Tag Archives: Jonah Hex

Comic Books/Graphic Novels

Nostalgia…

Just discovered eBay and, yeah I know, I’m really late to this particular party.

Over the past few months I’ve flown around a bit and, unlike where I live, I’ve found comic shops with pretty healthy back issue bins and its been ages since I’ve gone through back issues and picked out stuff from the past I might have had at one time and which now I really want to get my hands on again.

So I did so, but once I got back home, it was back to not having access to that stuff. Truthfully I don’t know how exactly it happened but I must have started looking around and realized I could essentially look around the entire country’s worth of stock and find copies of all that interesting stuff I used to have and no longer do.

Again: I know I’m really late to this party and I know to some it may be nonsense but…

This is a copy of Weird War Tales #39 I picked up. It has a cover date of July 1975 and I figure I must have gotten my hands on this in and around that time period… though I have no way of knowing how exactly. Over time I lost this issue but elements of it stuck with me.

In the 1970’s DC would release a vast array of comics, from superhero works (I suppose their bread and butter) but also westerns, war books, and horror series. Weird War Tales married horror and war and was a fascinating series which had some fascinating stories through its 12 year, 124 issue run.

The primary element of the above issue is Joe Kubert’s magnificent cover. Joe Kubert, to me, was pretty much the king of DC comic books covers from the late 60’s and through the 70’s and into the 80’s. If DC should decide one day to release a Omnibus edition of all the covers he created, from war books to horror books to superhero books to pulp books… I’d be the very first person in line to pick it up. The three stories presented in the book were a revelation as well. I recall the first one the best, especially its final panel which chilled the hell out of me as a kid.

I obviously wasn’t going to stop there, right? Continuing the haunted nautical theme, I also picked up Weird War Tales #27, July 1974. This one I don’t believe I had before but I recall seeing advertisements for the book in other comics I did have so it was a no brainer to buy this one. The cover here is by Luis Dominguez, I believe (a website lists it as being by Frank Robbins but I don’t think so… he did illustrate the first story so I suspect this might have been a small error). While Joe Kubert was IMHO the king of DC comic books covers, Luis Dominguez wasn’t too far behind. He made some magnificent horror and western covers during the 1970’s as well!

Here we have another book, Unexpected #161 from February 1975. I absolutely loved DC’s 100 Page Spectaculars. More comic book stories and pages? Sign me up! The cover this time around is by Nick Cardy. He’s yet another spectacular DC cover artist from this era who created terrific covers after terrific covers. I had this book way back when and the two stories depicted on the cover in particular are wonderful!

Finally, here’s the Jonah Hex Spectacular released in January of 1978. This was another book I had way, waaaaay back when that really turned my head when I read it. Or rather, read the first story which involved Jonah Hex.

Written by longtime Hex writer Michael Fleischer and illustrated magnificently by Russ Heath, the Jonah Hex story “The Last Bounty Hunter” tells the “last” Jonah Hex story… and its freaking brutal.

In 1904 an elderly Jonah Hex fights Father Time. He has to wear glasses and isn’t the young hellion he used to be. He gets involved in a bounty and the results wind up being very tragic.

This is very much meant to be a final Hex story and I’m shocked, even after all these years, that editorial within DC allowed such a story be made. Not that its a bad story, heavens no, only that it features such a wild end for what was a very popular character during most of that decade… and whose regular book was still being published!

Of note, the pretty terrible Johnny Depp Lone Ranger movie released a few years back ripped the Jonah Hex tale off with its framing device, which saw Tonto as some mannequin in a circus type place in the early 1900’s.

I don’t want to get into too many SPOILERS but, yeah, they ripped off Mr. Fleisher’s story there but without the sadness and shock that is found in the comic.

So for those who itch to recover things they had at one time long ago, sniff around eBay if you have the free time -and the cash to blow! You might find yourself picking up stuff you really enjoyed way back when…

…and I’m not just talking about comic books!

Comic Books/Graphic Novels

Jonah Hex, End of the Trail

It isn’t often I review individual comic books, but in the case of All Star Western #34, a comic which features one of my all time favorite DC Comics characters, Jonah Hex, I had to make an exception.

Created by writer John Albano and artist Tony DeZuniga back in 1971, Jonah Hex made his first appearance in issue #10 of the original All Star Western series, which would become Weird Western Tales before Jonah Hex moved on to his own book.  Before that move, he was featured in one of my all time favorite comic book covers, that of Weird Western Tales #25.  See for yourself:

While John Albano wrote the early stories featuring Jonah Hex, it would be Michael Fleischer who would come in shortly afterwards and write the vast majority of them throughout the 1970’s and into the 1980’s.  His stories were very consistent and even today are a pleasure to read.  Perhaps one of the most intriguing stories he ever wrote featuring the western anti-hero appeared in DC Special Series #16.  In that story, a 66 year old Jonah Hex meets his fate…

This story proved alternately grim and sad, with the corpse of Jonah Hex being stuffed and put on display in a carnival show (I suspect this was the inspiration for the sequences featuring Tonto in a carnival in the Johnny Depp starring Lone Ranger film that was released last summer).

Despite this very final story, Jonah Hex would continued to appear in one form or another since that (in)famous story, including appearing in animated form in the Batman series as well as “real life” in the awful 2010 Jonah Hex film.  What a wasted opportunity that was!

In more recent times and since 2005, writers Justin Gray and Jimmy Palmiotti have been writing Jonah Hex stories, first in the “new” Jonah Hex series and then for 34 issues in the “new” All Star Western.

Given their nearly decade long association with the character, it is a tribute to their talents that the volume of stories they’ve presented have been so damn good.  Yes, there have been some lesser fare here and there, but their run, overall, is nothing to be ashamed of and I figured they would go on for a long, long time.

So it was something of a surprise to find that All Star Western #34 is pretty much what the title of the story says it is: “End of the Trail.”  It proved to be Mr. Gray and Palmiotti’s final Jonah Hex story and was illustrated by the terrific Darwyn Cook.  Was it good?  More than good.  I would say it is terrific…but with one rather big caveat.

What is the caveat?

To understand this particular finale story, one really should read/be familiar with the Michael Fleischer final Hex story I wrote about above.  Mr. Gray and Palmiotti’s finale plays with the Fleischer finale, offering a different take while never quite negating (entirely) what Mr. Fleischer wrote.

Now, like all things, the comic book industry operates on profits and losses and while clearly DC was finishing the Jonah Hex series with this issue of All Star Western and probably didn’t want to spend more money than they had to on it, I really wish they could have reprinted the Fleischer story with this finale.

While I think readers who aren’t familiar with the Fleischer finale will enjoy it, they will enjoy it far, far more if they are familiar with that particular tale.

In the end, I highly recommend those who have even a passing interest in Jonah Hex give All Star Western #34 a look.  And while you do, try to dig up a copy of that Michael Fleischer Jonah Hex finale.  You’ll be glad you did.