What will a Jonah Hex book in 2026 look like?

 

I finally found some time to sit down and type up some thoughts about the under-the-radar announcement by Scott Snyder over on his own blog that, shockingly, Jonah Hex is getting a new title...or at least that how he seems to be phrasing it.  Two weeks earlier, DC had dropped the news that their latest publishing initiative will be titled "Next Level", to follow their current one called "All In".  While the company itself only focused on Lobo, Batwoman, and Deathstroke getting books, it was Snyder who mentioned Hex, along with a ton of other characters and titles.  He just tossed the bounty hunter's name out there with no other info, rather like what happened when Dan Didio name-dropped Hex in a WIZARD interview in early 2005.  As I wrote in Chapter 15 of my long-running Hex history project, we didn't get another peep from Didio or DC  about what was coming until many months later, with Jonah Hex (vol. 2) #1 finally hitting the stands in November 2005.  I'm going to presume that, since this "Next Level" stuff is to begin this March, we won't be waiting as long this time around, but the same question faces us now as it did 21 years ago: What sort of Jonah Hex are we going to get?

Over on the "Jonah Hex, Via Pony Express" Facebook page, my co-admin Darren Schroeder put up a poll to ask our members what they'd like to see in a new Hex title, giving folks nine possible versions of our favorite bounty hunter to choose from.  Nearly all of them got at least one vote, and I personally couldn't decide which one to throw my weight behind, because each has the potential to be something good, and unless this hypothetical new series turns out to be something truly heinous, I will follow ol' Jonah wherever he goes.  So instead, I'm going to go through Darren's list and tell you what I think DC could do with each version, starting with the one that got the highest votes and working my way down from there, even touching on those that got bupkis.

"Bounty-Hunting Wild West Hex": Garnering 79% of the votes, this version may seem like a no-brainer, but I put 50/50 odds on it being what we actually get, simply because standard Western titles -- even "weird" ones like an average Hex comic -- don't bring in high sales numbers, as proven by Jonah's previous two series.  Even stunts like big-name artists and superhero guest-stars don't permanently move the needle, so unless the potential creative team has a very strong idea that they think will generate big sales over a long period, I doubt DC would put money behind a standard Western.  That being said, both the creation of Jonah Hex and every revival has been loosely tied to a rising interest in Westerns via other media -- Spaghetti Westerns in the 1960s/70s, gritty revisionism like Unforgiven in the 1990s, TV shows like Deadwood in the 2000s -- so the creation of a third volume of a straight-shootin' Jonah Hex could be tied to the current popularity of Yellowstone and all its spinoffs.  If this is the route DC is taking, I bet it'd be more of a limited series than a monthly title (like how they did Jonah's Vertigo run), with it maybe getting extended if the numbers really show up this time.

"Civil War Hex": This was an intriguing notion Darren tossed out there, and about 5% of the voters agreed.  With the current state of things all around us, the right writer could deliver one helluva message along with filling in a long-standing gap in Hex history.  Jonah's pre-War life (i.e. the couple of years prior to 1861) has barely been touched, and while I've written my own speculations as to how he ended up in the Confederacy, I'd love to see someone else tackle it, giving us a canonical reason as to how and why Jonah was swayed to fight for a cause he didn't believe in.

"Post-Apocalypse Hex": This version also netted 5% of the vote.  I've said my piece many a time regarding HEX, both in fanfiction and in a historical context, so I'll quickly sum up my feelings by saying that the idea is good but the execution is terrible.  That means it has the potential be turned into something great in the right hands.  This could be done within its original 2050 setting -- presumably moved to an alternate DC future -- or a complete rehaul where Jonah gets dropped even further ahead in time, thereby avoiding the conundrum we're in now (i.e. we are rapidly catching up to a future that will not happen).  There's even a third possibility, wherein the events of HEX get revised to fit within the framework of Batman Beyond, allowing Hex to piggyback on what is still rather popular iteration of the Dark Knight instead of making one from scratch like Michael Fleisher originally did.

"Time Travel Hex": Yet another 5% vote, and one that I think is strongest possibility of what we're getting.  Remember, over in the JLU title, Hex is still bouncing around with "Legend" and some other time-displaced heroes, and since we still don't know who she or he is yet, it could be that a new Jonah Hex series contributes to wrapping up that storyline.  There's also the fact that this setup is essentially the same as Legends of Tomorrow -- where Hex was a semi-regular -- plus there's the whole idea that the Hex we're seeing is a "quantum ghost" who doesn't actually need to go back to the Old West, so yeah, a Jonah Hex title where he's constantly bopping around time seems the most likely scenario at the moment.

"Brand-New Reimagined Hex": Our final 5% vote is possible, but the potential of it backfiring is high.  That's not to say he hasn't been reimagined before, as the "Future Hex", "Vertigo Hex" and "New 52" eras technically fall into that category.  However, in the first and third examples, the same team who'd been writing him for years stuck with him, lending a sense of continuity, and in the second example, Joe Lansdale actually misremembered how Jonah Hex was originally presented in the 1970s, so while things went a little off-book, he somehow managed to portray Hex himself in the same manner he'd always been presented, so his "new take" was actually the same old one.  And that's what is key to any new Hex title, be it a reimagined version or "back to basics" like Justin Gray & Jimmy Palmiotti did for their run: If Jonah's heart isn't there, the whole thing falls apart.  I have no issues with taking him out of the Confederate uniform so long as they don't turn him into a Yankee, and I wouldn't necessarily have a problem with them changing how Jonah gets his scar so long as his surliness and ironclad personal morality remains intact.  If the heart of the character is there, Jonah should be able to weather any changes.  This is why I enjoy parts of the 2010 movie despite it being an overall mess (Josh Brolin fully embraced Jonah's heart, no question), but I'm still royally pissed about Justice League: Warworld (that man had Hex's name and face, but otherwise, he's literally a heartless bastard, and I had to write a fic about it just to make myself feel marginally better).  To sum up, if they reimagine Jonah Hex, they'd better not lose what's made the character last nearly 55 years.

"Modern-Day Hex": With only 1% of the vote, this is the last version that anyone put any support behind, and like "Time Travel Hex", I put good odds on this being where they might go, partially due again to what's happening in JLU.  This "quantum ghost" of Hex has nowhere to go -- the Hex of the past is still in the past, this one merely represents a split-second of the bounty hunter's life -- so if he doesn't go bopping around the timestream and he doesn't "die", then he's stuck in the present.  J&J explored the notion of Jonah dealing with the modern DCU midway through All Star Western (vol. 3), and I've dabbled in this area myself because I like watching the old man react to the everyday bullshit the average DCU citizen has to deal with.  Pitting Jonah against a "New West" -- perhaps with his many-times-great-granddaughter Jinny Hex in tow -- would be great fun, so here's hoping.

"Alt-Universe Hex": We're down to the 0% votes, but despite there being no apparent demand for these versions, we're gonna discuss them anyways, starting with one that's rather similar to "reimagining".  For this, however, I reckon it'd be something akin to Elseworlds or the new Absolute line, wherein you can REALLY go off-book.  We've kinda gone down this path before, with the aforementioned Warworld, Amalgam's Generation Hex, and even the Tangent line had a Hex in it.  Overlaying the general beats of Jonah's life over a totally new concept could be very interesting, as seen by the Elseworlds idea suggested by my pal Henry Joseph Feakes for my pretend HEX solicits: Feakes turned the bounty hunter into a scarred Vietnam vet in the 1970s, and while we only jotted up a paragraph, it's something I'd still love to see fleshed out into an entire story.  So yeah, depending on the idea, an Elseworlds/Absolute Hex would be a welcome sight.

"Supermodel Hex": I'm sure Darren tossed this out there as a gag, but since her existence was noted in the recently-published New History of the DC Universe -- her first mention in over 26 years -- the possibility of it is open!  If she did come back, I would demand an explanation of what her deal is, though.  And bring back her creator, Karl Kesel, while you're at it.

"Space Traveler Hex": This one is funny, because I've run across mentions of HEX that describe it as a space adventure, so there's some folks who already think ol' Jonah has gone to space!  In truth, the only spacebound Hex incident I can think of was in Justice League Action, and admittedly that was fun, so I wouldn't be against the ol' buzzard doing it in the comics.  Once again, this is a good possible destination for the "quantum ghost" version of Hex in JLU, and the notion of our timelost cowboy riding off into the final frontier is full of potential.  At the very least, we could see Jonah Hex butt heads with Lobo in the ultimate bounty-hunting faceoff, and how can you say no to that?

So yeah, no matter what form this potential new Jonah Hex series takes, I'll be there for it, full of hope that they do justice to his very long history.  I also REALLY need to get my Hex history project into print ASAP, so excuse me while I go back to editing!

5 at 50

Ten years ago, I did a post about turning 40 and signing my very first publishing contract.  To say I was giddy at the time would be an understatement.  Sadly, as I mentioned in my post two weeks ago, that contract fell through, and I eventually went with self-publishing, which mainly consists of making up your own deadlines and blowing past them most of the time (or at least for me it does).  But dangit, I’m gonna change that!  I’m officially old now -- got an application from AARP in the mail with my name on it and everything – and the clock is ticking, so I gotta quit screwing around and GET STUFF DONE.

With that in mind, here’s a list of  the five works-in-progress I have in various stages of completion, it’s all just a matter of getting it down on paper (so to speak):

Swords & Sixguns: Crossing The Line - As you probably figured by the title, this is the sequel to my first novel, Swords & Sixguns: An Outlaw’s Tale.  At the moment, I have 136 double-spaced pages written, meaning somewhere between one-third and one-half of the story is done, and has been for quite a while.  I’ve got the beats worked out for the rest of the novel, so it’s not a problem of writer’s block, just time.  I also have the beats for the third and fourth novels, plus rough ideas for the others after that -- things in the overall storyarc have changed a bit since I first began plotting it out in 1994 (yes, that’s how long I’ve had this idea!), mainly because I’m a better writer than I was when I started, so I’ve been weeding out some of the clichés I’d originally put into the plot.  Thankfully, many of them were so far down the line, story-wise, that it’s only taken a few tweaks in the upcoming stuff to avoid them.  This is the ONLY advantage I’ve had in regards to how slow I write!

Hero to Some, Villain to Others: An Illustrated History of Jonah Hex – This is my long-running, non-fiction work that’s going head-to-head with my second novel in terms of “Who’s gonna get to press first?”  It has the advantage of being closer to completion -- only 5 chapters left to write, plus another appendix for two -- but some disadvantages.  The first is that I have to format it differently than my novel, since this will include multiple pictures throughout, not just a couple pieces of clip art like my first novel.  The second is how little material is in the first few chapters compared with the later ones (again, I’m a better writer now), so I want to beef them up.  And third is that there’s still a couple of interviews I’m trying to arrange, but I haven’t got a hold of the people yet (I’ll likely just have to let those go and deal with the info gap).  I’m still kicking myself for missing Jonah’s 50th anniversary, but so did DC, therefore I don’t feel too awful.

Godheart - One of two works that are currently exclusive to Kindle Vella, which are released chapter-by-chapter instead of one fell swoop.  It began life as a fanfic I wrote at the request of a site that was launching out of DC2, but when the new site fell through, the fic was never used, and it’s been sitting in my files for years collecting dust.  When Vella launched, I decided to file the serial numbers off of the fic (i.e. remove anything that would identify it with the property it was originally riffing on) and post it as a test of what this new site could do -- if anything went seriously wrong, I wouldn’t lose a property I’d put a massive investment into.  That’s not to say I don’t like the story -- I kept it for years, after all -- it was just a low-priority thing.  I put up four chapters, with a note at the end of the fourth asking people to contact me if they want to read more, and so far, I’ve had zero responses.  I think part of the issue is the paywall: the first three chapters are free to read, after which the reader must buy tokens to go further, and I get a small percentage of that token’s worth.  Other than a “signing bonus” of sorts from Kindle due to me being a beta tester, I haven’t made a dime off of it.  So this is on the back burner for now, though it will eventually get finished so I can at least publish it in physical form sometime later.

Forgotten Be Thy Name -  My second Kindle Vella work is in the same boat as the first, though it’s further along in regards to chapters due to me having stronger ideas for it.  This tale is pretty much “Jonah Hex in Hell” without mentioning him by name because copyrights (fiction work goes by different rules than non-fiction).  I thought it would do better than the previous one since I’m a known quantity when it comes to Hex, but again, I think the paywall is stopping people.  Like Godheart, it will get finished so it can be published.  Matter of fact, I’ll likely do both in the same volume, along with another finished story I’ve been submitting here and there for many years (I’ll talk about that in another blog post).  One shortie, one midrange, and one novella…that sounds like a nice package, don’tcha think?

Miscellaneous DC2 work - This entry is a bit of a cheat because it’s not one work, it’s three, all of which are loosely connected.  Despite having my own original universe to muck about in, I enjoy putting various DC characters in predicaments, so that’ll likely never stop.  To be sure, I need to finish writing the final installment of Omega Crisis -- which is plotted and a couple of scenes completed -- and once that’s out of the way, the other fics can proceed.  There’s at about 5-10 more issues of Weird Western Quarterly that need to be done so I can wrap up the long, winding storyline that I’ve been weaving since WWQ#0 hit DC2 in November 2005.  And Jonah Hex: Shades of Gray is just getting started in terms of where the story is headed, but I realize now that it will likely never have a solid end just because I have so many other things to work on and a finite amount of time.  I’ll get out as much of that story as I can, though, because I’ve got as lot more to say about Hex living in the 2010s (yes, I’m sticking with the original timeline, no bumping it up to keep it in synch with the here-and-now…which means I’m still writing in the past despite setting it in the 21st Century!).

So that’s the state of my WIPs at this moment in January 2024.  And now I put a question to you fine folks: would you rather I polish off my second novel by the end of this year, or should the printed version of my Hex history project take priority?  Drop me a line here, on Facebook, or at swordsandsixgunsnovel@gmail.com and let me know!

 

New year, new plan

 

Okay, kiddos, time for serious talk.

The #1 reason I joined Facebook back in 2014 was to promote my novel, which -- at the time – had just been picked up by Permuted Press.  I figured I’d get the ball rolling on creating a fanbase and all that.  Well, those of you who were around back then know how that publishing deal turned out…and the next one…so I finally nutted up in 2016 and decided to self-publish.  When you go that route, every single bit of promotion falls upon you, so you have to find a way to balance your writing and your personal life and being your own hype machine.

Let’s be honest: I suck at balancing all that.  My personal life (i.e. working at my paying job) eats up much of my time and energy, and scrolling FB tends to eat up a couple hours every day as well, leaving little time to decompress and do things with my husband and…you know…actually write.  This past year was semi-productive, as I did get a couple of things out there, but while I got to have a bit of fun while writing them, they made me no money and the public’s enthusiasm for them seemed middling.

Don’t get me wrong, I knew this whole writing gig would make very little money, so don’t look at this as a veiled plea for donations or something.  Us here at Casa Del Hillwig are doing just fine (again, I have a paying job), I’m just frustrated that not only did I pass the 7^th anniversary of my first novel’s publication without releasing the second book (though you can read the first chapter of it if you buy the hardcover edition of Swords & Sixguns: An Outlaw’s Tale!), but for the first time since 2011, I didn’t put out another installment of “An Illustrated History of Jonah Hex” when November rolled around (though one of those writings I previously mentioned did kinda fill that gap).  Big miss on both of my major projects.  So I’ve been telling myself the past couple of months that I’m gonna do better next year, I’m gonna buckle down and get at least one of those things completed and published and all that jazz so I can offer more than just one dang book at the cons.  I just have to figure out how to get rid of distractions, or at least manage my free time better.

This brings us back around to Facebook.  One of the writers I follow is James Fell who wrote two volumes of Today in History Shit Went Down.  He announced recently that he’s going to devote less time to FB because it literally isn’t paying off anymore.  Like many pros on the platform, he’s been getting fucked over by the algorithm, which is showing his posts less and less to people who’ve actually liked/followed his page in favor of paid advertising, aka sponsored posts.  So he gamed the system: He literally bought a sponsored post so he could tell his followers that he’s cutting back on FB in favor of Substack.  I admired his chutzpa, so I subscribed to James Fell, along with Dr. Heather Cox Richardson, whose daily history/news wrap-up is usually the first thing I read every morning when I log onto FB.  Substack sends the stuff directly to my email instead, meaning I don’t need to go to FB anymore to read her post, which then leads to me getting sucked into a doomscroll through the rest of the site.

In other words, I just discovered a way to wean myself off of that daily FB login.

I’m not quitting Facebook, mind you.  It is a useful tool, it’s just I now have proof that the reason I made the account to begin with doesn’t work as well as it used to.  It’s taken me close to a decade to get over 300 followers, so if someone like James Fell -- who has literally a thousand times more followers than me -- is getting buried by the algorithm, then I have no hope at all of reaching anyone new unless I shell out money…and even that is a shot in the dark.

So things will likely get quiet around Facebook as far as my posts are concerned, both personal and professional.  I’m thinking like once or twice a month, I’ll put up a fresh post with a link to my blog attached – as I’ve done for this one – and probably share a meme or two in the interim like usual, just so you know I didn’t die.  Matter of fact, expect the next blog post around the 19^th or so, because I’m turning 50, and that seems like a good as time as any to step back, reassess all these little projects I have going on, and give y’all a sit-rep.  See you then!

No history post this year, but here's a consolation prize!

 

For those of you tuning in to read the next installment of "An Illustrated History of Jonah Hex", I'm sorry to say I don't have one for you.  The project is still going on, don't worry, I just got busy the last few months with something else Hex-related (also life got in the way...you know how it goes).  Lucky for you, I finished that other thing just last night so I could debut it on Jonah's 185th birthday!

If you're like me, you were terribly disappointed in the Justice League: Warworld animated movie, both for how they treated ol' Jonah and for overall being a not-very-good story (most of the reviews I found for the movie rated it as merely okay).  So, being who I am, I figured out how to fix it, at least in terms of Jonah's portrayal.  If'n y'all follow this link right here, you'll find a brand-new fic titled "The Deaths of Jonah Hex" that'll maybe make up for the lack of Hex history this year.  Let me know what you think of it, and hopefully I can get my ass in gear so I can get this project wrapped up by this time next year (or at least have a proper installment for you!).

An Alternate History of Jonah Hex

 

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!

An Explanation, an Announcement, and Asking a Favor.

 Well, it's two weeks late, but the latest installment of "An Illustrated History of Jonah Hex" has finally been posted in its entirety.  Normally, I can write up an entry in a few weeks, no problem, but to be honest, I think I'm going through a spot of depression because this one was darn hard to complete.

I imagine there's many of you who've gone through a depressive swing this year because...y'know...frickin' 2020, but I figure most of mine stems from the fact that my Mom passed away about 2 months ago.  Before you ask: No, it wasn't COVID.  She'd been living with Parkinson's for over 18 years, and things had gotten worse for her health-wise early last year (for those who remember me having to cancel some appearances in May 2019 due to family issues, this was part of it).   It all came to a head this past summer, and the docs had a frank discussion with her that they were quickly running out of options, so they gave her a choice: Exhaust every option they had left to keep her alive but put her in tons of pain with little improvement to her quality of life, or stop everything and let go.  We talked together quite a bit about this, and in the end, she decided she was tired of fighting the inevitable, and she passed away three weeks later.

Most days, I'm pretty good emotionally: I know my Mom isn't in constant pain anymore, which was a big concern those last few months she was alive.  But sometimes -- like right now typing this -- it hits me hard, and it wasn't until I was struggling through writing this latest Hex history entry that I noticed it was likely effecting my ability to work.  I'm normally a pokey writer, so I thought that's what it was, but then I realized the drive wasn't there.  I know that one of the signs of depression is not finding pleasure in things that you normally enjoy, so that kinda shocked me, especially because I've got plans.

You might've noticed this latest entry is structured a little differently than the others, namely there's virtually no external links.  That's because -- prior to COVID turning the world upside-down -- I'd decided to work on getting "An Illustrated History of Jonah Hex" published.  The old man's gonna turn 50 in 2022, and I feel that's something to celebrate, so my goal is to cover all of Hex history up to that point, then publish via Amazon's printing service, same as I do Swords & Sixguns. This will be an unofficial work, naturally, but that's not for lack of trying (DC has made it impossible to contact them -- even industry pros I know have no idea who I should talk to about such a project), and I've already spoken with some fans with collections of original Hex art who'll provide the "illustrated" portion of the work, as opposed to the page scans I've been doing (this should help get around any copyright issues).  With all that in mind, I decided to write the next few entries so they're mainly text as opposed to a mix of text, pics, and external sources, just to cut down on work later on (I need to go through all the previous entries and do the same, probably fatten up the really early ones as well because they were light on info compared to later ones).  It's a bit of an undertaking, but not impossible...or at least that's what I was thinking before this one entry took twice as long as usual.

My Mom was proud of my writing.  She had absolutely no interest in the genre, preferring Nicholas Sparks and James Patterson, but she was proud that I wrote a book, got it published, and had fans who appreciated my work.  She loved telling people her daughter was an author, and always wanted to know how things were going with cons and such.  I'd even tell her about the Hex history project and the pros I'd interviewed for it (she was tickled by how Johnathon Schaech contacted me and the chats we've had).  So it's a bit disconcerting for me that this depression is cutting into my ability to do something my Mom actively encouraged me to do.  I know it's going to take a bit to work through, to find a way back to where I need my head to be in order to get all this done in a timely manner.  Right now, I'm thinking of working on some Hex fics to get back into his world in a fun way (besides, I've seriously neglected my DC2 work the last couple of years!), then crack down on the history stuff once we reach January 2021.  As I do that, I was wondering if'n y'all could help me out in a few ways.

First up, if you haven't already, go become a member of the "Jonah Hex, Via Pony Express" posse.  As I write this, we currently have 913 members, and I'd love to have over 1,000 when the book gets published.  So join up and ask others to do the same so we can beef up that number.  Also, if you own any original Hex art, be it pages, covers, or sketches, drop me a line at swordsandsixgunsnovel@gmail.com so I can add you to my list of potential contributors.  I'll be honest, I can't pay you for your contribution other than give you credit in the book, but the bigger variety of art I have to pull from, both in terms of eras and artists, the better it will represent all 50 years of Hex history.  Lastly, I just began a sale at my online store: From now until December 12th, you can pick up autographed copies of Swords & Sixguns: An Outlaw's Tale for 20% off, along with a few other exclusive items.  That might sound unrelated to the Hex stuff, but in truth, buying those books will help me raise capital to print the Hex history book, as I'll need to get cover work done for it, and last time around, that cost me a few hundred dollars.  If we were still having cons on a regular basis, my revenue stream would probably be a lot better right now, but we're not, so it ain't.

That's about it for now.  Thanks for listening, and I wish y'all a happy and healthy holiday season.

An Illustrated History of Jonah Hex (Part 17)

2008-2009: Riding High

By the beginning of Jonah’s third year under the care of Justin Gray & Jimmy Palmiotti, it was clear that our favorite bounty hunter was firmly ensconced in the comics landscape of the 21st Century.  Though sales on the title were low compared to most superhero comics (at this point in time, Jonah Hex moved roughly 14,000 copies per month, whereas Batman would sell at least 70,000 copies during the same period), Dan Didio believed it was important for DC to offer a variety of genres, so Hex survived the chopping block despite numbers that would’ve killed many other books.  Such an attitude may have been why one of Jonah’s fellow cowpokes also experienced a brief arrival around this time, as Bat Lash received a 6-issue miniseries written by Peter Brandvold and Lash’s co-creator Sergio Aragones, with art by the legendary John Severin.  Jonah even managed to earn a spot in DC Direct's Showcase line (which was inspired by the Showcase black-and-white reprint collections), when in June 2008 they released an action figure done in Tony DeZuniga’s classic style.  Also, Jonah’s continued presence on the racks as opposed to comic-book limbo was possibly what brought the prospects of the long-dead Jonah Hex feature film back to life, as reports began circulating in mid-2007 that a new script was being worked upon by Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor.  Movies take a long time to move from script to screen, however, so we’ll push that to the back burner for now and continue our focus on Jonah’s monthly adventures.

In Jonah Hex (vol. 2) #26 (February 2008), Gray & Palmiotti gave a shout-out to three fans who frequented their Paperfilms website -- specifically Lewis Himelhoch, Mike Hewison, and Loy Turns -- by bestowing their monikers upon a group of outlaws Jonah is in pursuit of.  His search leads him to a remote farm owned by two women with a penchant for quoting the Bible -- recites the King James version of Jonah 4:10-11 when the bounty hunter informs her of his name -- as well as a dark secret luring upon their property.  Seems some men wronged them in the past, so these ladies have decided to wreak vengeance upon any man who comes ‘round by hacking off their limbs at the knees and elbows, cutting out their tongues, and forcing them to live like pigs in their barn...which is exactly what happened to Himelhoch, Hewison, and Turns (in a way, this little name-drop ain’t too far off from the “tribute” Lansdale & Truman cooked up for the Winter Brothers back in 1995).  Suffice it to say, Jonah makes sure the gals won’t be adding any more guys to their pigpen, in a scene that artist Guiseppe Camuncoli (previously the cover artist for JHv2#7) renders in gory detail.  The story wraps up with Jonah delivering the mutilated outlaws to the local sheriff, who is horrified by what he sees, but as Jonah points out, the warrant on them stated they be brought in alive, so he was just following the letter of the law.

JHv2#27 gives us another masterpiece by Jordi Bernet, as well as adding a new member to Jonah’s cast of characters.  Not long after the end of the Civil War (and certainly after Jonah received the “Mark of the Demon”, going by the depictions here), a boy named Victor Sono immigrates from Italy to New York with his father, a former soldier and peacekeeper who’d lost his leg at some point.  When the elder Sono goes looking for employment with the police, the “native” New Yorkers mock him and gun him down, an act that justifiably sends young Victor into a rage.  Grabbing a pistol off a stranger in the street, Victor opens fire upon the tin-star-wearing murderers, only to soon be clubbed across the head by Jonah Hex, the rightful owner of the pistol (what exactly he’s doing in New York City at the time is uncertain -- there’s mention of a transfer of funds to Hex, but not the why of it).  While at first Jonah seems unconcerned as to what the lawmen may do to Victor, he quickly reconsiders and finishes the job the boy started, then takes the unconscious Victor to an orphanage.

Many years later, Victor is known by the moniker of “Star Man”, in reference to all the badges pinned to his coat, each of them taken off of a crooked lawman Victor has killed (by the way, there are no apparent ties between Victor and any of the other Starman folk to come after him in the 20th Century).  When Jonah comes looking to collect the $1,000 bounty on his head, Victor recalls what the man did for him as a boy and refuses to kill Hex, even going so far as to give him the majority of the bounty money in the hopes that Hex will leave him be -- it appears Victor’s sense of honor is just as ingrained as Jonah’s.  Seeing as how Victor was about two hundred short, though, Jonah ain’t done with him yet, and after a series of twists and turns -- as well as a couple more lawmen gettin’ what’s comin’ to them -- both men eventually end the tale satisfied with their respective outcomes.

John Higgins joined the ever-growing list of Hex artists with JHv2#28, which features a tale of revenge taken to the extreme.  Jonah is approached by a gay man whose lover was lynched by some townsfolk who objected to their lifestyle.  The man blames the entire town for the deed, and wishes Jonah to kill everyone within, to which Jonah replies, “So yer of the mind Ah’m an orphan maker, or would you have it that Ah slaughtered their offspring in crib and stroller alike?”  He then turns down the job offer, for while Jonah doesn’t really give care one way or another that the man is homosexual, he certainly doesn’t relish the idea of leaving behind a bunch of orphans who may come looking for him someday.  The man, however, decides to take matters into his own hands by wiring the town church with explosives and detonating it when all the folks are inside (don’t have to worry about vengeance-seeking orphans when you blow ‘em up all at once).

When the man later seeks out Hex again to brag about the deed, the bounty hunter literally cuts the tongue out of the man’s head as punishment (only thing worse to Jonah than killing kids is being proud of it), and he likely would’ve done worse if the whore Jonah’s been visiting with throughout the story hadn’t stepped in to stop him.  “You fancy yourself a martyr and misunderstood saint of killers,” she says to Hex.  “Cast that anger inward, you son of a bitch, and the reflection of truth shows you the face of a coward not one boot heel taller than them he’d call law-breakers.”  Jonah blows her off and leaves, but a few issues down the line, we’ll discover that her words cut deeper than he let on.

We return to Devil’s Paw in JHv2#29, this time with Rafa Garres on art chores, and in JHv2#30, we get more Bernet in a story that, continuity-wise, appears to take place directly after the events of 1982’s Jonah Hex #53.  There’s a sepia-toned double-page spread that acts as a highlight reel for Jonah’s life all the way through his marriage to Mei Ling, the birth of their son Jason, and ending with Mei Ling leaving him:

Jonah becomes a drunken wreck after this, stumbling into a nearly-deserted town called Desperation (how fitting).  A few days later, a gang of outlaws led by a man named Lucky Dave arrives on a train they hijacked, intent on blowing the safe in one of the boxcars -- they picked this town to do it in since there’s only six people living there.  They begin rounding up the folks, who tell them about the “mean drunk” who’d arrived, gathered up all the booze in town, and locked himself in a hotel room.  The outlaws figure they can handle him and send a huge fella named Samson upstairs to get him.  Too bad for Samson that Jonah managed to rouse himself from his stupor enough to kill the man as soon as he entered the hotel room.  When Samson doesn’t come down, another fella goes up, and Jonah kills him as well, tossing him out the window and into the street for good measure.  By this point, blowing the safe has already gone terribly wrong (rather like the scene in Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid), so Lucky and his gal try to get out of town, but Jonah -- haggard, shirtless, and probably nursing a mean hangover -- catches up to them and challenges Lucky to a gunfight.  By this point, Lucky hasn’t had one damn thing go right on this job, so he’s more than happy for the opportunity to blow Hex away.  Too bad his gun misfires.  “Yore just a no good drunk!” Lucky yells as he throws his pistol as Hex.  “A whiskey hound with an empty heart he’s tryin’ ta fill with whiskey!  Ya ain’t even got nuthin’ worth stealin’!”

“Sure Ah do,” Jonah answers as he thumbs back the hammer on his own pistol.  “Ah got my reputation.”  Though there is no gunshot, it can be assumed that Jonah took Lucky Dave out.  Overall, the issue is a great “between the panels” sort of story that shows us Jonah didn’t exactly jump right back into bounty hunting after his marriage to Mei Ling fell apart.  It also won’t be the last time Palmiotti, Gray, and Bernet visit that particular period in Hex history.

Jonah reputation doesn’t serve him well in JHv2#31, as it nearly gets him killed by lawmen as well as framed by a masked outlaw.  Artist Paulo Siqueira -- whose style is reminiscent of rags Morales -- made a good story even greater with wonderfully-detailed panels and expressive faces (including probably the most evil grin I've ever seen on Hex’s ugly mug!).  In JHv2#32, the bounty hunter heads to Mexico during Dia de los Muertos (meaning this takes place around November 1st, Jonah’s birthday) to meet a powerful man named Esteban who wants Hex to kill a famed matador that had an affair with Esteban’s wife.  It’s soon evident to Hex that the man is off his rocker (Esteban carved up his wife’s face as punishment for her infidelity) and he turns down the job, but Esteban won’t take no for an answer and arranges for Hex to be gored to death by a bull in the same arena the matador performs in:

Ironically, Jonah is rescued by the same matador Esteban wants dead, and gets nursed back to health by the matador and his younger sister Chula (who apparently has the hots for Hex, going by all the not-so-subtle advances she makes on him -- Jordi Bernet’s art makes this scene all the more hilarious).  Once he’s recovered, Jonah sneaks back into the bullfighting arena and stabs the very-surprised Esteban in the gut, then informs the wife that the matador still loves her.

After his ordeal in Mexico, Jonah gets about as far away from there as possible...all the way to the Great White North, to be exact.  For JHv2#33, Gray & Palmiotti managed to get the award-winning Darwyn Cooke to step away from superheroes for a bit and join them in the Old West.  In a Newsarama article published around the time of the issue's release, the three men revealed that they’d all known each other for a few years, with Gray admitting to Cooke, “Once you made a casual comment about wanting to maybe do an issue of Hex it was all over, we were going to lure you into it one way or another,” and Palmiotti adding that Cooke had been on their “short list of dream artists” for Jonah Hex, “but never thought you would actually be interested.  We’re very glad you did, but somehow I have a feeling it’s a favor I will be repaying for the rest of my life.”

The duo always took pride in delivering scripts tailor-made for the selected artists, and with Cooke, it was no different.  “One night in San Diego last year,” Cooke revealed, “I gave Justin my ‘laundry list’ for a Hex story.  It had to take place in Canada, it had to break the cliché of the squeaky-clean Mountie, it had to feature a knife fight with wolves and so on.  Two weeks or so later, I’ll be damned if the script didn’t appear, better than I’d hoped.  You boys took my caveats and made them window dressing to what is one of the best stories they’ve written.  That main story is pure J&J and it’s what elevates the issue to something resonant.”

Indeed, it’s a remarkable tale, told from the perspective of a young mute boy, whose father dies while they’re traversing the Canadian wilderness.  Jonah saves the boy from a pack of wolves, and soon after, a group of Mounties comes across them with a prisoner in tow.  Seems Jonah came north to collect the bounty on said prisoner, and the Mounties don’t take kindly to such things.  Jonah tries to fake his way out of the situation, telling them he’s a trapper by the name of “Fleisher”, but the Mounties are well aware of Jonah’s infamous scar, so it don’t do him much good.  Stripping him down to his longjohns, the Mounties crack open the ice over a frozen lake and let Jonah fall in, then go on their way, leaving the boy behind as well.  Jonah being Jonah, he eventually manages to drag himself out of the lake and -- half-frozen and angry as Hell -- he tracks the Mounties back to their fort, slaughtering them one by one:

Once the task is complete, Jonah collapses, and the boy drags him inside one of the buildings in the hopes that he’d recover.  The bounty hunter does, of course, and to the surprise of both the boy and the reader, Jonah proceeds to literally push the boy away, at one point smacking him across the face when Jonah goes to leave the fort.  Considering Jonah’s reactions when other folks harm children, such a thing seems out of character, but it appears Jonah was trying to show the boy that, despite his muteness, he could take care of himself, and that depending upon a surly cuss like Hex would be a mistake in the long run.  As Cooke said in regards to the issue, “The story’s power lays in its ability to be both heartfelt and heartless at the same time.  There is a remarkable slow build to the final scene and it is one hard ending...this bitch out-Shanes Shane.”

Mark Sparacio handily took care of the art for JHv2#34, which contains multiple references to fans within its pages, as well as acting as a sequel to JHv2#28, with the opening giving us a recap of the events of that issue (said to have taken place in New Mexico).  Seems the angry words leveled at him by the whore apparently struck a nerve with Jonah, causing him to leave the open plains behind and head for Oregon in an attempt to make a life for himself that doesn’t involve killing people for money.  To that end, the first page shows Jonah literally burying his past: he places his guns and uniform in a box marked with the Confederate battle flag and inters it in a cemetery.  After spending the winter in a log cabin built by his own hands -- the one practical skill passed on to him by his father -- Jonah heads to the hardware store over in the nearest town for supplies, where the owner, Mr. Clarkson, and his daughter Sandy strike up a conversation with him.  When they inquire about his name, Jonah tells them it’s “Hillwig”, borrowing the surname of a certain Hex historian (full disclosure: while I’d known Jimmy & Justin for a few years by this point, and they were well-aware of all the Jonah Hex fan fiction I’d written, I had no clue they were going to work my name into a story.  See the blog post I wrote back in 2011 for more info on my fanfic career).

As they help Jonah load supplies onto his wagon, a group of men ride into town and begin causing trouble.  The leader, Elmsford, is modeled after Jonah Hex fan and podcaster Matt Herring, while his buddy Blackie is based on Brian LeTendre.  Both Palmiotti and Sparacio were already familiar with Herring’s work, so when the artist was working on the issue, Herring gave him some reference material for the character, which soon turned into Herring and LeTendre going over to Long Island for a photo shoot, under the assumption that they’d be featured in a panel or two.  Little did they know, Sparacio would turn them into the two main baddies for the story, having them harass shopkeepers for protection money and make rather lewd remarks about Sandy.  Jonah witnesses all of this but does his best to ignore it, even as the days pass and the violence amps up, leading to the hardware store burning down, killing Clarkson.  Faced with having to turn tricks at the saloon to survive, Sandy heads out to Jonah’s cabin, and though they spend the night together, Jonah’s attitude changes drastically in the morning:

Some time after she leaves, Jonah is sitting in his cabin before the fireplace, a Bible in his lap as he mutters, “You press me ta action against muh will.  Set a bush ta burnin’, why don’t Ya?”  Since the very first issue of Gray & Palmiotti’s run, we’ve seen references to Jonah’s feud with the Lord, and it all comes to a head here, with the bounty hunter speaking plain about the hypocrisy he finds in the Word of God: “Love thy neighbor and thou shall not kill stand at odds with each other an’ Ya prefer Ah take up the work of Yer angels who ain’t but assassins with wings!  And when Judgment Day comes, Ya’ll put these deeds in shadow an’ condemn me nonetheless as a killer and a sinner.”  He then throws the Bible into the fireplace and heads into town, only to find Sandy already dead and buried in the same cemetery he was in at the beginning of the story (the date on Sandy’s tombstone states the year as 1871, so all this may have taken place before Jonah’s marriage to Mei Ling and his other attempt at hanging up his guns).  Jonah spends little time mourning her loss, for he already knows what he has to do: he grabs a shovel, digs up his uniform and guns, then seeks out Elmsford and his crew so he can cut them down in a hail of gunfire.  As much as he loathes it, Jonah has faced up to the fact that God will never let him have a moment’s peace, not so long as evil walks in the world.

Though Gray & Palmiotti were essentially able to do whatever they wanted within the pages of Jonah Hex, there were occasions when DC’s higher-ups would rein them in.  Such was the case when the duo got the idea for a story that would make Jonah Hex an ancestor of Harvey Dent, AKA Two-Face.  Someone in Editorial shot down that notion real quick, so the references to Dent were removed and the script reworked into what became JHv2#35, gloriously illustrated by J.H. Williams III.  Jonah assists some lawmen in wiping out a band of outlaws, and afterward, the elderly sheriff tells Jonah he’ll have to wait until tomorrow for payment since the bank is closed.  In the meantime, the sheriff invites Jonah back to his home for a bit of supper with himself and his young wife.  Once their stomachs are full of fine vittles, the two men take a seat on the porch and share some whiskey, during which the sheriff makes an unorthodox proposal.  Seems the man is impotent, and his wife is longing for children, so he’d like Jonah to play surrogate father -- between the bounty hunter’s wandering lifestyle and his unsightly appearance, the sheriff thinks his wife would be less inclined to run off with Hex should he do the deed.

Considering that it’s been implied more than once that Jonah’s mother was a whore, it’s understandable that he isn’t in favor of prostituting himself, no matter how good the cause.  Too bad for him the sheriff has already put a contingency plan into motion, i.e. he slipped something into Jonah’s whiskey.  The panels in the comic begin to twist about and turn wild colors as the drug takes effect, letting the reader experience the same level of disorientation as Jonah while fights off both the sheriff and his wife, who at one point literally straddles him with her skirt hiked up.  Jonah manages to get away without being sexually assaulted -- let’s not mince words, that’s exactly what this is -- but there’s still the matter of him getting paid, so before he leaves, he gasps, “Be...at the...bank come...mornin’ or...I’ll come...fer ya...” then tells the sheriff to “think real hard” about why Jonah didn’t kill him outright.  The next day (after puking up whatever it was they slipped him), Jonah heads into town to collect, and though the sheriff does cough up the dough, he also threatens to shoot Hex, who points out that the sheriff doesn’t seem to realize he’s better off than most men.  He and his wife may not have children, but they have each other, along with a roof over their heads and a comfortable life, so they should be happy with that.  In saying this, Jonah is silently pointing out that he himself has none of these things, and that the couple’s actions the night before nearly stripped Jonah of one of the few things he does have -- his dignity -- just for their own selfish gains.

Rafa Garres returned to do the art for JHv2#36, set in 1866.  Unusually, it takes place before Jonah received the “Mark of the Demon”, and certainly long before he took up bounty hunting.  Also unusual is the narration throughout, as it takes the tone of a historian writing about Jonah’s life (perhaps this is from Professor Lawrence’s book on Hex?), focusing mainly on the question of whether or not Jonah was a racist.  While our unknown narrator cites facts about Jonah’s enslavement by the Apache, his marriage to Mei Ling, and his actions during the Civil War (see Appendix A for more on the latter), we see Jonah travelling through Tennessee, whereupon he stops beside a riverbank to ask a black woman for directions to the nearest town.  Upon seeing his Confederate uniform, she cries out, “Oh Lord!  You’re one a’ them!” and tries to flee, only to fall into the fast-moving river.  Jonah does his best to save her, but she strikes her head against a rock and dies.  Just then, a group of blacks finds the two of them and, presuming Jonah murdered her, pummel him and attempt to string him up.  Jonah is soon rescued by four white men, who kill every black person present without mercy, then take an unconscious Hex back to their place.

As Jonah recovers, his rescuers talk long about all the injustices they perceive around them -- namely the laziness and general uppity attitude of the black populace since the South lost the War -- and how they plan on turning things around.  When they realize their guest doesn’t share the same sentiment, they immediately brand him a spy who must’ve stolen a uniform.  Jonah informs them that his uniform was rightly earned in battle, “but as time has passed and reflections bolstered by several attempts at surrender have taught me...the thinkin’ behind both blue an’ gray leaves a bitter taste.”  He also mentions that a longing to live amongst whites again after years with the Apache may’ve caused him to take up a “foolish” cause.  All this perplexes the bigoted men, as they can’t understand why someone who thinks as Jonah does would still be wearing that uniform a full year after the War ended, but Jonah is through trying to explain himself, and instead pulls leather and kills three of the men.  The fourth survives, but his kneecap is shattered, a fact Jonah pays no mind as he drags the man back out to the riverbank.  Once there, he forces the man to dig seven graves -- one for each black person the bigots killed -- and after the man dies from both exhaustion and his wounds, Jonah dumps his body under a tree and proceeds to dig an eighth grave...this one for the woman Jonah was unable to save.  As the story closes, our unseen narrator surmises Hex was not racist in the sense that we usually know, for in truth he “loathed every human soul with equal enthusiasm”, and by continuing to wear Confederate gray, he could more easily judge what truly lay in a person’s heart by how they reacted to the uniform.  If good people feared him and stayed away, that was fine by him, and if it lured evil folks out into the open for him to snuff out, so much the better.

Next up, we get a double-dose of Jordi Bernet, starting with JHv2#37, wherein Jonah has to contend with three female circus performers looking to get into the bounty-hunting business, and in JHv2#38, we learn that the sheriff Jonah delivered those mutilated outlaws to back in JHv2#26 (which apparently took place three years earlier) was turned out of office due to the townsfolk losing confidence in him that day.  Feeling that the bounty hunter is to blame, the man hunts down Hex to get revenge, during which time we learn their lives were more entangled than just that one encounter (and the sheriff isn’t as much of a victim as he implies).  Then Garres comes back again for JHv2#39, as Jonah helps a reluctant lawman take down three escaped convicts (and later prevents a beloved saloon from being shut down by temperance folk).

Artist David Michael Beck -- who’d previously done the pair of Hex/El Diablo team-ups -- is on hand for the two-parter in Jonah Hex (vol.2 ) #40 & 41 (cover-dated April-May 2009), which takes place in 1879.  Jonah is put on the trail of a man believed to have killed seventeen young girls in a gruesome manner -- when the details are given, Jonah finds a note of familiarity in them.  He recalls stories he heard during the Civil War about a doctor from Louisiana -- William Zimmerman, known to many as “Sawbones” -- who took sadistic pleasure in torturing and performing medical experiments upon Yankee prisoners.  The man had learned “hoodoo magic” from some slaves proficient in it, and used the War as an excuse to partake in the dark arts.  Despite this reputation, Jonah takes on the job, but a month later, as he closes in on his quarry, he’s accidentally shot in the chest when mistaken for a member of an outlaw gang.  When Jonah wakes up, he discovers himself bound hand and foot, with Sawbones standing before him.  The good doctor knows who Hex is and why he’s in town.  “It’s a true crime that I so rarely get to speak freely with my own kind,” Sawbones says as he begins to go to work on the soles of Jonah’s bare feet, slashing them with a knife, then cauterizing the wounds shut, over and over again.

After a while, Sawbones leaves to go fetch some of his disciples, and Jonah uses the opportunity to free himself, repeatedly slamming his back against the support pole he’s tied to until the wood snaps.  Exhausted and feverish from both the effort and the infection setting into his chest wound, Jonah staggers on bloodied feet out of Sawbones’s lair and into the night, eventually collapsing into a stream when he pauses for water.  The issue ends with his semi-conscious form being found around dawn by none other than Tallulah Black, whom we haven’t seen since they parted ways in JHv2#17.

The next issue opens two weeks later with Jonah waking up screaming from a nightmare, wherein Sawbones was taking Tallulah apart one organ at a time.  Fortunately, Tallulah is just fine, and has been tending to Jonah’s wounds with both bandages and “Mr. Chow’s special deliveries” (presumably opium-laced cigarettes, knowing of Tallulah’s previous experience with the drug).  Jonah has told Tallulah nothing about how he came to be in such a state, nor does he want her hanging around, but she feels indebted to him and refuses to leave (there’s also the fact that they still fancy each other a bit -- “Just holler if I break anything important,” Tallulah says as she pulls off her shirt and climbs into bed with him).  Four days later, Jonah feels well enough to leave the hotel they’ve been holed up in, and Tallulah has managed to ferret out where Sawbones is now.  Apparently, Jonah did fess up about what happened to him, but he still doesn’t want Tallulah to help out.  He’s faced people as depraved as Sawbones before, and he’s never shied away from doing some rather gruesome stuff to folks what deserved it, yet going by the nightmares, Jonah is genuinely afraid of Tallulah falling victim to this mad doctor.  Keep in mind that one of Jonah’s first loves -- Cassie Wainwright -- was tortured to death, so perhaps his feelings towards Tallulah combined with this situation are dredging up those dreadful memories.

Whatever the reason, Jonah does go after Sawbones alone...and nearly gets captured again when one of the doctor’s disciples bushwhacks him.  Lucky for Hex, Tallulah decided to ignore his warning to stay away, and together they eliminate all of the disciples, then strap Sawbones to his own operating table so Jonah can extract a bit of justice for all those girls the doctor killed.  “Ah like fire.  Always have,” the bounty hunter says as he pours a literal bucket of blood into the doctor’s open mouth.  “There’s somethin’ ‘bout it that brings a smile ta muh face.”  He then takes a lit kerosene lantern and smashes it over Sawbone’s head, making for an exaggerated variation of the “bleed and cauterize” torture Sawbones had inflicted upon Jonah.  Tallulah makes a wry comment about it smelling like a barbecue as Jonah repeats the procedure upon the doctor, followed by an admission that “Watchin’ you work makes my blood hot.”

Despite his initial reluctance to let her help, it’s plain to see that Jonah Hex and Tallulah Black are perfect for each other.  Palmiotti & Gray made the right decision two years earlier when they let her survive in her debut tale, and Jonah's world is all the better for it.  In less than a year, however, their relationship will be tested in ways that no one should ever have to endure.

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Appendix A   |   Appendix B