No joke, here's the latest news on the Hex history project!

I wish I had some real news for you about the upcoming Jonah Hex title instead of a goofy April Fool's post on Facebook, but for those of you who were brave enough to click the link, I can tell you that Chapter 4 of my long-running Hex history project has been updated!  I’ve added lots more info, including a fuller picture of how the DC Implosion affected numerous Western characters, not just Hex, along with brief rundowns of some issues I skipped the first time around (I was really bad about that in the early days of this project).  I also covered a 1978 parody of “The Last Bounty Hunter” published in The Buyer's Guide for Comic Fandom called "The Death of Jonah Hoax" by Eddie Eddings, which was the inspiration for this year’s April Fool on VPE.  Here’s that same panel, back in its original context of “Hoax” telling fibs about his career:

Plus, if you flip back to the end of Chapter 2, you’ll find that the final paragraphs have been rewritten, thanks to something I found last month in a 1976 issue of The Comic Reader, which totally changed the story of how Jonah’s first self-titled book came to be.  While I’m constantly apologizing for the delays on this project’s physical release, those delays have benefited the overall book because I keep finding more information!  I suspect that’ll still be the case once this is published…great works are never finished, just abandoned.

Anyways, Happy April Fool’s Day, have fun, and don’t take any wooden nickels!

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!

Ol' Jonah got an early birthday gift this year!

While I am sorry to say that the book version of "An Illustrated History of Jonah Hex" is still not available yet (I'll talk more about that later), I did update Chapter 3 here on the blog, so y'all can enjoy the new info I've added.  The expansion isn't as large as when I updated Chapters 1 & 2 last year, but there's a few good-sized chunks of newness in there, so go check it out.

"Hold on," I can hear you saying, "if your book isn't done yet, then what's that picture I see here on your blog?  Looks like a Hex book to me!"  Indeed it is, it's just not mine.  A couple of days ago, I picked up the brand-spanking-new Jonah Hex: All-Star Western Omnibus, and I gotta tell you, it's gorgeous!  Even before I cracked it open, I was in love with the dustjacket design, not to mention the image concealed beneath (I adore it when publishers do stuff like that!).

In addition to containing the entirety of ASW's New 52 run -- including the backup tales-- this omnibus features lots of behind-the-scenes artwork, much of which I've never seen before, along with a new, brief interview with Jimmy Palmiotti & Justin Gray.  If you missed out on the single monthlies or just want a nice collected version, you need to get this!

That same day, I also picked up Justice League Unlimited #12 and New History of the DC Universe #4, both of which contribute new Hex-related info.  For JLU, it's the revelation by Mr. Teriffic that all our time-lost heroes are actually "quantum ghosts", each representing a single, standalone second in the existence of their true selves.  Anything that happens to them will have no consequences on the actual heroes: no knowledge of the future passed on to their past selves, no memory whatsoever of what is occurring in JLU right now...and if these "quantum ghosts" die, they'll simply cease to be, their true selves unharmed.  That means our Jonah Hex who's bouncing around with those "Legends" in the Waverider could be killed and not affect Hex's known history.  Unfortunately, other than an acknowledgement of a distress signal sent out by Airwave, we have no advancement on that particular story thread yet.  Fingers crossed we get back to it soon.

Speaking of history, the fourth and final issue of that series gave the nod to Jinny Hex and her Young Justice pals within the main story, but it's the timeline in the back that really delivers the goods, as it surprisingly refers to "Lady Hex" as a distant relative of Jinny!  This is the first mention I've seen of that gal since her last appearance in Superboy #75 (no mention of Chastity Hex from the Bizarro mini, though).  If anything, this moves our female, gargoyle-riding Hex further up when it comes to the possibility of her being Legend since Mark Waid co-wrote this timeline.  Sadly, it also moves Stiletta, Stanley Harris, and the Batman of 2050 further down due to no mention of the "Future Hex" reality on their list of possible futures (that reality may be gone for good, seeing as we're less than 25 years away from it now).

So, lots of goodies for Hex fans here on his 187th birthday...but no published Hex history book yet.  I want to sincerely apologize for the lack of movement there: I've done very little editing since last year, as I've frankly been distracted by the world slowly falling apart.  It's been hard to peel my eyes off the social media feeds and do real work.  Add in that fact that sales of Swords & Sixguns: An Outlaw's Tale have trickled to near-nothing, with me sometimes not even making back my table fees at cons over the past year, and I have been occasionally slipping into depression a couple times a month.  Just thoughts of "Why bother?" for a day or two, then I'll pull out of it and go on like normal, but not necessarily sitting down to write or edit.

After my last big show that resulted once again in just a couple of books sold, my husband and I discussed the situation, and came to the decision that I needed to take a sabbatical for a year.  No con appearances save for Dawn of the Collectors because it's literally 5 minutes from our house and we sell more than my book at those (e.g. toys and comics), and even that will only be 2-3 shows.  So no Fantasticons, no Free Comic Book Days.  Let's see if they miss me.  I'm also doing my damnedest once more to stop fiddling with social media, which is really hard because I understand how scrolling acts like a dopamine hit on your brain.  I've struggled with it for years, so here's hoping I can kick it this time.  I want to concentrate all my energy and attention on writing so I can come back to the cons in 2027 stronger and with more to offer.

Since my sales are obviously going to tank with no con presence, I will be putting a couple new items up on my online store pretty soon, so if you want to help financially, go over there and buy something.  Other than that, I plan on being fairly quiet aside from my weekly commitments over on the "Jonah Hex, Via Pony Express" FB page (frankly, putting together dumb stuff for #Memeday posts is a fun way to decompress).  If you get worried about me, drop me a line and I'll respond as soon as I can.  Anyways, that's it for now.  Go raise a glass to Jonah and have a great weekend, y'all.

Who is Legend (All Dudes Edition)

As I’d hoped, my previous blog post did spark some conversation about who Legend really is, with at least one name tossed out that I hadn’t considered.  Since we’ve covered all the possibilities of the female persuasion (though I did miss a few the first time out…head on back and scroll to the bottom to see who I added!), I thought I’d go over all the men-folk this time, just in case I’m barking up the wrong tree with that “Don’t blame a girl for wishing” comment.

Now, before I get started, let me cross one name off the suspect list, despite having multiple run-ins with Hex: Swamp Thing.  Seriously, the two of them have crossed paths three times over the past 36 years, but if you’re gonna try and convince me that big ol’ Swampy squeezed himself into that armor without anything oozing out, you’ve got a serious uphill battle, kiddo.

And for those wondering why the Lord of Time isn’t on here, even though he’d seem like the #1 contender for Legend due to him fucking with Hex on two separate occasions…that dude was slaughtered within the first few pages of the Justice League: Dark Tomorrow Special.  Seriously, one of them Omega Demons punched a hole though his chest.  Seems he changed his name to Epoch at some point -- a fact I learned when checking up on his status for this post -- so I didn’t know it was him when I read the comic.  Damn shame, as I was formulating an “Iron Lad from Young Avengers” situation in my head.

Okay, same rules as last time, minus the presumption that Legend is female.  Here we go...

SUPERMAN: Only a single meeting near the end of J&J’s All-Star Western run, but we’re counting it.  I don’t know about you, but I seriously doubt it’s him, if only because we already have at least two Supermen running around by the end of the “We Are Yesterday” arc.  Why add another, especially one that appears to be rather non-super?  Also, Supergirl was listening to Legend’s heartbeat to see if they were telling the truth, and something tells me she’d recognize that heart as her cousin’s.

BATMAN: Bruce had a Black Lantern version of Hex as his righthand man during Dark Nights; Death Metal, they teamed up in the Batman Giant Walmart series, he sprang Jonah from jail during the aforementioned ASW, not to mention the bounty hunter’s associations with the Waynes during the 1880s…fuck, Hex is pretty much honorary Bat-family at this point!  All that being said, there’s the same issue here as with Superman -- multiple Bats running around, so why add another? -- plus Legend’s dialogue doesn’t 100% ring true as Bruce’s.  The real clincher for me dismissing Bruce as a suspect is how he talks about Helena Wayne aka Huntress as being “Batman and Catwoman’s daughter”.  Not his daughter.  So does Bruce compartmentalize his thoughts that damn much?  Maybe.  You know who might think of Helena that way, though?

THE BATMAN OF 2050: A longshot only in the sense that he was presumed dead after his last appearance in HEX, but there was no dead body shown, and know you the rules of comics, folks.  The idea of our time traveler being the historian who found the Batcave after Bruce’s death and resurrected his legend (pun intended) after the bombs dropped in 2045 seems very plausible.  If he could find the Batcave, he might also find one of the old Justice League HQs and some time travel equipment, then try to stop the apocalypse before it happens (see what I said about Stiletta in the previous post).  We’re also back to the “helmet points as bat ears” notion, which would also apply if Legend does end up being Bruce…yeah, I’m gonna keep bringing up this vague feature until we find out who’s under that helmet.

STANLEY HARRIS: This one was suggested by Dwayne Hendrickson of Matching Dragoons, and admittedly, this didn’t occur to me prior to my concentrating solely on female suspects, and I kick myself for not thinking of it.  The time-displaced Vietnam soldier who begrudgingly teamed up with our favorite bounty hunter during HEX, Harris would eventually be given superpowers and drafted into the Dogs of War (“As far as ‘rag tag’, ain’t nobody more rag tag than the Dogs of War!” Dwayne said, and I wholeheartedly agree).  Last seen taking off into space with his team in order to head off an alien invasion, there’s nothing to say he couldn’t have gone bouncing through time afterward.  However, I will dismiss one clue that Dwayne pointed out, namely the coffee-colored sleeves of Legend’s armor.  Dwayne believes that to be bare skin (Harris being African-American), but that same color is present on the lower half of the suit, especially over the crotch.  So unless Legend has the features of a Ken doll and is walking around pantsless, I’m presuming they’re completely covered, with no bare skin at all showing.  Damn shame, as narrowing down their race would’ve trimmed the list even more than narrowing down their gender.

BOOSTER GOLD: Another suggestion, this time by Darren Schroeder of the Jonah Hex Corral and founder of the Jonah Hex, Via Pony Express Facebook page.  While I personally dismissed Booster as a cheat since he’s already a time traveler, Darren pointed out that “he’s always doing that ‘fake ID cause I don’t want to get caught or break time’ Kind of B.S.”.   Good point, Darren.  I’d still consider it a cheat, but then again, Jonah slugged Booster real damn hard last time they saw each other in ASW, so yeah, I’d want to hide my face too and avoid a repeat.

THE FLASH: Barry Allen has encountered Jonah twice, and he certainly has more than enough time-travel experience, but unless he’s become depowered, I don’t know why he’d be depending on a timeship instead of just bopping through the Speed Force like usual.  Low odds.

GREEN LANTERN(S): My mind is mainly on Hal Jordan here, but John Stewart got to meet Hex during Crisis on Infinite Earths, so we’ll group the two Lanterns together.  For sure, both Hal and John have experience with “failure and redemption”, and there’s always the possibility of them losing their rings and having to rely more on tech.

HAWKMAN: Same rationale as Hawkgirl, this time via his former incarnation of Nighthawk.  On a side note, do you realize how damn nuts it is that Jonah Hex knows so many classic Justice League members?  I bet there’s actual people in the League that haven’t met as many as him!

STEVE TREVOR: In case you didn’t look back at the previous post for my revision, I added Wonder Woman and a few others due to Hex running into them in the Walmart Justice League/Wonder Woman Giant titles.  One of the few men in that storyline -- other than ol’ Jonah, of course -- was Steve Trevor, and though they barely even spoke to one another, I’m adding him to this list just to be a completist, as I seriously doubt he’s Legend.  Be a nice surprise, though, giving him some character development unrelated to the Amazon.

JOHN CONSTANTINE: Near-zero odds because Legend doesn’t swear enough, plus Constantine isn’t one to rely on technology.

Okay, pretty sure I’ve got all the angles covered this time.  Once again, comments are encouraged, and more posts will come when we learn anything new regarding Legend and/or Jonah Hex.  Really hoping we get something in the next JLU issue, because I hate waiting!

Who is Legend, and how do they know Hex?

 

Though I’ve been reading Mark Waid’s Justice League Unlimited since the first issue, I hadn’t planned on picking up the Justice League: Dark Tomorrow Special.  I’d already been skipping the other JLU spinoffs because they didn’t seem necessary to understand the main story, but when I took a peek at a preview for the Special, I saw our favorite bounty hunter would be present, and I am morally obligated as Jonah Hex’s P.R. agent to but virtually every appearance I can get my hands on, so…yeah, I bought it.

Up until reading this comic, I’d been a little miffed at Waid.  He told us way back in February that he’d figured out how to work Hex into JLU, yet the three dang issues the character appeared in so far had amounted to background filler and one line of dialogue.  Sorry, sir, I need more Hex than that to be happy, please and thank you.

And now I got freakin’ more.  I got ol’ Jonah shootin’ folks in the head, and I don’t care that they’re just faceless demon-shadow -thingies, it was still fun to see Jonah cut loose.  I also got some spot-on characterization when he straight-up told the Leaguers “No” in regards to joining their little excursion into time and space (even though he did in the end, the initial resistance is what counts), followed by him stating bluntly that he is not a hero.  So yay yay happy me!

I also got a mystery in the form of a new character referred to as Legend…or at least the appearance is new.  According to Legend themselves, they are a time traveler, and telling the Leaguers who they truly are under that armor and full-face helmet could supposedly lead to a paradox.  Luckily, nearly all the narration boxes in the issue come directly from Legend, and there are clues to be found there, with the biggest two coming at the bottom of the page revealing the time-lost folks who’ve been enlisted to help:

Legend privately admitting that they and Hex have a shared history jumped out at me like a neon sign.  Though Jonah’s been racking up some serious frequent-flyer miles in the past decade or so, his interactions with future-folk are still limited enough that I can pretty much make a list of who this Legend person may be, using the other clues scattered throughout to narrow the list further, starting with the “Don’t blame a girl for wishing” line Legend lets slip in regards to Marilyn Moonlight.  Throughout the issue, Legend is referred to with they/them pronouns, meaning they’re not even letting on what their gender is, so this internal dialogue implies that Legend is a woman (and possibly LGBTQ+, as it also implies an attraction to the newest cowpoke in DC’s Western stable).  Presuming our target is indeed female, that knocks quite a few people out of the running…and though Hex refers to Legend as “him” at one point, I doubt the bounty hunter can wrap his brain around the concept of gender-neutral pronouns, so I’m dismissing that.

Other clues are more vague but still potentially helpful: Legend’s manner of speaking (casual, the occasional swear or bit of snark), their statement about having experience with “ragtag” teams, their confession to Airwave that they know “more than a little bit” about failure and redemption, their throwaway line about Hex being “another satisfied customer” when the bounty hunter praises the powerful ammo he got from Legend’s timeship, the Waverider (yep, they just made the ship from Legends of Tomorrow canon), not to mention how incredibly well-versed they are in regards to DCU history, all the way up to the Legion of Super-Heroes.  Whoever they are, they’ve been bopping around the timestream for a good long while.

Speaking of the timestream, I want to make clear that I have no idea when in time ol’ Jonah got snatched up, much less what is still canon when it comes to his future-folk interactions.  Since Mark Waid is doing the writing, that says to me anything is possible, therefore I’m not discounting any character/storyline that may’ve been erased by retcons.  I’m also presuming that Waid isn’t crafting this Hex/Legend connection out of whole cloth (that’d be cheating, sir!), so all these guesses are based on documented interactions over the past 50+ years of Hex history.

Okay, ground rules are established.  Let’s look over the list, in no particular order…

BATWOMAN: After bopping around with the new version of the Outsiders (aka the low-key Planetary sequel) for nearly a year, the idea of Kate Kane becoming a time traveler somewhere down the line doesn’t seem far-fetched.  And I daresay the term “ragtag” does fit those Outsiders well, plus Kate does have a “failure and redemption” thing in her past.  There is also that fact that, from a certain angle, Legend’s helmet does come to two points at the back…not full-on bat ears, but it’s something I noticed.  As for her Hex run-in, it’s a little tenuous, seeing as how ol’ Jonah was a ghost at the time, but I’m counting it.

JINNY HEX: Speaking of Outsiders, the same issue where Batwoman ran into a ghostly Hex is the same where his many-times-great-granddaughter Jinny got introduced to the group, making that the second “ragtag” team she’s a part of (the first being Young Justice, of course).  I’d say being kin to the man qualifies as having “literal” history with him, and then there’s the matter of that trunk she inherited…Lord knows, there might’ve been a time-travel device buried inside!  When you add in the notion implied near the end of the Outsiders run -- that Jinny Hex may be a Century Baby, making her potentially long-lived -- the odds of her being Legend go up.

CHASTITY HEX OR “LADY HEX”: On the subject of descendants, I’m putting these two on the board as longshots.  Neither have been seen or mentioned outside of the respective titles that introduced them (the Bizarro miniseries and Superboy, respectively), but knowing Mark Waid’s penchant for obscure characters, I’m not discounting the possibility of one of them turning up.  I put higher odds on Chastity due to her heading off to space in her last appearance, plus her penchant for jetpacks and rayguns, but overall, I’d still be shocked if Legend was one of them.

HARLEY QUINN: Another longshot, as Legend’s dialogue doesn’t sound like how Harley talks whatsoever, but she recently went on a multiversal jaunt throughout DCU history, so maybe this is a much older Harley who’s a little more sane (like I said, it’s a longshot).  There’s also the fact that, when she met Jonah Hex during the Dark Nights: Death Metal event (a Black Lantern Hex, but it still counts!), the two of ‘em had a bit of a talk about doing more to fight for good than for evil, and to me that falls under the “failure and redemption” category.

HAWKGIRL: This one is a bit of a cheat, as I’m thinking specifically about her past life as Cinnamon, who has definitely met Hex, plus it’d be a nice callback to her being on the original Legends of Tomorrow team.  I also think the idea of having someone who’s lived so many lives also ending up as a time traveler is interesting.  And remember those two points on the helmet that I said could be bat ears?  They could also very well be a suggestion of the “wings” that both Hawks tend to have on their masks.

STILETTA: Of all the people I’m listing, this is the one I’m rooting hardest for.  I am not a big fan of the “Future Hex” era as envisioned by Michael Fleisher, but over the past 20 years, I’ve come to appreciate its potential.  I want to see Mark Waid take the idea and do this own spin on it.  Have Stiletta unearth her father’s time travel equipment and improve on it, then she puts it to good use by helping people in her own era and across time (that’s how the “another satisfied customer” line could fit in).  There’s the question of whether or not that would put HEX back into the DCU’s main timeline or remain an alternate future, but if it’s the former, it’d be a heck of a premise to build on: stop the nuclear holocaust of 2045 from happening (hard to believe what sounded like a far-off date in 1985 is just around the corner!).

***LAST-MINUTE ENTRY***: I can’t believe this one slipped my mind!  In the Justice League/Wonder Woman Giants released through Walmart back in 2018, Jonah got mixed up in an adventure involving Wonder Woman, Cheetah, Etta Candy, and an alien princess named Sibella.  The story is way too complicated to explain here -- suffice it to say it involves time travel shenanigans and alien fights to the death -- but it’s unusual in that nearly everyone Hex deals with is female (there’s also a military officer named Kate, but I think she’s just made up for the story…sorry, Wonder Woman lore is out of my area).  Anyways, I put even near-zero odds on Legend being Wondy, because while I’m no expert on the Amazon, she does have a particular way of talking, and it doesn’t match Legend’s dialogue one bit.  However, I could see Cheetah talking like that (and once again, those points on the helmet could be possible cat ears).  A presumably-reformed Cheetah would also fit the “failure and redemption” angle, the Legion of Doom qualifies as “ragtag”, and I bet dollars to dumplings that, even reformed, she’d take advantage of time travel to do a little business (hence “another satisfied customer”).  Etta Candy is also possible, but I seriously doubt it’d be Sibella, as she doesn’t exist outside of this story as far as I’m aware.  Her people do have some serious time travel tech, though…

So that’s what I’ve got.  If you can think of anyone else who might fit the parameters we know so far, let me know in the comments and I’ll add them to the list (or maybe make a whole new one!).  I'm also adding a "Legends" tag so you can easily look up any posts dealing with them, as well as any past/future Legends of Tomorrow posts.  I’m hoping we don’t have to wait too long for the reveal (maybe it’ll come during this DC K.O. event they mention at the end?), but in the meantime, let’s keep our eyes peeled for clues…and more Jonah Hex!

Blue skies smiling at me...

 Thirteen years ago, after a stumbling start, I joined Facebook with the notion of using it to help promote my then-upcoming novel.  As I said at the time, I'm neither social nor do I network, so I didn't really have a desire to deal with the site, but hey, I wanted to sell books, and I reckon the Swords & Sixguns page I set up there helped to a small degree.  It also led to me to becoming admin for the Jonah Hex, Via Pony Express page because I simply asked Darren Schroeder if he ever considered setting up a FB version of the Yahoo group he ran (good thing I did, too, 'cause Yahoo Groups is long gone!).

Fast-forward to today: the S&S page has 334 followers and VPE has more than three times as many (the old buzzard has the advantage of name recognition).  Considering that I've never bought one ad on FB, I think that's pretty good, but I daresay those numbers may not get any bigger thanks to the algorithm actively working against virtually every page out there (and no, putting money into this won't help, as I've seen enough other, much-bigger pages report that ad buys no longer move the needle).  Still, I don't want to lose those numbers, so I keep on keeping on over there, but from what I've been hearing lately, it seems like the general environment at FB might reach a point where many folks abandon the place altogether.  In fact, over the last few months, I've seen that a good amount of people have been setting up accounts over at the Twitter-ish site BlueSky.

Now, I've been long resisting the pressure to set up on another social media site, but I've finally decided that having a backup isn't a bad idea.  That's actually why I started this blog: years ago, when the future of the DC Message Boards was in question, I set up here and let other Jonah Hex fans know about it in case that place went kablooey...and it eventually did, so good call by me.  So yesterday, I set up an account on BlueSky, which will serve as a combo of all three of the FB pages I have: my personal page, my S&S page, and a trimmed-down version of what I do over on VPE (the lack of a Photo section on BlueSky prevents me from doing much of what VPE has become known for).  It'll be a different vibe, to be sure, but I plan on keeping things fun, especially since I plan on unleashing the massive meme archive I've accumulated over the years upon the place.

So, if you're on BlueSky, look me up under "Susan Hillwig" and help me build this new venue into something special.

Kindled, then extinguished

 Got an email from KDP recently letting me know that they were discontinuing the Kindle Vella program, due to it not taking off the way Amazon expected since it began in December 2021.  Frankly, the response to the two stories I'd started on the platform was a bit underwhelming, as you can see by the graph here depicting every time someone read at least one chapter.  Most folks appeared to pop in, read one or two chapters, then leave.  Two ambitious folks read both stories in their entirety, but despite including my email at the end of virtually every chapter and damn-near begging people to drop me a line if they liked it, I never got any feedback save for getting some thumbs-up marks on the chapters (which I honestly didn't even notice until today).  Since they're shutting down the whole dang program, I imagine this was typical for most of the writers who tried it out.

On the upside, I made nearly twenty bucks thanks to KDP sending participants bonuses for contributing to the program.  It's a damn sight better than the royalties those two stories earned, which amounted to about forty cents over those three years.  Not exactly a hidden goldmine, right?

So, what now?  The stories will be finished eventually, so if you're one of the few who read them, physical copies will one day exist, but I wanna get the published version of my Jonah Hex history project done first, not to mention the second Swords & Sixguns novel.  Low response means low priority, unless y'all want to convince me otherwise.

And if you never read them at all, then you've got until February 2025 to read them on your Kindle.  You can find the first four chapters of Godheart here, and the first seven chapters of Forgotten Be Thy Name over here....and if you like them, for goodness sakes, tell me!

An EXPANDED History of Jonah Hex!

 

While the book version of "An Illustrated History of Jonah Hex" is not ready for publication yet, I have made enough progress to officially say that the edits on Chapter 1 and 2 -- encompassing the entirety of Jonah's time at All-Star Western/Weird Western Tales -- are 100% COMPLETE!  Unless something earthshattering is uncovered prior to publication or I stumble across a massive typo, I'm not noodling with those chapters anymore.

In celebration of this feat, the first two Hex history posts on this here blog have been expanded with all-new material, making them 2-3 times longer than the originals!  I've added a couple of new images as well, though I've decided to remove the hyperlinks since I no longer use Photobucket, as well as me doing my level best to get all the info "on the page" this time around since that's how it'll be in book form.

Okay, that's enough chatter.  If you want to read the updated chapters, you'll find the new Chapter 1 here and the new Chapter 2 over here.  Hope you enjoy them, and don't forget to wish Jonah Hex a happy 186th birthday!

Hex history update AND MORE!

Progress on the book version of "An Illustrated History of Jonah Hex" is still proceeding at a slow pace, but it has gotten far enough along that, this November 1st, I will be updating the first 2 chapters on this blog with BRAND NEW MATERIAL!  That's right, y'all will be getting a sneak preview of what the book version will look like!  I haven't decided yet if I'll update every single chapter, but the first chapter alone is now double its original length, so it didn't seem fair to hide all that new info in the book alone.

In related news, my work has once again been cited in another article!  Nathan Cabaniss of Screenrant contacted me a month or so ago after coming across my blog, as he was looking for some info about a 1980s write-in campaign to get Clint Eastwood to make a Jonah Hex movie.  I informed him that the Eastwood/Hex connection went MUCH deeper than he expected, which soon led to a full-fledged article with quotes from Yours Truly!  You can read all about it right here on Screenrant...and yes, this story will be covered in a much briefer form in Chapter 1!

Okay, I gotta get back to work.  Two weeks to go until the update drops!

Your plastic pal who's fun to be with

 

Got the new Jonah Hex figure from McFarlane Toys in the mail last week, so I decided to shoot my very first unboxing video!  It's nearly 25 minutes of me talking Hex and cracking little jokes.  Hope you enjoy it, and if you want your very own plastic bounty hunter, go to the McFarlane Toys online store and order your own while you still can!

What's it like having your name in a book? (guest post)

 *NOTE: All the posts this month will be written my by husband, Jamin Hillwig, as I do my darnedest to make headway on the published version of my Hex history project.  Enjoy!

You’re going to laugh but, before Swords & Sixguns came out, my name was already in a book. A famous book. It’s called the Holy Bible. The name "Jamin" is only in there a few times, 6 to be exact throughout the Old Testament, mostly in reference to the Sons of Simeon. My mom thought it was pretty. The fact of the matter is that me and Susan were broken up at the time she decided to name a major character in her book after me… So, I don’t want to hear any nepotism crap, okay?

Here’s a funny story: My older brother got a copy of Susan's book. He was really digging it because he likes the Old West. Anyways, he’s reading and enjoying the story then “Jamin” shows up. He said, (and this is a direct quote) ”I could mentally hear the needle skip across the record.”… Yeah, I know. He’s just jealous.

Actually, seeing my last name "Hillwig" in a comic was pretty cool. It about scared the shit out of me, too. So, there we were years and years ago, sitting on the couch reading our new comics and Susan starts screaming, screaming like she’s dying! “WHAT?! WHAT?! WHAT, DAMMIT?!? ARE YOU OKAY?!? WHAT?!?” , I scream at her. She points at the page in her comic. Then I start screaming like I’m dying. Susan and the authors of the comic book had been corresponding for awhile and I guess they decided to give her a little surprise.

I looked around the internet. There are a few noteworthy Hillwigs. One is a doctor, one is an astronomer, and at least one was a Union soldier in the American Civil War. But how many of them can say they have their name in the Bible, a novel, AND a comic book?

The decision is made!

At the end of my last post, I asked y'all to weigh in regarding which project should take priority for 2024: my second novel or the Hex history book.  I got two responses -- one for each project -- so I had to do the tiebreaker myself.  In the end, I decided on the Hex history book, not only because it's closer to completion, but I can also put an ad in the back for Swords & Sixguns at the low rate of absolutely free (the advantages of self-publishing!).

Since making the decision, I've made some progress in multiple areas:

- I've figured out how to scale up the images I need to 300 dpi with minimal fuss.  There's still a ton of work to be done there, but at least I've narrowed it down to a few mouse clicks as opposed to the clunky method I thought I'd be stuck with.

- The Introduction is done, plus I've added three new pages so far to Chapter 1, giving readers a "lay of the land" as to what the comics landscape and Westerns in general looked like at the time of Jonah's creation.  Like I said in my previous post, those first couple chapters are a kinda bare-bones compared to the later ones.  I'm aiming for at least 10 pages per chapter, not counting images.

- While I don't know how long the final book will be, I can tell you it won't exceed 500 pages, because that's the maximum amount I can do through my printer.  Each chapter will have at least two images in it, to be certain, but whether I include more than that -- along with how much extra stuff I can pack at the end beyond the already-written Appendix A and B -- will depend on how much of the page count is taken up by the main text.

- For those curious about dimensions, I'm currently formatting the book at 7x10 inches, since this is as close to "comic size" as my printer offers.  The idea is that, when complete, you can comfortably slip it onto your bookshelf next to your Hex trades and have it blend in fairly well (it might also fit into a comic box with minimal fuss, depending on the type you use).  Both the paperback and hardcover editions will be roughly the same size...and yes, there will be a Kindle version!

- The Afterword is already complete, and it's not written by me!  I asked actor Johnathon Schaech -- who initially spurred me into turning this blog series into a book -- to write some thoughts about playing ol' Jonah, and boy oh boy, did he deliver!  He's also sent me various photos over the years, some of which will end up in the book.  Plus Seth Albano -- grandson of Hex creator John Albano -- has agreed to write the Foreword, and I'm hoping he'll supply some photos as well.

That's about all I have to report at the moment.  Between working on the book and the fast-approaching con season, I likely won't have much time for blogging over the next few months, so in my absence, my husband has volunteered to write a few guest posts in March.  We're referring to it as "Assistant Editors' Month", so expect a bit of shenanigans.  See you then!

 

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!