Susan Hillwig: One Fangirl's Opinion: February 2012

3 - New Home, New Hassles
(Text updated November 1, 2025)

“THE WEIRDEST WESTERN HERO NOW IN HIS OWN MAGAZINE!” trumpeted the cover of Jonah Hex #1 (cover-dated March/April 1977), which hit the stands in December 1976 and sported the new Milton Glaser-designed “DC Bullet” corporate logo that had begun appearing on titles just a month prior (this was part of publisher Jeanette Kahn’s decision to officially incorporate National Periodical Publications as DC Comics, as she wanted new fans encountering their characters in other media like movies and TV shows to know exactly where to find them). In addition, fans could pick up the latest issue of Jonah’s former home, Weird Western Tales #39, now starring Scalphunter but touting on the cover that the story within was “In the tradition of Jonah Hex”. A fair comparison, considering both were written by Michael Fleisher, whose second volume of The Encyclopedia of Comic Book Heroes was also released that month.

It may have seemed odd to some at the time that DC was doubling their Western output at a time when other companies were all but done with the genre (heck, one could argue DC had tripled it, since the Vigilante -- a Golden Age character who straddled the line between singing cowboy and superhero -- began appearing in backup stories in World’s Finest Comics right around the same time). Looking over what was available on the racks in 1977, one would discover that Gold Key’s Lone Ranger series came to a close the same month that Jonah’s debuted, Charlton’s output in regards to cowboys was sporadic at best, and Marvel had been relying for years on reprints to fill its few remaining Western titles. Starting up a brand-new Western comic in a market that was becoming more dependent on superheroes was likely seen by others in the industry as a huge mistake, but five years of appearances in All-Star Western and Weird Western Tales had proved that Jonah was more than up to the task.

For his first self-titled issue, Michael Fleisher and Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez send Jonah Hex to Whalenburg, Tennessee in the spring of 1874. Tommy Royden, the son of a wealthy plantation owner, had been kidnapped over six months ago, yet there’s been no ransom and no trace of the boy has surfaced. After two weeks of westward tracking, Hex comes across a boy-fighting troupe run by a man named Blackie LeClerc, who ain’t above taking a whip to the young’uns. After making it clear that he’s not fond of such things, Jonah inquires if they know anything about the missing boy. Both LeClerc and his boys claim ignorance, but later that night, one of the boys sneaks into Hex’s room and tells a different story: Tommy hadn’t been kidnapped for ransom, but to replace another boy who’d died in a fight. Sadly, Tommy himself died in the same manner that very afternoon (just as Jonah arrived, in fact, but the bounty hunter didn’t recognize him because LeClerc had dyed the boy’s blond hair a darker color).

The boy leads Hex to the local undertaker, and as Jonah examines the body to find the telltale scar the elder Royden told him about, they’re ambushed by LeClerc and his partner, who shoot them both. The boy dies, but Jonah’s only grazed, so LeClerc tosses him into a coffin and nails it shut, figuring Jonah will die before he escapes. Of course, we all know Jonah’s made of sterner stuff than that. He soon tracks the skunks down and, since he doesn’t know which one did the actual kidnapping, decides the best way to settle it is have LeClerc and his partner participate in “a little friendly fight! You know, like the kind you make those boys have!” The two men duke it out until they stumble off a cliff, and though LeClerc manages to hang on for dear life, his victory doesn’t last long (a fact that bothers Jonah very little).

The 1-page epilogue that follows does little to lighten the already-downbeat ending. When Jonah arrives back at the plantation with Tommy’s body, he finds that his employer (who was ailing at the beginning of the tale) died in the interim. After laying the small coffin at the feet of the man’s widow, he rides off without taking any of the reward (and it was a hefty sum: $20,000 to be exact...a crazy amount of money both then and now, but Fleisher tended to make the bounties much larger than what would have been realistic for the late-1800s). Looking back, it’s a terribly depressing story to start out on, but I do ask that you remember it well, as this will become relevant again in about three decades.

Two months later, we get the first installment of a storyline that will run for nearly one-and-a-half years. JH#2 begins with the lawmen of the town of Wyandotte, Texas, accusing Jonah of robbing a store, and before he can get a word in edgewise, they beat the holy Hell outta Jonah and drag him to jail...only to find that it was a diversion set up by Ned Landon, a member of the U.S Secret Service. The government desperately needs Jonah’s help, and Landon offers him $5,000, to which Hex -- who likely is thinking of what happened when he worked with a Secret Service man back in WWT#23 -- replies, “Been havin’ a lotta trouble with wax in muh ears lately, Mr. Landon! Did Ah hear you say $10,000?”

Landon concedes to the demand, then tells Hex about El Papagayo, a ruthless bandito who wants to overthrow the Mexican government, which apparently has folks in Washington worried. Not wanting to be openly involved, they’ve instead chosen Hex to perform some covert ops for them, supplying him with a cache of guns to sell so he can cozy up to Papagayo and learn what his plans are. Hex agrees and rides off to Mexico, guns in tow. After impressing the bandito with both the ordnance and his own gunfighting skills, he and Papagayo actually get along pretty well...until El Papagayo’s men discover that all the firing pins have been removed from the guns Hex brought, rendering them useless! Jonah escapes the furious banditos by the skin of his teeth and, figuring this all to be a set-up by Landon, rides back to Wyandotte. Once there, he learns the lawmen who hauled him in on that fake robbery charge are dead, and the whole town thinks Jonah’s the one who did it -- once again, Jonah escapes, but now he has a triple-murder charge hanging over his head and no idea why. In truth, Landon’s the one who killed the lawmen, and the last page shows him meeting up with someone at an old barn to discuss how things went, only to get shot by a man with an eagle-headed cane!

Yes indeed, Turnbull is back, and this time, he’s not going to be content with merely killing Jonah Hex: he wants to make sure the man’s reputation is destroyed along with him, giving him no safe harbor as he runs from every lawman in the West. In JH#3, we learn that a $10,000 bounty has been placed on his head, which is yet another crazy-high amount, plus there’s the irony that it’s how much Landon agreed to pay Hex. Unaware that Landon is dead, he’s desperately searching for the man as he flees a posse, getting shot in the process. He eventually manages to ditch the posse and find shelter in the home of a blind Quaker, who refuses to turn Jonah in even after he discovers the truth about the man in his care. His daughter, however, has other feelings on the matter, which only changes after Hex rescues her from a local cattleman that wants to possess the Quaker’s property (seems there’s a rich vein of turquoise running through it that the Quaker and his daughter didn’t know about). Unfortunately, Hex catches a couple more bullets by the end of the tale, and he has to flee again as the posse has tracked him down. Riding through the wilderness, Jonah’s too focused on his injuries to notice that there’s someone on the rocks above him with a rifle...someone who looks like...Jonah Hex?!? What in blazes is going on here? Did Fleisher just introduce a twin brother or something?

Luckily, we don’t have wait long to find out: not only does JH#4 pick up just moments after the last one ended, but it’s cover-dated September 1977: starting now and for the next seven years, Jonah Hex is a monthly title. As for our second Hex, he turns out to be a former actor and master of disguise called the Chameleon (no, this isn’t some surprise Jonah Hex/Spider-Man crossover, though that would’ve been fun, eh?). Another agent hired by Turnbull, the Chameleon is masquerading as Hex in order to further discredit our hero. After robbing a stagecoach and murdering one of the passengers, he ambushes Hex and shoots him off his horse. Laying by a creek half-dead, Jonah is eventually found by a young lady named Joanna Mosby, who helps him back to her cabin.

As Hex is recuperating in another room, the Chameleon shows up again, this time disguised as a wounded veteran looking for a handout -- while Joanna fetches him something to eat, he hides the loot from the stagecoach robbery in the cabin. After he leaves, the Chameleon switches up his garb to that of an old prospector and rats out Hex’s location to the authorities, who arrive at the cabin just after Hex and Joanna finish doing a bit of canoodling. The lawmen find the planted loot, but Hex luckily manages to escape their clutches.

For the next six days, Jonah pursues Landon’s weeks-old trail, which leads him to that old barn we last saw at the end of JH#2. He first finds what appears to be Landon’s body hanging from the rafters -- it turns out to be a straw-stuffed dummy -- then spots a very-alive Turnbull sitting nearby having a drink. Turnbull informs his visibly-shocked foe that he was only “incapacitated for a few days after our last encounter” back in WWT#30, then spills the beans about the whole set-up right before his manservant Solomon conks Hex out with a shovel. The two men leave Hex there, and when he wakes up hours later, he races back to Joanna’s place only to discover that she and the Chameleon have been in cahoots this whole time! Sadly, she’s seen the Chameleon’s true face, so he decides to set the cabin on fire to kill both her and Hex. Too bad he didn’t count on Jonah’s fancy footwork: though he’s tied to a chair, the bounty hunter manages to kick a gun on the floor at such an angle that it hits the Chameleon right in the crotch, followed by a well-worn boot to the face!

Hex and Joanna escape the blazing cabin, and though she says that she genuinely loves him, the man ain’t buyin’ it, giving her a good slap in the kisser before riding off. Moments later, the lawmen arrive once more with news that Jonah’s been cleared of the stagecoach-robbing charge: an artist on the stage did a sketch of the robber, and while the Chameleon made himself up to look like Hex, he put the scar on the wrong side of his face (a touch that may have slipped by some readers upon first perusal), therefore confirming that he was an imposter. Joanna informs them that said imposter died in the still-smoldering fire before them, so the lawmen consider the matter closed, though Hex is still wanted for the Wyandotte murders. Unbeknownst to all, the Chameleon -- his face horribly burned -- actually escaped the fire unnoticed and has sworn vengeance upon Hex!

After this issue, the crazy Turnbull-backed shenanigans suddenly drop off, though Jonah’s “fugitive on the run” status still gets worked into each story. This includes the reprint of Jonah’s debut in All-Star Western (vol. 2) #10 that makes up the bulk of JH#5, which gets a new framing sequence written by Fleisher and illustrated by Garcia-Lopez & Romeo Tanghal, thereby giving readers 18 pages that month instead of the usual 17. Whereas reprints in the past smacked more of a desperation to put out anything (e.g. the production delay that caused ASWv2#9 to be nothing but reprints), this was likely yet another acknowledgement by DC that ol’ Jonah’s popularity continued to rise, so the company was giving new fans a chance to see where it all started…and there were likely more than a few DC staffers counted among those fans. As Mike Gold -- who was a P.R. rep for DC at the time -- said in an interview printed in Comic Media News #32 (August/September 1977), “Jonah Hex is our ‘class act’ here, it’s the book that everybody would like to do.”

The opening page of JH#5 shows a posse in pursuit of Hex crossing paths with a woman on a buckboard. Turns out this is the same lady -- now named as Mrs. Thornton -- that Jonah helped back in ASWv2#10. When the posse ask if she’s seen him, she replies, “Ah ain’t laid eyes on thet man in more’n five years, sheriff! But Ah swear, if Ah live to be a hundred, Ah’ll never forget the day he rode through Paradise Corners…” The comic then rolls right into Albano & DeZuniga’s “Welcome to Paradise”, exactly as it was the first time around (though there are a few coloring changes, such as Thornton and her still-unnamed son are now redheads instead of blonde). When the tale is through, we get a final page by Fleisher, Garcia-Lopez & Tanghal, with the sheriff saying that Hex is now a wanted killer, and he tells the woman, “You see any sign of him, you let out a loud holler, hear?” before riding off. Cut to Jonah poking his head out from beneath the tarp covering the buckboard -- he’d been hiding there the whole time -- and thanking Thornton for the assist. She in turn thanks him for what he did all those years ago, namely paying off the family farm for her and her boy, who she says is now “almost a full-grown man”. After the anger she’d shown him when they parted ways originally, this scene is rather touching, especially in light of the mess Jonah’s life has become. It’s a reminder for both us and himself that he is a good man, he just has very rotten luck...and that luck extends to the departure of Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez as series artist after this issue. Just like Mrs. Thornton, he will turn up in Jonah’s life later on, but for now, we must bid Joe Orlando’s “secret weapon” a fond farewell.

Ernie Chan joins up with longtime Hex artist Noly Panaligan for JH#6, in which Jonah impersonates a U.S. Marshal who died trying to bring him in (it wasn’t his fault, I swear!) as well as JH#7, while Chan gets an assist from Vicente Alcazar on JH#8. These latter two issues are a landmark in Jonah’s life, as they reveal another large chunk of his mysterious past. The present-day anchor is Jonah being hired at the beginning of JH#7 by a Mr. Vanden (who is aware of Jonah’s fugitive status and doesn’t care a whit) to rescue his kidnapped daughter, Laura. He wants Hex because he’s an expert on Apaches, and as the story rolls into a flashback, we find out why.

Back in July 1851, Jonah was a boy of thirteen and living with his abusive, drunken father. The elder Hex sold booze illegally to a local Apache tribe, and one day, in order to raise a grubstake so he could get in on the California gold rush, he decided to trade own his son to the Apaches for a bundle of pelts so they could use him for slave labor. Though his father promised that he’d come back for Jonah as soon as he struck it rich, that promise would never be fulfilled, and it fell to Jonah himself to shake off his slave status. After two years, he managed to do so by rescuing the tribe’s chief from a vicious puma (resulting in Jonah’s back getting severely clawed, though we won’t see the resulting scars for nearly three decades), and they accepted him as a full member of the tribe. Unfortunately, the chief’s son, Noh-Tante, wasn’t so happy about this, nor about the fact that Jonah kept making eyes at a girl named White Fawn. When they were both sent out on a test of manhood -- stealing horses from a nearby Kiowa camp -- Noh-Tante betrayed Jonah, knocking him out cold and leaving him to be killed by the Kiowa.

At the beginning of JH#8, we learn that young Jonah was saved from certain death by an unlikely source: a band of mercenaries hired by the Army to wipe out Indians! Though glad for the rescue, he tried to stop the mercs from shooting the Kiowa children, which lead to Jonah getting shot as well. His second savior would come in the form of a trapper who found him amongst the dead Kiowa and nursed him back to health. Months passed before Jonah was well enough to return to the Apache encampment, but they were long gone by the time he arrived. There’s a quick glossing-over of the next 12 years, mentioning how he would go on to work for the U.S. Army, first as a buffalo hunter, then as a tracker and scout, followed by his stint with the Confederacy (with the text clearly stating, “For four long years he fought the Yankees”, confirming for the first time that, despite his feelings about slavery, Jonah continued to side with the Rebs after the Fort Charlotte Massacre). After the War, Jonah resumed his wandering, and in 1866, he finally stumbled across his old tribe, only to find that White Fawn married Noh-Tante! Still wanting justice, Jonah told the chief of how Noh-Tante betrayed him, and the chief decided this must be settled by trial-by-combat.

Armed only with tomahawks, Jonah and Noh-Tante tussled, with Jonah unaware that his weapon had been rigged to break. When it eventually snapped, Noh-Tante told Jonah of the sabotage, so Jonah decided that one dishonorable move deserved another and pulled out the knife he always kept hidden beneath his coat collar -- with one quick stab to the chest, the former soldier killed his rival. Not knowing about the rigged tomahawk, the chief sided with his dead son and, as Jonah was lashed between a pair of upright poles, he heated up the head of another tomahawk. Lamenting that the young man who’d saved his life years earlier had now unjustly killed Noh-Tante, he declared that “the world must know that you are half good and half evil! Henceforth, you shall carry with you, for all time--THE MARK OF THE DEMON!” With that, the chief pressed the red-hot tomahawk against the right side of Jonah’s face, thus bestowing upon him the hideous scar readers had become very familiar with. The chief then banished Jonah from the tribe as White Fawn cried in the background.

After that frightful reveal, the story returns to present times, and it turns out Laura Vanden was kidnapped by that very same Apache tribe, and they soon capture the bounty hunter as well. In the eight years since Jonah was banished, the chief appears to have turned bitter in regards to all whites, and now openly wars against them, hence the kidnapping of Laura. As punishment for daring to return, the Apaches plan on torturing and burning Jonah to death come sunrise, but in the middle of the night, White Fawn frees both him and Laura, with the intent of leaving the tribe alongside them. Unfortunately, the chief discovers what she’s done and kills White Fawn as they begin their escape, leaving Jonah no choice but to shoot the chief dead in order for him and Laura Vanden to get away.

As with the Fort Charlotte two-parter in WWT#29-30 and the “fugitive” storyline this tale is embedded in, it all boils down to yet another false accusation, as well as rejection by a father figure (in this case, his actual father is part of the equation), and in the long run, events like this have to color how Jonah thinks of himself. In his interview with The Comics Journal #56 (May 1980), Michael Fleisher commented that someone like Hex must have a certain amount of self-hatred to do what he does because, as a bounty hunter, he’s putting his life on the line constantly, and someone who actually cared about themselves might go into a safer profession. To be sure, coming from an abusive household isn’t the best start for a boy (plus there’s no mention yet of his mother -- it’ll be many years before we find out why she’s no longer in the picture), and enduring slavery would just lower his opinion of himself even further.

But Jonah did manage take away one very important lesson from all this: he learned how to endure. Between what the Apache did to him and the unknown tortures his father already put him through, there’s little the world can throw at Jonah that he hasn’t already experienced. And of course there’s the more practical lessons in the form of hunting, tracking, and fighting skills that he picked up during his years with the Apache (which would have been honed razor-sharp by the time the Civil War ended). So much of what makes Jonah Hex the man he is can be traced back to his Pa trading him away for a stack of pelts. Without that event, he’s nothing.

We get another two-parter in JH#9 &10 (with art chores done by Ernie Chan & Danny Bulandi on the former and Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez on the latter), wherein Jonah’s hired by the Mexican government to escort a fortune in gold bullion across bandito-infested territory. And where there’s banditos, there’s El Papagayo, who wants revenge on Hex for the stunt he pulled in JH#2. “For almost eight months I am lying awake nights dreaming about how I am going to kill heem!” says Papagayo...which leads us to a problem with this whole “Hex as fugitive” story. Aside from his initial tracking down of Landon, we’ve seen Jonah do absolutely nothing to prove his innocence. Admittedly, this can’t be an easy task, what with how neatly Turnbull set him up, but you’d think after eight months of this, Jonah would’ve at least attempted it. Of course, if we go back to Fleisher’s reasoning of “self-hatred”, maybe Jonah thinks he deserves this treatment on some level, so he’s not trying very hard. Either way, he misses the perfect opportunity to get his life back in JH#11: Jonah rescues a young woman who’s being assaulted by a nasty card-sharp and his cronies, and not until afterwards does Jonah realize it’s Joanna Mosby, who’s been following him for months. Too bad the reunion is short-lived, as the skunks soon bushwhack Jonah, tie him to a hitching rail, and go to work on him with a sledgehammer, smashing the bones in both of his hands.

There’s a heck of a tale behind that scene, as laid out by Fleisher in the aforementioned TCJ interview. Apparently, he’d scripted it so the bad guys “place [Jonah’s] hands on a hitching rail so that...his hands are gripping the hitching rail. Then the script called for the bad guys to take railroad spikes and hammer them through Jonah Hex's hands into the wood...Now, the artist [Rich Buckler] took this story and he changed the position of Jonah Hex so that his back was to the hitching post.” Which is how it appears in the comic, except there’s no spikes to be seen. Turns out that the good folks at the Comics Code Authority saw the original art and claimed it looked like a crucifixion, which made it sacrilegious and therefore had to be changed. “Not because the spikes were so brutal, you understand, but because religious people might be offended,” Fleisher said during the interview. “What the Code said to us was that only Christ could be crucified. By that reasoning, you presumably couldn't show the two thieves who were crucified alongside Christ in a comic book because they weren't Christ either. Be that as it may, I never meant the scene to look like a crucifixion.”

Back to our story: the next scene shows Jonah all bandaged up (spikes or no, his hands ain’t gonna be in good shape), and Joanna’s taking care of him. She tries to explain about the whole incident with the Chameleon, but Jonah blows her off, and as far as we know, that particular subject never comes up again. As I said earlier, it’s a missed opportunity: she knows about the stagecoach setup, so why didn’t Jonah grill her about what else she might know? He says later on in the tale that he can’t fully trust her, so I suppose that’s his reason for not pursuing the issue further.

This distrust of Joanna inadvertently leads to her death at the hands of the same guy who busted up Hex. It also leads us back to that interview, where Fleisher talked about writing “a story in which a woman whom Jonah Hex loves dies in his arms and Jonah Hex in the first moment of grief kisses her on the mouth after she's died. I thought it was a very powerful moment in the story. Now the artist was very uncomfortable with this. He took the story and brought it in to the editor -- he'd written a whole new ending for it. In his ending, Jonah Hex picks up the girl, carries her to the graveyard, and buries her, or something. Fortunately, in the case of that particular story the editor insisted that the story be redrawn to meet the requirements of the original script.” Though Fleisher doesn’t mention the artist or issue, the “uncomfortable” scene matches the end of JH#11. If you couple this comment with what he said about the hitching rail scene (along with noting that the inks for the issue are credited to “Dick Giordano & Friends”, implying that there was a scramble to get this one in the can) it seems as though Fleisher and Buckler had quite a few differences of opinion regarding the content of the story, though when I met Rich Buckler in 2006 and asked him about it, he couldn’t recall any problems of the sort, so it’s one man’s word against another here.

Those searching for more “fugitive” action in JH#12 will be disappointed, as there’s not even a brief mention of Jonah’s troubles in this story. This tale -- drawn by Vicente Alcazar, who will stick around for the remainder of the “fugitive” storyarc -- focuses instead on Hex looking for a friend lost in the Louisiana bayou and running afoul of some swamp folk (a theme we’ll revisit nearly three decades later). It’s possible this may have been written before the current storyline was cooked up and held in reserve as a fill-in just in case Fleisher fell behind, a theory lent credence by the fact that the next three issues aren’t written by Michael Fleisher at all! Instead, David Michelinie -- who Fleisher had brought to DC four years previously, after coming across his writing samples in Joe Orlando’s slush pile -- briefly took over the title while Fleisher finished up work on the third volume of The Encyclopedia of Comic Book Heroes, which was originally released in 1978 under the title of The Great Superman Book to coincide with the release of the Christopher Reeve-starring movie. For those keeping score, this made Michelinie the fourth writer to take on Jonah Hex since the character’s creation, and his trio of tales not only contributed to the “fugitive” storyline, but also delivered the same high caliber of action that readers had come to expect from our favorite bounty hunter.

In JH#13, Jonah is blackmailed by a Pinkerton agent into helping him find out who’s been blowing up railroad lines in the area -- if Jonah refuses, the Pinkerton will haul him in and collect that $10,000 bounty. This turns into a huge double-cross by the Pinkerton, who ends up killing a boy in the process, and if there’s one thing you should never do in Jonah’s presence, it’s harm a little kid! In JH#14, Michelinie introduces us to “The Sin Killer”, an old friend of Jonah’s who has made it his life’s mission to kill bounty hunters...Jonah Hex included! Michelinie’s final tale in JH#15 has Jonah working in a carnival under the moniker “The Crimson Pistolero”, wearing a bandana over his face so as to hide from the authorities (though why he didn’t think to change out of his Confederate duds is beyond me). Because of his scars, the “special” people who work in the sideshow welcome Hex as one of their own, at least until they think he’s responsible for the death of the carnival’s owner. When the real culprit is found, Jonah helps the sideshow members dispense their own kind of justice before hitting the trail once more (though this certainly won’t be the last time Jonah has a run-in with circus folk).

Sharp-eyed readers likely noticed something new on Jonah’s uniform throughout those three issues: a gold-colored “7” on the collar of his Confederate-gray coat. At this point in Hex’s publishing history, three years had passed since the last mention of the 4th Cavalry, Jonah’s regiment during the Civil War, so those who’d never read WWT#29-30 would likely have been unaware that the number was an anomaly. I asked Michelinie about this in 2025, curious as to whether he or Vicente Alcazar was the source of this small retcon, and he replied that it likely wasn’t his idea: “I try not to add new things to someone who’s just loaning me their series for a bit,” he said, then speculated that perhaps Alcazar had done it based on input from Fleisher. Whatever the source, that 7 will continue to crop up in every issue drawn by Alcazar from here on out, eventually making its way into the actual text well over a year after its first appearance.

Fleisher returned for Jonah Hex #16 (September 1978), with the cover boasting that it now contained a “FULL-LENGTH 25 PAGE STORY!” alongside a 50-cent price tag, as opposed to the previous 17 pages for 35 cents. Both changes were part of “The DC Explosion”, a new publishing initiative by the company brought on by a need to raise prices after years of cutting corners to avoid such a move. The powers-that-be, headed by Jeanette Kahn, decided the best way to soften the blow for readers was that, if they had to ask for more money, they’d add more pages to go along with it. For some titles like Jonah Hex, those eight extra pages meant longer stories, while others like Weird Western Tales got eight-page backups instead, the latter of which led to the debut of female gunslinger Cinnamon in WWT#48-49 (plus Scalphunter’s home finally gained monthly status with #49). DC also planned on adding a third Western title to their schedule called Western Classics (one of four new reprint “Classics” titles) and Showcase #107 was to present the debut of Civil War veteran Aaron Hope, aka “The Deserter”. Ol’ Jonah even got featured in an in-house ad touting the DC Explosion, which repurposed Jim Aparo’s art from the cover of World’s Finest Comics #250 (though it’s uncertain if Aparo himself or someone else added Hex alongside Sgt. Rock and Cain from House of Mystery to that superhero group shot). Overall, it was a huge gamble that likely would’ve paid off if a certain something beyond their control hadn’t blindsided them just as the “Explosion” went off. We’ll get into that later, because right now, it’s time to bring the “fugitive” storyline to a close.

JH#16 starts with Jonah being captured by a local vigilance committee, who don’t want to bother with no fancy trials and just hang Jonah from a nearby tree, leaving him to slowly strangle to death. Luckily, a man by the name of Tobias Nostrum and his Black assistant Joseph happen along and cut him down. No fan of vigilantism, Nostrum saved Hex so he could be turned over to the proper authorities. When Jonah tells them about how he was framed, Nostrum reveals that he is an inventor of sorts, and is familiar with the still-nascent science of fingerprinting, as well as the process of identifying the distinctive marks left on bullets when fired by certain guns. With a little bit of work, Nostrum can prove Jonah Hex is innocent!

Unfortunately, while Hex and Nostrum are discussing the matter, Joseph is killed by a mysterious figure when he goes out to chop wood. By the end of the issue, we’ll discover that it’s the Chameleon, but I’m letting you in on the secret early because of the ludicrousness of what transpires throughout the story. Please keep in mind, it’s 1875 (the year given last issue, despite both JH#8 and JH#13 being dated 1874…reckon Jonah really has been on the lam for more than eight months!), and all the Chameleon has to work with is the makeup techniques available at the time (mere putty and greasepaint, going by what the man said in his first appearance). Despite this, he manages to impersonate Joseph in the presence of his own employer, even accompanying him and Jonah to Wyandotte, where the three dead lawmen are buried (Nostrum needs to recover the bullets that killed them). I can allow for the Chameleon’s impersonation of Hex in JH#4, as he wasn’t doing it in front of folks that knew the gunfighter (and he didn’t do it perfectly either, if you recall), but standing in the midst of someone who sees this person on a daily basis, and therefore should notice that something was different about them? Admittedly, Nostrum did say he was absent-minded, but that’s pretty darn sad if he can’t tell this isn’t actually Joseph.

While Nostrum and Hex collect evidence, the Chameleon slips away and changes his disguise to that of a thin-faced (and short!) young lady, then pays a visit to the sheriff to alert him that Hex is in town. They capture him, and while Jonah awaits his turn in court, Nostrum keeps working, going so far as to locate Ned Landon’s body in the old barn -- turns out the bullets embedded in the lawmen match up with the gun in Landon’s pocket. An acquittal is all but guaranteed for Hex...too bad the Chameleon stabs Nostrum right before the trial! Now impersonating Nostrum, he gets on the stand and tries to convict Jonah with a damning testimony, but the real Nostrum stumbles in and manages to blow the Chameleon’s cover before dropping dead of his wounds. Furious, the Chameleon pulls a gun and rips off his makeup, ranting like a madman until Jonah whips out his handy-dandy hidden knife (guess nobody frisked him) and shuts the former actor up permanently.

With the true killer both revealed and dispatched, court is adjourned, Jonah is set free…and that’s it. After fifteen issues of non-stop action, Jonah’s troubles are all resolved rather succinctly in one page. Overall, the “fugitive” storyline is burdened somewhat by too much padding -- about half of the issues in this arc could be removed without affecting the plot -- but on the plus side, we did get Jonah’s “origin story” in the midst of all this craziness, along with a new bad guy in El Papagayo, who will turn up to menace Hex for years to come. Most importantly, Jonah Hex proved that he was a popular enough to maintain a solo title, even as superheroes were forcing his fellow cowpokes off of the comics racks. But that doesn’t mean this ol’ bounty hunter gets to take a break, for right around the corner lies one of the busiest periods of Jonah’s life...along with the end of it.

<< Part 2 | Index | Part 4 >>
Appendix A | Appendix B

Wednesday, February 15, 2012

Young Nerds in Love

Wednesday, February 1, 2012

An Illustrated History of Jonah Hex (Part 3)