A Meeting and a Departure

It's been a bit of an emotional roller-coaster for me the last few days when it comes to Jonah Hex stuff: one big high point followed by one bigger low point.  The low you probably already know about, and I'll get to it later, as I would much rather start with the high. 

This past Saturday,  my husband and I made our annual pilgrimage to the Motor City Comic Con.  Money's still kinda tight around Hillwig HQ, so we had a limited budget, but we each managed to obtain our major targets.  For Jamin, it was autographs from Chris Sarandon and Robert Hays, and for myself, it was getting a chance to finally meet the legendary Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez.

Since I write so much about Hex, you probably think that's where I got hooked on the artist, since he had a good run on Weird Western Tales and Jonah Hex, but I actually knew him from further back, thanks to that big ol' stack of comics my dad would bring home from work.  Mixed into that stack were a few issues of Atari Force, the earliest one being #8.  My 10-year-old self was instantly drawn in, both by Gerry Conway's story and Garcia-Lopez's art.  I fell instantly in love with his style, and when I found out that he was also responsible for creating many of the images used for DC's licensed products, it pretty much blew my mind, because it meant that his work graced all those puzzles and paint-by-numbers and other things that my dad's company made (it also meant that I had scribbled all over a Batman marker-by-number poster with his stuff on it as a kid...my coloring skills haven't improved much since then).  This guy was everywhere, perfectly capturing the image of every DCU character that he rendered.

When I got into Jonah Hex, I eventually stumbled upon the Garcia-Lopez issues, and once again had my mind blown.  As I mentioned when chronicling his first Hex story for my li'l history project, the way he draws the character differs greatly from how so many others have done it over the years.  All those crisp lines and pitch-perfect expressions that Garcia-Lopez is famous for seem like they wouldn't fit in a Jonah Hex story, but it becomes like a breath of fresh air.  Dwayne over at Matching Dragoons points to one issue in particular -- Jonah Hex #32 -- as being one of the most outstanding Hex stories ever produced, mainly due to Garcia-Lopez's art.  He took what Tony DeZuniga originally envisioned and distilled it into a form that can stand next to all the characters he's ever worked on, so that Jonah fits in perfectly without losing anything that makes the character what he is (weird fact: Garcia-Lopez is the only Hex artist I've ever seen that remembers to add the little deerskin pouch onto Jonah's belt that Tony DeZuniga always put on there...seriously, go look at a bunch of renderings and see if you can spot it).

Needless to say, when I found out he was going to be at the con, I was bound and determined to meet him.  I sent him a note via Facebook, asking if he would be doing sketches (some artists don't do them at cons anymore) and was thrilled when he sent a positive reply.  I will admit, I geeked out heavily, bouncing up and down a bit from overexcitement before I even spoke with the man -- when he looked up at me and said, "I remember you," presumably from my Facebook pic, I just about went over the moon.  Thanks goodness Garcia-Lopez had some original pieces laying out on his table in portfolios, as the images helped me find the words I wanted to get out.  "This is the first work of yours I ever saw," I told him, pointing at some Atari Force pages (yes indeed, he still has four in his possession...they're a couple hundred bucks apiece if you're interested).  Then I pointed at a recent Jonah Hex piece he'd done and said, "But today, I'm here for him."

He gladly did a head-shot of Jonah for me (his fourth of the day, according to his assistant), and as he worked, I told him that I'd been enjoying the Madame .44 backup he'd been doing in All-Star Western, but I'd love to see him draw one more Hex story.  I know quite a few folks who've been hoping for the same ever since the character came back in late 2005, as Garcia-Lopez's version is so quintessential.  I reckon that's why my hands began to shake when he handed the sketchbook back to me -- I actually had to put the book down on the table and lay my hands flat upon it until I was sure I could hold onto it.  I must've thanked him a dozen times before, during, and after he did that sketch, and even now, I look at it in disbelief.  Buying that Tony DeZuniga piece earlier this year was phenomenal, but this...I stood there while Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez himself drew it!  I swear, Jonah's staring at me from the page as if to say, "Yuh ain't worthy tuh own this."

I was still somewhat giddy about the whole experience when my husband broke the bad news to me Tuesday morning: All-Star Western has been cancelled.  The final issue -- #34 -- will be released in August, wrapping things up just before DC does their next big event...which I have absolutely no interest in.  After ASW's departure, the only two DC titles left on my pull-list are Harley Quinn and the upcoming G.I. Zombie, both co-written by Jimmy Palmiotti (who appears to be the only reason I still buy DC these days), so if they get tangled up in this "Future's End" mess coming in September, that'll be my only exposure to it.  I've talked about this conundrum before, how I've been drifting away from the current DCU offerings even though they're the ones who got me interested in comics to begin with, and to be honest, I figured that, when Jonah got the axe, that would be the end of my association with DC, but things keep ending up on my pull-list here and there (Li'l Gotham ended a few months back, but I'm also signed on for the Batman '66/Green Hornet mini, and Sandman: Overture occasionally shows up in my box was well), so for now, my connection with the DCU is not fully severed.

After they did a "skip month" last September, I figured ASW's cancellation was only a matter of time.  I still held out hope that we'd get another year out of the book, though, or maybe fortune would smile upon ol' Jonah, and he'd actually make it all the way to issue #55, thereby enabling Jimmy & Justin to surpass Fleisher's record for number of Hex stories written (and maybe we'd get some new Garcia-Lopez art out of the deal, as well).  Of course, that isn't going to happen now, but I am happy they'll have 106 tales under their belt when it's all over...twenty shy of Fleisher, but still a damn respectable number.  Add in the guest-shots, the cartoon appearances, the action figures, plus the movie (yes, it was lousy, but it still happened), and you've gotta admit, the past nine years have been very, very good for Jonah Hex.  It's been over four decades since his creation, but that sonovabitch is still here, and just because his title is bring cancelled doesn't mean he'll cease to exist.  Over six years passed between HEX#18 and Jonah Hex: Two-Gun Mojo #1, and another six passed between the last issue of Jonah Hex: Shadows West and the first issue of Palmiotti & Gray's tenure on the character.  If the trend holds, and those fellas don't crank out a special or something after August 2014 passes (thereby skewing the numbers), Jonah will claw his way back onto the comic book racks sometime around 2020.  Hunker down, be patient, and keep your eyes peeled for more guest-shots in other titles -- any time there's a whiff of the Old West in a DC book, Jonah's there more often than not.

As for myself, I'll continue to keep Jonah's memory alive in my own peculiar fashion.  And that's really the key to bringing the old man back on a large scale: we can't let folks forget about him.  I really do enjoy writing the Hex-fics and such, but part of the drive to do them has always been to raise Jonah's profile, and to get people interested enough in the character that they'd go out and plunk money down for his books.  Justin Gray told me years ago that he should buy me a shot of whiskey for every new Hex-nut I'd brought into the fold, to which I replied that I'd already roped so many in, he owed me a whole bottle.  Now there's no book to hype (save for my own...release date still pending), but that doesn't mean the work stops.  Yes, I can switch to a lower gear, especially since I now have a paying gig with Permuted Press, but until the ideas totally dry up in my brain or I simply run out of Hex-related things to talk about, I'll keep chugging along.

To that end, I'm doing my best to set up a schedule, as opposed to my usual scattershot method of writing this stuff.  "An Illustrated History of Jonah Hex" will become a bi-annual thing, with new parts being released on November 1st (Jonah's birthday) and May 1st (exactly 6 months later) until we hit the end, after which I'll start to work on appendices, like comparing Jonah's known Civil War activities to real-life history.  As for fanfic, there's still a few tales that need to be told in Weird Western Quarterly, including the long-delayed issue  #25, so I'll get those out eventually, and of course, there's the ongoing saga of Jonah Hex: Shades of Gray, which I plan on writing for a good long time.  With no regular Hex title being published, this'll be the only way to get new stories for the foreseeable future, so if you like what I'm doing with Jonah, let me know...and if you hate it, let me know that as well (I also encourage you to write your own fics, and if you do, send me a link, I'd love to read someone else's take on Jonah).  I don't have a schedule pinned down for WWQ or SoG as of yet, but I'm working on it.

And now I shall make a promise to all my fellow Hex-nuts out there: if my novel series Swords & Sixguns becomes a hit, and I gain enough clout that I can actually wrangle a meeting with The Powers That Be at DC Comics, I will do my damnedest to bring Jonah Hex back to the racks, even if it's just a one-off special (this is presuming he's not already there in this hypothetical scenario).  There's a couple of tales rattling around in my brain that I'm holding in reserve just in case the opportunity ever arises.  Until that day comes, though, tell others about Jonah Hex.  Buy the trades from DC.  Join us on the "Jonah Hex, Via Pony Express" Facebook page so you don't miss any news that might pop up.  Draw pictures, write stories, dress up as Hex or Tallulah Black or the other DC Western folk at conventions, do anything you can to keep that memory alive.

 Because Jonah Hex will come back one day, and it'll be nice to have friends waiting for him when he arrives.

52 Pick-Up

Okay, at the end of my last ramble, I said I would give you a rundown of what DC Comics titles I'm buying come September.  I've been doing a lot of looking around since then, reading creator interviews and Newsarama/CBR articles and scrutinizing all the solicits, and I've realized that there's a lot more books I'm interested in than I thought.

First up is the sure thing, the one that I'd buy no matter what, even if they passed some sort of comics law that said "Only one title per person": All-Star Western.

When I became a regular comics-buyer, Jonah Hex didn't have a title anymore.  He was a member of the original stack, though, and thanks to a nascent interest in westerns, I sought him out in the back-issue boxes.  I got hooked really quick, but aside from the three Vertigo minis in the 1990s (which aren't the best representation of him), I never got to experience the thrill of getting a brand-new Jonah Hex comic every month until 2005.  I've been VERY happy with what Palmiotti & Gray have brought to the character (and have told them so many times), so while I am upset that Jonah's losing his self-titled book, I am glad that he's not losing J&J.  Plus we'll be getting back-up stories with all the other DC Western folk, so more bang for the buck.  Only shaky step for me is Jonah staying in 1880s Gotham long-term: He's not comfortable in cities, so this is going to be a little odd...but on the other hand, it'll make him even more ornery than usual, and that's always fun.

Coming in second place is DC Universe Presents.  I'm a sucker for anthology titles, and I've always had a fondness for Deadman (the original stack contained reprints of his Neal Adams-drawn debut) that's only grown since Brightest Day.  I'll give it a flip first, but most likely. this is a buy.

Everything after this is one "maybe" after another.  I'll give them all a good hard look on release, but I don't know how many will become monthly pulls.  In no particular order:

Green Lantern: I've been a regular buyer of GL since Rebirth, but I'm starting to feel burned out.  The Emerald Knight has been going on one Crusade after another for...what, two years?  Three?  Not to say I haven't enjoyed the stories, but when was the last time this space cop busted somebody?  Yeah, I don't remember, either.  I also might take a peek at the Red Lanterns title, simply because I like Dex-Starr...if the rage kitty is the headliner, I'll buy it!

Birds of Prey: I've been buying BoP since it was just a special starring Oracle and Black Canary, but this...I'm not sure if this is even the same dang book.  They're really got to wow me with their #1 or I'm done.

Batgirl: On the good side, it's Gail Simone writing, and I've had this on-again/off-again interest in various Batgirls over the years, Babs included.  On the bad side, I REALLY want an explanation as to how the heck she's getting out of the wheelchair.

Swamp Thing: My taste in the big green guy leans more towards Alan Moore and Rick Vetich, but I'm curious.  I suppose that's what this whole gig is about, right?  Hooking those who are curious about one title or another and giving them jumping-on point.  Problem here is, aside from the aforementioned writers, most everyone else who's written Swampy does it quite badly, so I might run the other way screaming.

Hawk and Dove: I've kinda gotten hooked on Dove thanks to her appearances in Brightest Day and Birds of Prey, but I don't like Hawk at all, so this one's really dicey for me.  On the plus side, they mention in the solicit that Deadman is Dove's boyfriend, and I'm curious to see how this works now he's...well...dead again.

Blackhawks: Number-one reason to crack this one open on release day?  To see if Zinda Blake is in it.  I've loved Lady Blackhawk ever since her first appearance in Birds of Prey, and since it looks like she won't be there anymore, I reckon this is the most likely place for her to turn up (the book's called "Blackhawks", fer cryin' out loud!  Why wouldn't she be in it?).  Or she might no longer exist.  In which case I'll raise a beer in her honor and then cry in it.  Even if Zinda's not here, though, I might pick it up, for the same reasons I'm considering Men of War when it hits: I've been known to read war books here and there.  However, being modern warfare instead of the WWII icons they take their names from, it's iffy that I'll stay with it.

So, that's the rundown.  When we get to September, I'll give you an update of what I decided to take the plunge on and what I passed over.

I haven't dreaded September this much since I graduated high school.

Okay, time to post about the subject that finally convinced me to start a blog: DC's decision to reboot all their titles back to #1.  I'm not one of those folks on the DCMB that's screaming "I'm gonna quit, you guys suck!" or whatever, but I am a little taken aback that they're smacking the reset button with very little preamble.  Yeah, I know, it's just a "soft reboot", they're not erasing everything.  I'll believe that when the new stuff hits in September.  Right now, I feel like I'm sneaking alongside a wall, and around the corner there's all this clamor going on that I can't quite make out and I'm not sure if I want to.  Yep, this fangirl is beginning to wonder if she should cut her losses and run the other way.

I should be used to these sort of shakeups, since they've been going on literally as long as I've been reading comics.  Like I said before, I got my first taste in 1984, which is when Crisis On Infinite Earths hit.  For a full year, DC slowly tore down then rebuilt their whole universe.  Funny thing is, out of that entire stack of comics my dad gave me, very few contained references to Crisis (I somehow managed to acquire no issues of that historic 12-part miniseries), so all I knew was that, somewhere off-panel, something very big was happening.  It wasn't until 5 years later, when I became a regular reader, that I learned what "pre-Crisis" meant, and that most of my grounding in comics came from there.  I had to re-learn some things (Supergirl and Superboy never existed?), and a few post-Crisis changes were a bit too drastic for me (What the heck happened to the Legion of Super-Heroes?!?  Timber Wolf's a big furry monster!), but for the most part, I managed well enough.  Batman was still Batman, Jason Todd was still a jerk (I didn't get to vote for his death, but I didn't exactly cry over it either), and Swamp Thing was still pretty darn cool for a guy made out of algae.

As years went on, I dug into quarter boxes and got all 12 parts of COIE (yep, quarter boxes...seeing as how there was no trade edition back then, I got real lucky), as well as all the issues of Who's Who, including the updates and the looseleaf version.  I absorbed the stuff real easy, learning the differences between pre- and post-Crisis so I could flip between eras without getting lost.  I still use those books as reference when certain things come up, like what were the circumstances behind Barry Allen killing Reverse-Flash (yes, I actually looked that item up last week).  By the time Zero Hour rolled around in '94, I knew what to expect: things are going to change, be ready for it.  I agreed with many of the tweaks, especially since it gave me a version of the LSH that I quickly grew to love, but like Crisis, we all knew it was coming, it was right there in the storylines.  Even with Infinite Crisis ten years later, we had warning, and we got to watch it unfold.  Didn't think that all of DC's decisions this time around were the proper ones, but they carried it off decently enough.

Unfortunately, this is also when I began to lose faith in the DCU in general.  Just before the "One Year Later" jump, I found myself enjoying my regular titles less and less.  Green Lantern came through it fine, Jonah Hex was completely unaffected (one of the perks of living in the past!), but Batman and all the other Gothamites?  It became of downward spiral of storylines that I just didn't give a darn about.  Nightwing became the first casualty for me, and I dropped his title with little hesitation.  Then they announced that Bruce Wayne was going to die, and that both the Robin and Birds of Prey titles were getting cancelled, and I didn't flinch.  "Thanks for making the decision for me," I said.  "I just needed a good excuse to let them go."  You know how strange it was to go into the shop those first couple of months and not have a Bat-title waiting in the pull box for me?  I'd been living in Gotham City for twenty years, so you'd think it'd be a hard adjustment, but it wasn't.  I will admit, I bought the first dozen issues or so of Batgirl when they re-launched it with Stephanie Brown under the cowl, but it never caught on with me, and I just recently took those issues out of the longbox and tossed them into the sell bag for the next con, along with all the OYL Nightwing issues.  God, I used to be hardcore for the Bat, and now I look at the newer stuff and just shrug.

I got a bolster of hope after Blackest Night/Brightest Day came out.  I was enjoying the new BoP title, thanks to Gail Simone writing them again (my disappointment with the previous version didn't begin until after she left), Green Lantern was still moving along at a good pace, and Jonah Hex had just passed fifty issues (Fifty!  We were all afraid it wouldn't last twelve!).  Then the bombshell comes: "Hey, you know that Flashpoint miniseries you've been ignoring?  Well, guess what?  We using it as an excuse to reboot!  All those titles we just started up after Brightest Day...GONE!  All the anticipation over Batman and Superman closing in on the 1,000-issue mark...GONE!  No time to adjust, no time to wrap up storylines, we're just gonna throw all the readers into the deep end of the pool, and if you can't swim...oh well, we wanted to bring in new readers anyways!"

So here I am, sneaking alongside a wall, and around the corner there's all this clamor going on that I can't quite make out and I'm not sure if I want to.  Do I stay or do I go?  All I know is that my husband keeps whispering "Excelsior!" whenever I talk with him about this.  I'm not ready to fully expatriate, though (I have been buying Captain America for a few years and enjoying the heck out of it, but that's as far into Marvel territory as I've gone with my own pulls recently).  I want to stay in the DCU to some degree, I'm just not sure which section of it I'll be living in.

That's the subject of my next post: The lay of the land in DCNu as can be seen in the solicits, and what corners of it look inviting.  It'll also be my first attempt at putting up pictures on this blog-thingy.  Fingers crossed!

Secret Origin Time!

Okay, not really all that secret.  Lots of people know this stuff, I just needed a dang title.

When I was a wee fangirl growing up in Michigan, my dad worked for a toy company that later became part of Fundimensions, which was an umbrella name for MPC, Lionel Trains, and Craft Master in the mid-80s.  So, unlike most kids whose only exposure to the toy industry was TV commercials and the aisles of Toys R Us, I got pretty familiar right off the bat with the concept of licensed products.  That's not to say that I wasn't duped into liking dumb things just because a pitchman told me to, but I also knew that, when my dad went to New York not long after my birthday every year, he was going to Toy Fair to check out what was new and hot before it even hit the shelf.  I recall begging him to take me a few times, but it never worked, and in my head, New York soon became this mythical land that revolved around FAO Schwartz.  However, my dad would sometimes bring his work home with him: I still remember the night we played with a remote control R2-D2 that one of his buddies at Kenner loaned to him.  I have an RC Dalek these days that could probably run circles around it, but when I was three, this was the end-all-be-all pinnacle of coolness.  I treasured toys of all shapes and sizes, and would love to just look at the darn things in catalogs.

So that's the first link in the fangirl chain.  The second goes back to that R2-D2 toy: the mass-merchandise phenomenon that is Star Wars.  Again, I was three when this came out, and I shall be perfectly honest when I say that I screamed like the little girl I was when we saw it the theatre.  DARTH VADER SCARED ME TO DEATH!  Every time I peeked out from behind my fingers, there he was, glaring at me from the screen.  I actually refused to see The Empire Strikes Back when it came out because I knew Darth freakin' Vader was waiting to get me.  Mind you, this didn't stop me from playing with the action figures or reading the storybooks, but to go sit in that darkened auditorium?  No way no how!  Thank God I mellowed out by the time I got to elementary school, because some parent had managed to get a hold of the first reel of Star Wars, and that became a special treat over the years: going down to the lunchroom/gym, sitting cross-legged on the floor, and watching Luke and Han and Princess Leia get projected onto the cement wall (note to all you young'uns: this occurred in the days before home video, so this was the ONLY way to see the movie once it was out of the theatre!).

The third link comes from my mom, who taught me how to draw Snoopy when I was little.  Like most kids, I gravitated towards cartoons (both animated and in the newspaper), and by the age of 5, I had a goal of becoming a cartoonist (I figured I'd squeeze it in when I wasn't being an astronaut).  Because of this, I studied linework and tried to copy my favorites until I got a style down that fit me good (I also made a brief living one summer by selling my drawings to neighborhood kids...the venture collapsed within a week).  I've become a pretty fair artist since then, and I really did consider making a career out of it when I entered college, but I couldn't stand being told what to draw day after day by my teachers.  I still love looking at vintage newspaper strips and checking out what new 'toons are on TV, though the plotlines of some are just a tad too out there for my tastes.

The fourth and strongest link in my fangirliness is what sent me right over the edge.  One of the licenses that my dad's company had the rights to was DC Comics: they'd make models and magic-marker posters and rubber-stamp kits of Superman and Batman and all their Spandex buddies, and due to this, DC would occasionally send the company free comics.  These were totally random issues of whatever DC was printing the month they made the package, and one day in 1984, my dad decided to bring one of these comp packages home for us kids.  Now, keep in mind that the only comic book I'd seen before this was an Uncle Scrooge that I swiped from a friend of mine.  So here I am, a 10-year-old wannabe cartoonist with a love of overblown adventure stories, looking at this foot-high pile of reading material.  I don't know how they managed to pry the things outta my hands so I could eat dinner!  I READ EVERYTHING.  Even the stuff I probably shouldn't have been reading at age 10 like Alan Moore's Swamp Thing run and the Mature Readers-labeled Vigilante.  I didn't understand half of what was going on, but dangit, I was going to learn!

And learn I did.  Any hopes my mom had of getting me to act like a normal little girl were irrevocably shattered (not that things were looking so hot before that: I supposedly announced to her around the age of 6 that I would never put on a dress again or wear my hair in pigtails).  My already-healthy reading appetite kicked into high gear when we moved to a town that had both a public library and a comic book store within walking distance...and this was in 1989, the Year of the Batman, so I went absolutely bonkers and never looked back.  I still own about 80% of what I've termed "the original stack", and many of my current favorite comics were introduced to me there.  I'll give you a breakdown of the particulars in later posts.

So that's my secret origin.  A bunch of random events that blended together to create the craziest fangirl known to the Interwebs.  Maybe not the most unique origin, but it's the only one I've got.