirical situations like riddling him with arrows from head to foot (followed by him covering his wounds with dozens of Band-Aids) and galloping around on a stick horse.  I chalk it up to Albano’s cartoonist background that he so effectively knocked the piss out of his own character without being mean.

The existence of the Zany parody also speaks volumes as to how popular Hex became in such a short period of time, especially when you consider that -- according to Tony DeZuniga in a 2010 interview -- Joe Orlando had initially only commissioned five stories for this new character.  Luckily, letters of praise for both Jonah Hex and the creative team began to pour in right away, and Orlando noted in the lettercol for WWT#15 that sales on the title were on the rise ever since the bounty hunter’s debut (he also explained the noticeable absence of Hex in that issue was due to Tony DeZuniga being in the midst of moving house, so they decided to give Jonah some time off rather than bring in another artist).

Perhaps this sales spike was what inspired DC to roll out two more Western titles in early 1973, both named after stars from the original iteration of All-Star Western, specifically Johnny Thunder and the Trigger Twins.  However, both filled their pages with reprints, which is likely one of the reasons why neither lasted long: Trigger Twins consisted of a single issue and Johnny Thunder put out three before getting cancelled.  E. Nelson Bridwell -- who edited both titles -- admitted in Johnny Thunder #3 (July/August 1973) that the latter had received only five fan letters so far, all of which were printed in that issue’s lettercol, which led Bridwell to muse that “maybe today’s Western readers go more for the Jonah Hex type than the clean-cut range riders of the past.”

Jonah gets back in the saddle -- still wearing that “pimp hat” -- with WWT#16, backing up a sheriff whose bumbling exterior hides a thieving heart.  In WWT#17, he finds himself working for “The Hangin’ Woman” Judge Hatchett, who mercilessly hangs both the guilty and innocent in order to maintain an iron grip over the townsfolk.  After her sons murder a man to take possession of his farm, his little boy comes looking for revenge, and the sight of them preparing a noose for a child drives Hex to dispense his own brand of justice upon the Hatchetts, with the wheelchair-bound matriarch meeting an end worthy of a pre-Code EC comic.  By WWT#18, Jonah has taken over the entire issue, not only starring in his first 23-page story, but also earning his very own logo on the front cover, which was printed larger than the magazine’s actual title, rather like how Batman’s name usually overshadows Detective Comics.  Though the occasional backup would still appear in Weird Western Tales, there was no doubt that, overall, it belonged to Jonah Hex now.  Another landmark moment came in the form of the cover artist, Luis Dominguez, whose rendering of a monstrous “wolf boy” menacing Hex made him the second person to officially draw the bounty hunter, and this most certainly wouldn’t be the last time the Argentine artist would do so.

More landmarks would follow in WWT#19: it was the first Hex story to contain a date -- August 1867 -- as well as the first to make reference to his service in the Civil War, with the opening narration pondering, “When the smoke of battle had cleared at Gettysburg… Vicksburg… Chattanooga… Chickamauga… Manassas… and Chancellorsville, was this the warrior who still stood -- alive and unscathed?”  In the decades to come, speculation on Jonah’s presence at these battles and many others would continue to arise (see Appendix A  for a comprehensive list), but sadly, John Albano would not be around much longer to add his input on this matter.

Around the same time as Jonah Hex’s debut, a years-long series of mergers and acquisitions was finishing up, leading to DC Comics falling under the umbrella of the newly-created Warner Communications Inc. -- which also contained Warner Bros. Pictures -- in February 1972.  One of the first things this new company did was assess which comics properties could be spun off into other media like movies and TV.  While the transition from comics to live-action is almost a given in our current world of cinematic universes, that was far from the case in the early 1970s, so it’s likely that this assessment, coupled with Hex’s overnight popularity, is what led to a dispute between Albano and DC in regards to the film rights for Jonah Hex.

According to Jared Vian -- whose grandfather once showed him paperwork regarding this, but it has since been lost -- Clint Eastwood’s production company, Malpaso, was apparently interested in this potential Hex movie, which would’ve been a match made in heaven, considering Eastwood and Spaghetti Westerns in general were one of the inspirations for the character.  But considering how few rights comic-book creators had at the time (a situation that has improved only marginally in the decades since), Albano was likely cut out of any movie discussions, not to mention any profits such a movie would generate.  Things got heated enough for lawyers to get involved, and though Albano did receive an unknown sum because of it, the situation would cause him to be relieved of his position as writer on Weird Western Tales.  We can presume this incident also killed the movie deal before it really had a chance to get anywhere, though this would be far from the last time that Hollywood would come a-callin’ for the bounty hunter.

Not willing to lose their star character, Joe Orlando was faced with the task of finding a new writer who could deliver that same gritty quality the fans were clamoring for.  The first to try out for the position was Arnold Drake, who’d been working in the comics field since the 1950s, and had co-created many long-lasting DC characters like Deadman, the original Doom Patrol, and the humorous duo of Stanley and His Monster.  His contribution to the Hex mythos in WWT#20 fit in nicely with the previous Albano tales, showing off both Drake’s writing talents as well as how quickly Jonah’s character quirks had become cemented in place (it also featured the return of Jonah’s Confederate officer’s hat, completing the “classic” Hex look).  Drake even built upon Jonah’s preference to Indians over white folks: when a U.S. cavalry major says that a recent skirmish might bring about a change in the government’s “liberal Indian policies”, Jonah replies, “Which one d’ya mean -- takin’ their lands, killin’ their braves -- or maybe starvin’ their squaws and papooses?”  Discussion of said skirmish also brings about another nod to Jonah’s wartime service, with the bounty hunter stating that he’d already fought his war, referring to it as “the blue agin’ the gray”, and that it seems to him that “a man shouldn’t make a hog of hisself” by getting involved.

Most notable about the story is Drake’s introduction of a bordello owner named “Widow” Eileen Lacey (she ain’t no widow, folks, she just calls herself that to sound respectable), whom Jonah knows from a run-in at a Dodge City saloon.  The exact nature of their previous relationship is unknown, but the two are close enough to share a kiss and a bit of a flirt not long after their reunion…and the biggest surprise of all is that she survives at the end, making her one of the few figures from Jonah’s past to do so.  Unfortunately, this would be Drake’s only time writing Hex, and Eileen Lacey never turns up again, so what exactly occurred in that Dodge City saloon will remain a mystery.

Albano’s final Jonah Hex story appeared in Weird Western Tales #21 (January/February 1974), and it’s just as strong as the one he introduced the bounty hunter to the world with.  After killing one outlaw and capturing three others, Hex is beset by a snowstorm, forcing him to stop with his prisoners at a farmhouse owned by a widow and her daughter to wait it out.  Coincidentally, the daughter had a secret relationship with one of the outlaws, Roy, so she helps him escape…but before they leave together, Roy beats Jonah senseless with a fireplace poker.  The widow spends the next week caring for Jonah (as well as the other outlaw, who’d been struck down by a fever, the third having died right as they reached the farmhouse), and she certainly has her work cut out for her, because we soon learn that ol’ Jonah has a tendency to talk in his sleep.  In this case, he’s having nightmares about being back in the War, thrashing about in bed as he hollers at his men to charge the enemy.  The scene is accompanied by a brief flashback to a wartime image of Hex on horseback, his face unscarred as he waves a saber and gallops into battle.  As noted earlier, Albano & 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 panel is first time they even acknowledge that Jonah wasn’t just born ugly.

Hex eventually recovers and sets to ride off in search of Roy and the widow’s daughter, but not before the old woman cautiously inquires whether Hex was wounded in the War.  He blows it off by saying that “the War’s over now and best forgotten!”  As he rides away, though, the widow silently reflects that it truly isn’t over for him: No, you still hear the roll of the drums…the bugle still sounding the charge…so long as there is an enemy for you to engage, you’ll ride on…

As to be expected, Hex catches up to his quarry two days later, ensnaring Roy in a noose and strangling him to death before returning the wayward daughter home.  When they arrive, though, they discover that the fever-stricken outlaw had recovered enough to stab the widow and escape.  Instead of immediately jumping on his trail, though, Hex fetches a doctor, then sticks around until he’s certain the old woman will survive.  These actions -- along with learning that Hex ponied up $400 for a children’s hospital fund in order to get the doc out there promptly -- cause the daughter to give Hex a bit of a dressing-down, pointing out that the merciless, unfeeling manner he’s been projecting the whole time doesn’t match with his altruistic acts.  Rather than own up to the fact that he actually has a heart, he spurs his horse General and rides off, locating the other outlaw four days later and gunning him down without a word.

Overall, this was a fine story for creator and creation to part ways on, and with the hindsight of knowing that this was Albano’s last Hex tale, the widow’s musings feel like his way of acknowledging that the character would indeed “ride on” without him.  What had started as an attempt to bring the sensibilities of the Spaghetti Western anti-hero to the comics page had succeeded spectacularly, but as with most things involving Jonah Hex, there was a cost.  The writer’s tenure at DC went on for a few more years before he moved on to work for other comics companies like Archie and Atlas/Seaboard, splitting his time between humor and horror.  It should also be noted that, despite Albano’s departure from Weird Western Tales, his son, John Albano Jr., would continue to work uncredited on the title as a colorist until WWT#37.

Despite solicits in the issue saying otherwise, the title was briefly cancelled after WWT#21, one of nine lower-tier books that DC saw fit to sacrifice due to a nationwide paper shortage in the Fall of 1973.  This move enabled the company to allocate resources to other titles with higher profit margins so they could more easily ride out this lean period.  This marked the first time Jonah Hex got the axe, and the book’s return four months later would mark his first resurrection (four other cancelled titles would return in the summer once the shortage was over).  Coincidentally, this also heralded the entry of the new writer that Joe Orlando had chosen to succeed John Albano, one whose contributions would define the character for generations to come.

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