Found an email in my inbox this morning from Matt Van Auken, a fellow Hex-nut and devoted follower of this li'l blog. Seems my Swiss cheese brain forgot to post further details about the new project I spoke about in November! I apologize profusely: I've been more diligent about updates over on the Facebook page for Swords & Sixguns, but I thought for sure I'd done the initial post here as well.
Okay, lesson learned. Allow me to finally elaborate...
You may recall I dipped my toe into Amazon's new Kindle Vella format a couple of years ago with a story titled "Godheart". While that story remains incomplete at the moment (frankly, the response to it was underwhelming), I decided near the end of last year to start up a new Vella story called "Forgotten Be Thy Name". Part of the impetus for this was realizing that, aside from the tongue-in-cheek story I managed to slip into the anthology The Fans are Buried Tales, plus a couple of Twitter posts by Jimmy Palmioti and James Gunn, there had been no official acknowledgement of Jonah Hex's 50th anniversary. Matter of fact, considering the current climate, there may never be featured in a DC property again outside of a wordless cameo. Let's be frank here: he's a gun-loving former Confederate, so without a lot of explanations and/or alterations, it's going to take a lot of doing to sell him to the general public in 2023 and beyond.
For those that know him well, however, very little selling is needed. We know he's not a racist, we know that the era he normally exists in -- the Old West -- justifies many of his actions, so for those of us who aren't ready to let go of him just yet, I decided to pick up Jonah's story from where we last saw him in Death Metal. If you don't recall, that story featured a Black Lantern-style Hex fighting alongside Batman and a bunch of other heroes against twisted versions of the Dark Knight. While far from my favorite story, I bought it for Hex, and got to experience the gut-punch of seeing him consigned to Hell for his actions. Considering his background, this destination was an inevitability -- Jonah himself had commented on this more than once over the course of his career -- but it still hurt to see it happen in the manner that it did.
So consider "Forgotten Be Thy Name" to be literally the last Jonah Hex story. It certainly won't be the last thing I ever write about him (still gotta get the history project printed!), but if there truly never is another appearance by him officially, then this at least will give both the old man and his fans some closure. Keep in mind that this story is not official to any degree, so I "filed off the serial numbers" (i.e. Jonah is never referred to by his actual name, hence the title). This is because Kindle Vella generates a small amount of revenue for me, so I have to do my level best to skirt any copyright issues that would otherwise relegate this story to unpaid fanfic.
The story is being released one chapter at a time, with 5 chapters up so far. I'm trying to put up a chapter every month or two, usually around the 15th (missed February). First 3 chapters are free, and you'll have to buy "tokens" to read further, but they're relatively cheap and can be used on other Vella stories as well. So go on ahead, give "Forgotten Be Thy Name" a look, and let me know what you think of it so far...and I promise to give y'all blog updates more regularly so this doesn't happen again!
