Been working so hard on my little secret project for next month that I almost forgot to post about my upcoming appearances, one of which I mentioned a few weeks ago.
First up is the Holiday Open House at Paperback Writer Books this Friday, November 18th. I'll be there 5-8pm along with a few other local authors, selling our wares and waiting for Santa to arrive at the Fountain Stage not too far from the store. The entire event runs until 9pm, but I'll have to cut out a little early because I need to get up bright and early the next day for Blue Water International Comic-Con on Saturday, November 19th. That show runs from 11am to 6pm, and I always have an awesome time there. Matter of fact, I'll be in Port Huron setting up for Blue Water just a few hours before I hoof it back to Mount Clemens for the Open House...like I said, busy weekend!
So whether you're free this Friday or Saturday -- or both! -- you've got two opportunities to find me so's you can buy some copies of Swords & Sixguns: An Outlaw's Tale for all the folks on your holiday list. And don't forget to come back around here in mid-December for the unveiling of my latest project!
As you regular readers of this blog likely know, I've been working on turning "An Illustrated History of Jonah Hex" into an actual published book. I'd hoped to have it done by now, but there have been distractions along the way, one of which was writing a Hex tribute of sorts for the anthology book The Fans are Buried Tales. I've also got something else up my sleeve that I hope to have out next month, but my original notion of releasing the Hex history book as part of a big 50th anniversary celebration of the character...well, I failed on that end. I'm still going to release the book, but it won't be for another year or so. Frankly, I'm a little disappointed that DC let the occasion slip by without so much as a cameo of the old man somewhere (unless you wanna count "Hex's Texas Steakhouse" sign in the background of that League of Super-Pets movie).
2010-2011: Gone in a Flash
For Jonah Hex fans, the summer of 2010 was bittersweet. As the disastrous release of the feature film faded away from the mind of the average moviegoer, the merchandise generated to capitalize upon it continued to roll out, acting as a sort of consolation prize for those who had higher hopes in regards to the bounty hunter’s big-screen debut. On July 27th, the direct-to-video release Batman: Under the Red Hood came with a bonus short titled DC Showcase: Jonah Hex, which was based on the “Madam Blood” side-plot in Jonah Hex (vol. 2) #19. The short was a sort of “Old Home Week” for ol’ Jonah, for not only was Batman: The Animated Series creator and “Showdown” story writer Bruce Timm listed as executive producer, but we also had former Hex scribe Joe R. Lansdale on board to pen his second Hex ‘toon script. “The story was picked for me,” Lansdale explained when I asked him back in 2014 about how this particular Gray & Palmiotti tale was chosen for adaptation. “I did pitch one with more fantastic ideas, including a tick-tick man, a kind of android made of watch materials if memory serves me, but it didn't fly. Then they gave me the story line for one I adapted, but except for time restrictions they let me go at it the way I wanted. Hex is my natural voice in many ways.”
With the finished product clocking in at less than 12 minutes, Lansdale kept the script tight, with only a little bit of new material added at the beginning to help establish the setting and mood, as well as keeping the majority of the action confined to one locale (save for that dilly of an ending, which was virtually unchanged from the original tale). Unlike previous animated versions of Hex, this one doesn't concern itself with being kid-friendly: the saloon gals are busty, the violence is literally in-your-face, and Hex himself -- as designed by Kelsey Shannon, who did all the characters for this short -- is drawn in a long and lanky anime style, with the right side of his face nearly resembling a leering skull. As for the voice of Jonah Hex this time around, the story behind that ties into the early production of the feature film. Actor Thomas Jane had lobbied to play our favorite bounty hunter in live-action form, even going so far as to have a special-effects friend of his craft a prosthetic scar so Jane could send in-character pictures to producer Akiva Goldsman (like just about everything these days, the pics were eventually leaked online, and the sight is impressive). While he’d get passed over for the role in favor of Josh Brolin, the former Punisher star’s obvious devotion to Hex led to Jane getting the chance to voice him instead. Joining him behind the mike was Linda Hamilton as the rechristened Madam Lorraine and Michael Rooker as outlaw Red Doc, with longtime DC voice actor Jason Marsden filling out the cast. For you completists out there, an “extended version” (read: one minute longer) of the short can be found on the direct-to-video release Superman/Shazam: The Return of Black Adam, which also includes a copy of the aforementioned B:TAS classic “Showdown”.
There was also a unique bit of Hex merch released around this time that may’ve been overlooked by some American collectors, as it was produced by the UK-based company Eaglemoss Publications in conjunction with their DC Comics Super Hero Collection line, and therefore only available in the United States as an import. Officially listed as Special Issue #12, this twenty-page magazine summarizes the majority of Jonah’s known comic-book history up to that point, focusing mainly on events depicted during the Pamiotti & Gray era in both the text and illustrations, with nods to the Fleisher era here and there (an entire page is devoted to the Jonah Hex Spectacular). The magazine is rounded out with entries on notable characters that had appeared during J&J’s run, as well as other DC Western heroes. However, the biggest reason to pick this up wasn’t for the magazine, but for what came with it: a fully-painted lead statue of Jonah Hex, nearly 4 inches tall, depicting him with a Dragoon in one hand and a tomahawk in the other as he stands guard over a strongbox full of silver ingots. It’s a damn fine piece, and the fact that it’s crafted out of the same metal commonly used for bullets seems rather fitting.
Back in the comics world, Jimmy & Justin continued on with their work, with Jonah Hex (vol. 2) #57 (cover-dated September 2010) hitting the stands the month after the feature film’s debut. Titled “Tall Tales”, it centers around two young brothers -- Thomas and Nate -- who’ve heard more than their fair share of fanciful stories about the infamous bounty hunter, many of them from the town drunkard, Mr. Davis (named after Hex fan Michael “Darth” Davis). To Nate, Hex is an invincible figure skilled in “Apache magic”, so when the boys hear Hex is actually in town, Nate sneaks out at night and finds Hex getting drunk in the saloon. Upon seeing the boy, the bounty hunter growls, “The Hell you want?” so Nate takes off running...only to stumble across a posse made up of the Trigger Twins, Cinnamon, Nighthawk, and Scalphunter -- all making their first appearance in Jonah’s modern title -- plus Bat Lash, who’s says he’s been “moved to action on behalf of good people everywhere.” Seems they’re all on the trail of an outlaw called Bloody Jack, and the posse means to bring him in alive as opposed to the dead, which is what he’ll likely be if Hex gets to him first.
The streets are deserted when they head to the train station the next morning, and as they approach the building, they see why: the trio from last night is waiting for them, all armed and itching to take their revenge. “Too bad Ah have promised not ta shoot any stupid people in defense of muh wife’s honor,” Jonah mutters to Mei Ling. “Maybe if we wish real hard, someone else’s bullets will come along an’ kill them for us.” Mei Ling relents and gives him permission to let loose with his guns, which he does, though he stops short of killing the men. She thanks him with a kiss for being merciful, then the two of them walk off to catch their train. It’s a great issue with lots of humor and tender moments between the couple, making you wish Jimmy & Justin had done more stories with Mei Ling.
While we’re on the subject of old names from Jonah’s past, let’s take a gander at DCU Holiday Special 2010 (cover-dated February 2011), a one-shot which features an Albano putting words in Jonah’s mouth for the first time in over 35 years. In this case, it’s Seth Albano, grandson of Hex co-creator John Albano (the story itself is dedicated to both Albano Sr. and John Albano Jr., who worked as a colorist on Weird Western Tales), and the tale is based around the Jewish holiday of Chanukah (the more traditional spelling for Hanukkah). Though set in December 1865, ol’ Jonah already has his infamous scar when a man named John Sutter comes knocking on the door to his rented room to demand both his services and his bed. He then ushers in a doctor guiding a wounded boy named Avram, who was ambushed on the trail by robbers two nights earlier -- the boy’s rabbi father died, but Avram managed to make his way to their destination -- and another three nights pass before he’s well enough to hit the trail with Hex.
By the time they arrive where it all went down, the rabbi has been dead seven days...yet the campfire the boy lit before leaving still burns! Avram swears that it rekindled as they approached, but Hex dismisses it and presumes the robbers are responsible. When Hex gets the drop on the robbers that night, however, they say Avram was the one keeping the fire going (the robbers kept trying to catch him in the act, but were never able to), and Jonah knows this is impossible since the boy was nowhere near the campsite for nearly an entire week. As they part ways on the morning of the eighth day, Avram says it has to have been a miracle, to which Jonah gruffly replies, “Ain’t no such thing as miracles, jes’ resourceful men.” He then mutters, “Well, don’t count mah opinion fer much, but Ah think you’d make a fine rabbi. Fine enough ta do whut’s right.” With that, he hands Avram a Hebrew prayer book given to him by Sutter so the boy can do the proper funeral rites over his father’s grave (which is marked with a Christian cross...pretty much the only flub in the otherwise great art job by Renato Arlem).
That same month, Jonah had an encounter with circus folk over in JHv2#62, and you know that sort of thing never goes well for him! Luckily, Eduardo Risso -- who Gray & Palmiotti had been trying to get on the title long before the artist worked on the Jonah Hex feature film -- was on hand to provide some right pretty pictures for both the cover and interior. Hex is hired to escort a group transporting an unseen animal in a covered wagon, but not everything is as it appears when the group -- led by a baby-faced gentleman with a neatly-trimmed beard -- turns on Hex and tries to feed him to what turns out to be a giant octopus! He manages to escape this watery deathtrap and, after getting a hold of a revolver, he kills his would-be captors save for the bearded gent, who Jonah ties up and carts along with the octopus to his employer, a circus owner. Once there, it’s revealed to the reader that the bearded gent is actually a bearded lady, formerly in the employ of this particular circus until she robbed them and injured one of their members a year prior -- now working for this circus’s competitor, she arranged the death of those originally hired to transport the octopus, unaware that Hex had been hired separately. As we learned over three decades earlier in JH#15, circus folk have their own particular way of dispensing justice, which in this case entails their resident strongman beating the bearded lady to death, though Jonah puts a bullet in her brain before the job is finished because “it just ain’t civilized,” as he tells them.
JHv2#63 brings us more Bernet and another look at Jonah’s childhood in a tale that hits a sensitive spot for the bounty hunter. The main part of the story has Jonah on the trail of a madman called Loco, who not only visits depravities upon both women and men -- one of Loco’s surviving victims, a man named Fassbender, had his face carved up badly and his right hand butchered -- but it’s also heavily implied that the man is a pedophile. This is what leads to the flashback, for it turns out that a boyhood friend of Jonah’s died at the hands of a man who had predilections similar to Loco. Despite his young age, Jonah helps with bringing that man to justice, for he’s able to identify him once the man is captured by a posse. The cold look on young Jonah’s face when he does so is rather like the one he’ll get as a grown man many a time.
Something else of note in this flashback is the portrayal of Woodson Hex, Jonah’s father: while we normally see him as a abusive drunkard, here he comes off rather respectable when speaking with the posse, and he even joins them in punishing the man, possibly because his own son could’ve met the same fate had he not parted ways with his friend earlier. When young Jonah later asks his father what they did with the man, the elder Hex tells the boy matter-of-factly, “We tortured him, cut out his eyes, and watched him die slowly,” adding that they removed his eyes so Woodson and the others would be the last thing the man saw before going to Hell. With that in mind, Jonah delivers the same fate to Loco at the end of the story, bringing the monster’s eyes to his employers and turning down the bounty, as he considers what he did a “public service”. Though the subject matter is not for the faint of heart, it does serve to add a new facet to Jonah’s tendency to come down harder on those who harm children, plus it shows Woodson in a light that we’ve never really seen before.
Nelson DeCastro does a grand job illustrating JHv2#64, wherein a crazy gal named Rosa takes a shine to ol’ Jonah, but has the weirdest way of showing it. In addition to the roughest foreplay we’ve ever seen in a Hex comic, the story is notable for the fact that it’s dated -- Rosa makes a reference to “San Juan’s fiesta”, meaning this takes place on June 23rd, Saint John’s Eve -- and also because about a third of Rosa’s dialogue is in Spanish, to which Jonah responds in kind (he also speaks with a bartender in this manner, revealing a plot point that won’t be spoken in English until 5 pages later). After so many adventures in Mexico where he apparently only knew a word or two of the language, it’s great to see that Jonah was actually fluent all this time.
Though unrelated to each other, the next two issues are both snowbound. JHv2#65, drawn once again by Bernet, has Jonah relying on a stranger after nearly freezing to death in a blizzard (though by the end of the tale, we discover that Jonah was already familiar with the stranger’s identity prior to their meeting). For JHv2#66, we get Fiona Staples providing illustrations for a story of starving townsfolk who resort to cannibalism...and are foolish enough to try and put Jonah Hex on the menu! Released barely a year before Staples skyrocketed to fame as co-creator of Saga with Brian K. Vaughan, it serves as a reminder of the high caliber of artists Gray & Palmiotti strived to bring onto the title each month.
JHv2#67 is a rather special issue, not
only because it’s the last Hex story Jordi Bernet drew, but also for the nods
to previous Hex writers. Opening on a
sheriff declaring before a posse that Hex is responsible for murdering multiple
innocent people all across the territory, we quickly cut to what one would
likely presume to be that posse facing off against a band of Kiowa, but turns
out it’s a group of men bringing some badly-needed medicine to a town afflicted
with “the pox”. The last two men
standing are saved when Hex rides to their aid, with the narration box giving
us a rendition of Michael Fleisher’s legendary “He had no friends, this Jonah
Hex” tagline. This a followed a few
pages later by one of the men echoing a bit of Joe R. Lansdale’s dialogue from Two-Gun Mojo #1: “Folks say he’s killed
more men than Hell has souls.” Any fear
the duo may have of Hex is put aside as the bounty hunter safely leads them the
rest of the way to the dying town, even offering to bring the medicine all the
way in as opposed to leaving it at the town border, which they were instructed
to do.
Why exactly Hex is so eager to ride
into a pox-infested town is revealed not long after someone starts shooting at
him from a hotel window: running up the stairs unopposed by any of the dead
bodies he passes, Jonah is soon face-to-face with a man in a replica of Jonah’s
uniform and a similar burn-mark on his cheek (though he’s far from the
dead-ringer that the Chameleon was way back in 1977’s Jonah Hex #4). This doppelganger
is the true culprit behind the murders, not Hex, and the why of it is a simple
act of revenge, as it seems Jonah killed his father. Unfortunately, this fella has the pox now,
meaning Jonah can’t risk hauling his soon-to-be-dead carcass to the
authorities, but since Jonah has a wagon full of medicine on hand, there’s a
solution. Dragging his doppelganger downstairs,
Jonah says, “Seein’ as how everyone in town is dead...Ah’m gonna be yer
nurse. In the meanwhile, Ah need a
drink. You feel free ta tell me that sad
story ‘bout yer daddy.”
The man does so off-panel, and it does
little to sway Jonah’s feelings on the matter, which leads the man to say, “You
don’t have a worry in the world, do you, Hex?
Not even of the pox?” Jonah replies
that he’s already had the pox...which readers of John Albano’s “Promise to a
Princess” in Weird Western Tales #12
would already know, since it’s mentioned there that Jonah had previously
received a cowpox vaccination! We don’t
get much time to revel in this four-decade-long callback, however, as the
sheriff and his posse have finally tracked both the real and faux Hex
down. The lawmen are unsure as to who
the guilty party is, so the doppelganger suggests killing them both, while
Jonah calmly asks if there’s a bounty on his head. Upon hearing that he’s worth ten thousand
dollars, Jonah shoves a gun against his doppelganger’s head and growls, “Guess
Ah ain’t yer nurse no more,” then pulls the trigger. This act is enough to convince the lawmen
that he’s the true Jonah Hex, since the now-dead man didn’t even think to ask
about the bounty. They declare the
matter settled and leave the town, while Jonah decides to stick around a bit
since the whiskey is free and there’s no one left to bother him.
As mentioned earlier, this would be
Jordi Bernet’s final work on the title, though that certainly wasn’t because
his services were no longer required. As
Jimmy Palmiotti remarked on Twitter in January 2021, “We wanted him [on] every
issue, but we were happy to have him 19 times.”
For those keeping score, Bernet was the most-prolific artist for the
second volume of Jonah Hex, with over
27% of that title being rendered by his masterful hand. It’s sad to think that number could’ve been
much higher if a certain event hadn’t taken place, which we’ll get to in a
moment.
Near the end of May 2011, just a few
weeks after JHv2#67 hit the stands, some Hex fans began posting on the
now-defunct DC Message Boards about some oddities they’d been coming across
recently, two of the biggest being that DC was no longer offering subscriptions for the title past August 2011,
and that the solicit for issue #70 made reference to Jonah’s death. A rumor soon began to spread like wildfire
across the forums that the title was getting cancelled, and seeing as how even
Justin Gray thought right from the get-go that the series would be lucky to
last 12 issues, the idea that ol’ Jonah could be taken off the racks without
any sort of announcement seemed very plausible.
Having already spoken with Palmiotti a few times by this point in
history, I took it upon myself to email him about it in the hope that he could
calm folks down (or at least put us out of our misery if the rumor was true). “I can tell you for SURE that the book will
keep coming out...you have nothing to worry about...just handed in a script
yesterday...” he quickly replied, then let slip that he and Gray had a year to
get the sales numbers up, as they were still dropping by a few hundred copies every
month. “We must be pissing someone off,”
he joked, followed by the revelation that “We have an idea to boost sales...and that's soon...so we
shall see. Hex isn't going anywhere...so
really, no worries. Really.”
On May 31, 2011 -- a scant
four days after that email exchange -- DC made an announcement that sent
shockwaves through the comics community: “On
Wednesday, August 31st, DC Comics will launch a historic renumbering of the
entire DC Universe line of comic books with 52 first issues,” the press release
stated, the first of which would be a new Justice
League #1. What the other 51 titles would
be was not mentioned right away, nor was there any hint as to why the company
had decided to do something so drastic when, from the general reader’s point of
view, everything seemed to be humming along smoothly. They’d even just wrapped up a 10-issue
maxiseries called DCU: Legacies,
which paid tribute to their 75-year history with a Marvels-style storyline that spanned the decades, and included nods
to Western heroes like Vigilante, Pow-Wow Smith, the Trigger Twins, and many
others, with ol’ Jonah himself getting a silent cameo in issue #7. Such a project was not exactly the sort of
thing one would expect to see from a comics company right before it hit the reset
button. Even with all the hype
surrounding “The New 52”, ten years would pass before the full story
of what led to the creation of the post-Flashpoint era would be uncovered.
“The year
prior to the New 52, we had a pretty big meeting at the DC offices in New York,
where a bunch of us were discussing a whole mess of stuff, but the focus of it
was coming up with stories that would stem from the Flashpoint
crossover,” Judd Winick stated in an online article published on Polygon in September 2021. Though originally conceived as a
self-contained (i.e. not universe-shattering) story centered around the
newly-returned Barry Allen, Dan Didio -- who was now co-publisher at DC --
thought it had potential to do for their comics line what the Ultimate Universe
had done for Marvel...only he didn’t want it to be a separate universe, he
wanted it to usurp everything currently being put out by DC Comics, literally
wiping the slate clean in regards to continuity. “We were doing it piecemeal,” Didio said in the same
article, referring to then-current projects like DC’s All-Star and Earth One
titles, “but to really make an impression, to really catch the attention of the
marketplace, you had to do something dramatic.”
And
dramatic it was: in the weeks and months that followed the announcement, DC trotted
out redesigns of nearly every single character in their stable, be it the
removal of trunks, change-ups in color schemes, or swapping out traditional
spandex for multi-segmented armor. One
costume change -- Wonder Woman wearing a pair of star-spangled long pants --
was met with such derision by fans that it was scrapped prior to her new title’s
release. In the case of Jonah Hex, it
was a location change that had fans up in arms, as it was revealed he’d be
headlining a revival of All Star Western
(note the lack of hyphen this time around), which would have our favorite
bounty hunter taking up residence in 19th Century Gotham. Some presumed that this meant Batman’s
hometown was inexplicably getting moved to the West Coast (according to some
sources, Gotham City is located in New Jersey), while others jokingly labeled
the upcoming book “All Star Eastern”.
Even with Justin & Jimmy’s continued involvement, Hex fans had some
doubts about what was to come.
There’s
no doubt, however, that Jonah’s survival into this new era was thanks in part
to Dan Didio’s love of the character and his belief that DC needed to be more
than wall-to-wall superheroes. “When I
looked at the New 52, it wasn’t just about relaunching the books, but also
diversifying the product and the characters,” he told Polygon. “We really wanted
to make sure we were reaching out and trying different things and different
types of stories. As much as people talk
about Superman or Batman, or any one of the relaunches of the primary
characters, I was more excited about...the other things that were part of that,
because ultimately, that’s the part of comics that brings in the casual readers
-- people picking up books if they’re not superhero fans, but want to read the
medium.” Paul
Cornell, who was chosen to write DC’s new fantasy-driven title Demon Knights, agreed, saying, “We were
all excited for the non-superhero titles, hoping they’d bring other genres back
into comics. We also thought sales would
be through the roof, because these titles would break through to the mainstream
audience.”
We’ll
eventually get to the subject of those sales, but for right now, let’s take a
look at the waning days of Jonah’s self-titled book. JHv2#68 gives us our fourth and final story
drawn by Rafa Garres, in which Jonah has to talk a self-appointed vigilance
committee out of hanging him for a death he had no part in (spoiler alert: the
guilty party is one of the vigilantes!).
The issue is also notable in that, for the first time since his Vertigo
days, Jonah’s title has a letter column.
The return of this once-ubiquitous feature came about months earlier as DC
transitioned the page counts of their stories from 22 pages down to 20, but due
to the backlog of 22-page-long Hex tales that were already completed when the
change was implemented, ol’ Jonah was only able to squeeze in two letter
columns prior to the series coming to an end (once The New 52 started, those 2
extra pages would instead be used for in-house promotion).
Sweet Tooth creator Jeff Lemire brought his
distinctive style to JHv2#69, an unusual Hex tale in that more than half of the
book consists of two people talking...namely Jonah Hex and his dear old Pa,
who’d taken to gold prospecting by the time 1881 rolls around (though no
specific date is given, a reference to him trying to forget his wife and son
for the past 30 years lets us presume it, if’n we use him dumping young Jonah
with the Apache in 1851 as a starting point).
Too bad some unsavory fellas clue in to Woodson striking a rich vein,
and though he manages to kill every last one of ‘em, he catches a bullet in the
gut while doing so. As he sits in a pool
of his own blood and surrounded by gold nuggets, Jonah comes riding up -- he’d
overheard the other fellas talking and, apparently aware that it was his father
they were talking about, decided he should make sure Pa actually died this time
(seeing as how Woodson fooled him on that matter back in JH#20 over 32 years
earlier, you can’t exactly blame him).
Despite all the years of abuse he suffered through as a boy,
it seemed like Jonah always held back when it came to confronting his father,
limiting himself to yelling and the occasional comeuppance, with the end of their
last encounter in JH#34 being a priceless example of the latter (that issue
even gets referred here in a roundabout manner). Now that Woodson’s final moments have
arrived, you might think that he’d perhaps take his own pound of flesh before
the end comes, but no, Jonah continues to exercise restraint, setting himself
up with a bit of shade and grabbing a bottle of whiskey from his saddlebag as
he waits for Pa to breathe his last.
Jonah tells Pa about his mother dying not long ago (thereby letting us
narrow down the date for No Way Back
a little), and confesses that he’s glad Pa never came back to collect him from
the Apache because “Apache ain’t half as mean.”
He even ‘fesses up to pissing in Woodson’s whiskey bottle as a kid (as
seen in JHv2#42), adding that he’d done so one more than one occasion.
For his part, Woodson alternates between insulting Jonah and
begging for forgiveness, expending every last bit of energy he has in an effort
to find the magic word that’ll either get him the bottle Jonah holds out of
reach or will tick off his son bad enough for him to draw leather and put ol’
Woodson out of his misery...but Jonah never takes the bait. He never yells at the old man or pummels him
or shoots him. Jonah just sits there
waiting, while his father stares back at him with sunken eyes like tiny black
holes, looking small and pathetic, a great contrast to the monster he must have
appeared to have been when Jonah was young.
The closest Woodson comes to getting under his skin is when Jonah lets
slip that he doesn’t torture his son -- that opening causes Woodson to poke and
prod about whether Jonah has a woman, “Ah mean regular-like, not some whore ya
see now an’ again.” Jonah stays silent,
and Woodson declares him to be “a chip off the old block” in regards to how
they’ve both treated their families. If
you recall the drunken hallucination Jonah had right after Mei Ling left him in
JH#53, then you know this is a truth he faced up to long ago, so the impact
Woodson hoped for is likely dulled.
I love cheap comics. When I see a longbox at a con labeled “$1 each” or “10 for $5” or whatever, I dive right in. My husband and I have acquired just about everything on our respective lists, so it’s fun to flip through these cheapie boxes and just grab whatever strikes our fancy. Titles we’ve only seen ads for, crossover event tie-ins, old runs by great creators that we never read in full back in the day...at a buck or fifty cents apiece, how can you say no?
The majority of what I pick up is from the 1980s-1990s -- the era that I really got into comics -- so it’s fun to see the connections build up between this “new” material and the issues I read decades ago, especially when you come across characters guest starring in other people’s books. The picture in your head of what particular eras in Marvel and DC history were like at that time expands greatly, so that you can see all the intersections of their myriad lives and stories and such instead of a narrow view of just, say, what Batman is doing month after month. And sometimes...sometimes it makes me wonder what it would’ve been like if Jonah Hex was truly a part of the DC Universe.
“What do you mean?” I hear you saying. “Jonah Hex is part of it! He always has been!”
Well, not exactly: Jonah exists in the DCU, but rarely does he mingle with the modern-day heroes. His purview is mainly the Old West, with a brief dabble in the post-apocalypse of 2050. This has long been a blessing and a curse for him, and likely contributes to why it’s so dang hard for him to maintain a monthly title. The stories are awesome, yes, but they have little-to-no effect on the day-to-day dealings of the DCU, so I reckon there are probably comics fans who feel his stories don’t matter in the long run. Part of my motivation for writing Jonah Hex: Shades of Gray (which I haven’t worked on for years...sorry, I’ll get back to it at some point) was to let Jonah butt heads with some long-underwear folk on a regular basis and see what sort of trouble he could get into, but that’s based in the DCU circa 2010. What if he’d integrated decades earlier, so that he was involved in some of the biggest events in DC history?
About seven years ago, somebody over on the forums for The Unofficial Guide to the DC Universe began a thread where posters made up solicits for books that didn't exist or were continuations of titles that were cancelled. For example, if Crisis on Infinite Earths didn't happen, what sort of books would DC be doing? I liked the idea, and considered contributing some fake ones for HEX, under the premise of what the book might've looked like after issue #18 if it'd kept going without Fleisher around. Under another writer/artist team, it could've become something radically different, like what occurred when Alan Moore took over Swamp Thing (which was a low-selling book when they gave it to him). HEX would still be a sci-fi book set in the future, yes, but it might've become a good one! More than that, it might’ve turned into something we’ve never actually seen: a monthly Jonah Hex title that survived into the 1990s and beyond, dodging cancellations due to an ever-growing fanbase and, eventually, full integration into the modern DCU. It would have been markedly different from the Jonah Hex comics we got (to be sure, the Vertigo era as we know it would likely never exist in such a scenario), but so long as the stories were good and stayed true to the character, I think it would’ve been enjoyable.
But what would that imaginary title look like? Who'd work on it? How would it tie in with some of the big DC events that occurred since 1987? Intrigued with the notion, I literally crunched the numbers, figuring out when certain landmark issues would have been released, along with which issues would coincide with specific DC crossover events (not to mention those themed annuals that were popular in the 1990s), then filled in a few blanks, including what might’ve occurred in the first half-dozen issues following Fleisher’s departure. Only rules I adhered to were keeping everything up to HEX #18 as canon, and keeping creators for this imaginary book within their proper eras (e.g. the late Michael Turner’s career falls between 1995-2008, so if I wanted to pretend like he did a special cover or something, I wouldn’t be able to do that at any point before or after his actual comics career).
I posted my made-up solicits on the forum and asked other fans if they’d like to add any more. Sadly, only one of my fellow Hex-nuts, Henry Joseph Feakes, contributed any ideas, and the thread soon faded into the background. The idea of it, however, stayed with me, occasionally rearing its head whenever I’d read some old event comic I’d acquired from those cheapie boxes. It’s a fun little “what if” to noodle with, but far too large an undertaking for a fanfic, especially with having so many other projects already in progress, so I doubted it would ever expand beyond those quick little write-ups I did in 2015.
Then I realized April Fool’s Day is fast approaching...
And this year is Jonah’s 50th anniversary...
Plus it’s been 35 years since the cancellation of HEX...
All of which added up to the perfect excuse to dig up some of those fake solicits and repost them here, along with some freshly-made ones and a few notes so you can imagine along with me what could have been. I might come back to this from time to time and add onto the list, but I reckon what’s here already should be enough to inspire some more “what ifs” in your mind...and should you also feel so inclined as to share them with others, drop me a line and I’ll add your ideas to the list as well.
Okay, kids, let’s see what’s on the imaginary spinner rack...
******
HEX #19 (March 1987)
Writer:
Gerry Conway
Artist: Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez
The team behind ATARI FORCE takes over HEX! After the shocking
final pages of the previous issue, Hex and Stiletta are searching for answers.
How can Jonah be dead in the past if he's alive in the future? Does this truly
mean he'll go home one day, and if so, when will it happen...and could he
possibly stay in the future instead and avoid his death?
HEX #20 (April 1987)
Writer: Gerry Conway
Artist: Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez
The paradoxes keep piling up as Hex and Stiletta unearth more information
about Hex's possible death in the past. Why are they finding records of events
prior to 1875 that Jonah doesn't remember? There's one place left that might
contain the answers they seek, but do they dare venture into the ruins of the
Needle to find it?
HEX #21(May 1987)
Writer: Gerry Conway
Artist: Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez
Reinhold Borsten -- Stiletta's father and the man responsible for bringing
Hex into the future -- is still alive, and hell-bent on killing them both! Even
if they survive the assault, the shock of learning the truth about how the
gunfighter ended up in the year 2050 might kill Hex instead!
HEX #22 (June 1987)
Writer: Gerry Conway
Artist: Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez
Once upon a time, there were multiple Earths. Then a Crisis occurred,
leaving only one Earth intact...but not before the Jonah Hex of Earth-2 was
brought to the future of Earth-1. Can Hex cope with the knowledge that the
Earth he was born on no longer exists, and that the life he thought belonged to
him alone is being lived in the past by someone else?
HEX #23 (July 1987)
Writer: Gerry Conway
Artist: Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez
January 1st, 2051: A new year and a new beginning for Jonah Hex and
Stiletta. They're leaving Seattle behind as they head off to build a new life
together, far from the ashes of the old. But can happiness truly be found in a
world scarred by nuclear war?
SECRET ORIGINS #21 (Dec. 1987)
This issue brings you a double-dose of Jonah Hex! First up, Michael
Fleisher and Gray Morrow return to tell one more tale of the Hex of the Old West,
as well as the final fate of Emmylou Hartley! Then Gerry Conway and Jose Luis
Garcia-Lopez fill you in on the Hex of Earth-2, one of the last survivors of
that doomed world, who is currently residing in the year 2051.
HEX #29 (Jan. 1988)
Writer: Gerry Conway
Artist: Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez
A MILLENNIUM tie-in! Stiletta thought she’d finally licked all the
physical and mental problems caused by the “enhancements” forced upon her by
the Combine...but that was before she and her beau Jonah Hex crossed paths with
an amnesiac known only as “Hunter”. Now
she’s of two minds -- literally! -- and Hex may not be able to bring her back
to her old self this time!
HEX #30
(Feb. 1988)
Writer: Gerry Conway
Artist: Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez
A MILLENNIUM tie-in! It’s bounty hunter versus Manhunter as Hex has to not only stop an ancient alien program from overwriting every last bit of Stiletta’s humanity, but keep it from unleashing that same fate upon the entire New West Coast!
HEX #31 (March 1988)
Writer: Gerry Conway
Artist: Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez
Stiletta has been freed from
the influence of Manhunter tech, but at the cost of all her memories prior to
the bombs dropping. Now Jonah has to
figure out how to explain a future he barely understands himself to a young
woman who doesn’t even remember him.
HEX #32 (April 1988)
Writer: Gerry Conway
Artist: Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez
Before she was Stiletta, she
was a high-school senior named Stella Borsten.
Then the world was engulfed in nuclear fire, forcing her to become the
sort of person who could survive the nightmare that followed. Now she’s back to square one and has to
rebuild herself all over again...and lucky for her, she’s got Jonah Hex -- one
of the fiercest survivors in the past 200 years -- as her teacher this time
around!
*this entry suggested
by Dwayne Hendrickson*
HEX/JUDGE DREDD: Mega-City Madhouse (One-shot, Dec. 1992)
Writers Alan Grant and John
Wagner -- who brought you last year’s BATMAN/JUDGE DREDD crossover -- are at it
again, this time teaming with artist Brian Bolland to deliver a tale that just
might break all of reality! The Sisters
of Death attempt to reestablish a link to Mega-City One, this time using an
alternate Earth as a staging ground between dimensions...and the one they pick
happens to be home to Jonah Hex! When
the two apocalyptic landscapes begin to bleed into one another, the results
ain’t pretty, and it’s up to Hex and Dredd to stop the Sisters before both 2053
and 2114 become a dimension-devouring Mega-Necropolis!
HEX #100 (Dec. 1993)
This extra-large issue celebrates
Jonah Hex’s past, present, and future, courtesy of writers and artists
throughout Hex history! Original
creators John Albano and Tony DeZuniga spin an Old West yarn about Jonah’s
long-lost brother (!), Michael Fleisher and Russ Heath give us another glimpse
of the elderly Jonah Hex of Earth-1, Gerry Conway and Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez
fill us in on what’s happened to the town of Sanctuary since Hex and Stiletta’s
departure, and Joe R. Lansdale and Tim Truman wrap up their “Gone to Texas”
storyarc just in time to pass the reins over to the incoming team of Garth
Ennis and Carlos Ezquerra! Plus pinups
by classic Hex artists Vicente Alcazar, Mark Texeira, Keith Giffen, and Dan
Jurgens!
HEX #109 (Sept. 1994)
Writer:
Garth Ennis
Artist: Carlos Ezquerra
A ZERO HOUR tie-in! Still mourning the loss of Stiletta, the Hex
of 2054 crosses paths with the Jonah Hex of 1879! Knowing that his alternate
self is fated to end up as a stuffed corpse, will Hex give in to temptation and
warn him, or let the past play out like it did the first time around?
I’m not crazy enough to
rewrite Zero Hour just to insert Hex, but suffice it to say that both versions
of him would end up getting mushed together (kinda like what happened to
Hawkman) and Hex would end up stranded in 1994, as we see below...
HEX #0 (Oct. 1994)
Writer: Garth Ennis
Artist: Carlos Ezquerra
Thanks to the events of ZERO HOUR, both the nuclear holocaust of 2045and
Jonah's death in 1904 have been erased from history. There's only one Jonah Hex
now, with an unwritten future ahead of him...and it starts in the modern-day
DCU!
HEX #110 (Nov. 1994)
Writer: Garth Ennis
Artist: Carlos Ezquerra
When you're a time-displaced gunfighter with a talent for hunting down the
worst criminals society has to offer, where do you go to ply your trade in the late-20th
Century? They say Gotham is lovely this time of year...
*this entry co-written by Henry Joseph Feakes*
HEX Annual #4 (1994)
The ELSEWORLDS theme
continues as we meet Lieutenant Jonah Hex, a badly-scarred Vietnam vet in 1972 who’s
trying to reconnect with his old life back in “the world”. Too bad that old life involves a larcenous
motorcycle gang whose leader, the sadistic Quentin Turnbull, ain’t happy that
his son Jeb died instead of Jonah. Get
ready for tale full of bullets, bloodshed, and bellbottoms that only manly-man
Beau Smith and tough-guy Tim Truman could tell!
*this entry suggested
by Dwayne Hendrickson*
HEX OF FUTURE PAST (One-shot, April 1996)
Writer: David Michelinie
Artist: Ron Frenz
The weirdest Amalgam hero,
now in his own magazine! Between his
entire platoon dying at Fort Charlotte and the horrific scars he bore from the
incident, Matt “Hex” Hawk was believed by his fellow Confederate soldiers to be
cursed...and after a group of freedom fighters with access to a time machine
plucked Matt off the battlefield and dragged him to the nightmare world of 2050,
he began to think the other Rebs were right!
Nowadays, he’s part of a different rebellion, fighting alongside his new
gal Stilettocat -- as well as other time-displaced soldiers like Vietnam vet Stanley
“Bishop” Harris and Soviet-era cyborg Ivan “Metallus” Rasputin -- in an effort to
stop Bolivar Borsten and his army of Tri-Sentinels from conquering the
world. It’s a whole new war, but he’s
the same old HEX!
HEX #134 (Nov. 1996)
Writer: Garth Ennis
Artist: Carlos Ezquerra
A FINAL NIGHT tie-in! Jonah Hex has faced the end of the world
multiple times, so he ain’t too concerned with this current go-round. Still, that doesn’t mean he’s gonna sit idly
by when a squirrelly preacher tries to talk his flock into a suicide pact. Can a natural-born pessimist like Hex
convince a church full of scared people to hold onto hope for a miracle just a
little longer?
HEX Annual #7 (1997)
Writer: Garth Ennis
Artist: John McCrea
The PULP HEROES theme leads Jonah Hex back to his Weird Western Tales roots!
After receiving a mysterious message, Jonah travels to an Indian reservation
that’s fighting the state government over possession of a literal hole in the
ground. What’s the secret of the Devil’s
Well, and why was Hex willing to kill a man 125 years ago keep that
secret? Garth Ennis has come up with a
yarn so tangled it takes two artists to tell it, with the legendary Gil Kane
working in the past and Ennis’s Hitman cohort
John McCrea laboring away in the
here-and-now!
HEX
Annual #8 (1998)
The GHOSTS theme has come to
haunt Jonah Hex! Garth Ennis and Mike
McKone conjure up a centuries-spanning saga that reaches from the antebellum
plantations of Virginia to the modern-day halls of our nation’s capitol. The spirit of Jonah’s long-dead friend, Jeb
Turnbull, refuses to rest until the bounty hunter stops the machinations of a
descendant of the Turnbull clan. In
doing so, Jonah is forced to confront his part in the family’s long history of
white supremacy and political manipulation.
For the first time ever, Hex’s pre-Civil War connection with the
Turnbulls is revealed!
As with Zero Hour, I’m
not about to rewrite Infinite Crisis, but I do think it’d be interesting to get
him involved in the Rann/Thanagar War, because parallels could be drawn to his
previous wartime experience, and also it’s an excuse to shoot Jonah into space
(which some non-Hex fans believe actually happened in HEX, so we may as well
have a go at it). And if we get involved
in Infinite Crisis, then there’s the inevitable fallout of...
HEX #247 (May 2006)
Writer/Artist:
Dave Gibbons
ONE YEAR LATER! On the fringes of wild space, there is no
law. Slavery, degradation, and depravity
run rampant. One of the worst places is
the planet Kobalt, where skull-crushers from all around come to challenge Lord
Gruell’s stable of pit fighters. Many
enter the pit, but if they have to go up against the fighter known only as Hex,
they never leave!
HEX #248 (June 2006)
Writer/Artist:
Dave Gibbons
After a year of living in
chains, Jonah Hex has had enough! The
bounty hunter is determined to make Lord Gruell pay for all the deaths he’s orchestrated,
even if it means Hex dies himself!
HEX #249 (July 2006)
Writer/Artist:
Dave Gibbons
Hex and his cohorts are
free, but for how long? Kobalt is a
cold, unforgiving world, and Lord Gruell is hot on their tails! After all the wild adventures Jonah has been
through in his life, this one may turn out to be his last!
HEX #250 (August 2006)
Writer/Artist:
Dave Gibbons
A double-size issue for a
double celebration! Though grateful for
their newfound freedom, the former slaves of Lord Gruell are curious as to who
Jonah Hex really is. Settle in as the
bounty hunter opens up about the long, strange journey of his life, from the 19th
Century to now!
And that’s all I’ve cooked up so far. A few more ideas sprung to mind this morning, but I don’t have the time to jot them up at the moment. If this post gets a strong response, I’ll add them over the weekend...and remember, if you have any ideas of your own you’d like to contribute, feel free to drop me a line!
