The Chronicles of Jonah Hex (part 3)

By Eric S Brown

By 2005, the comic industry had recovered from the collapse of the 1990s. Older
fans were returning to titles they had once enjoyed and new fans were being created each
month. DC’s sales were better than they had been in years. The company was looking to
expand its catalog beyond standard super hero fare and offer a broader spectrum of
reading choices to its consumers. Jonah Hex was relaunched as a monthly, ongoing
series to the joy of long time fans. Comic visionary Jimmy Palmiotti who’d helped
reshape Marvel Comics by introducing their cutting edge Marvel Knights line, along with
Justin Gray, took over the duty of writing the book. They returned Jonah to the setting he
was created for, the American Old West. The series launched with strong sales and
overwhelming critical praise. The Philadelphia Weekly News even went so far as to call
Jonah Hex “A book that anybody who loves Westerns should be reading.”

This new Jonah Hex series has remained extremely faithful to the original Jonah
tales of the 70s and early 80s: keeping the character’s history intact and retaining both the
feel and diversity of stories offered by those first issues. Each issue of the current run
once again explores a seemingly random adventure from the gunfighter’s long,
remarkable, and tragic life.

For example: in one issue of the current series, Jonah finds himself in a southern
town in post civil war America. A bleeding and ravaged African American comes
running down the street begging for help. None of the southerners move to help the man
and most go on with their business completely ignoring him despite his obvious need for
aid. He collapses dying at Jonah’s feet, gasping out a tale of a murderous family living in
the nearby swamp who still have his wife and child held captive as their play things. He
begs Jonah to find them and save his family, handing Jonah a deed for land in the western
territories as payment with his last breath. Jonah takes the deed and honors his promise
to the man, setting out to avenge him and rescue the man’s family by disguising himself
as a simple traveler and walking through the swamp. The clan of inbred killers spots
him, sets up an ambush and takes him prisoner, then tosses him to the swamp’s alligators
for fun. Jonah escapes the water after a knife fight with a hungry gator, and proceeds
with his rescue mission, only to discover the child is already dead. However the wife is
alive and Jonah rescues her. He then extracts payment from the clan for all their victims
by torturing them while she watches. As his final act of vengeance, Jonah burns the
house to the ground, and then he gives the woman the deed her husband gave him and
urges her to head west and start a new life for herself.

In another equally dark issue that explains why Jonah is still wearing his
Confederate uniform long after the Civil War has ended, Jonah stumbles upon a different
African American woman by a stream. She sees his Confederate garb and attempts to
flee, but falls into the water and gets caught in the current. Jonah tries to save her by
lassoing her, but accidentally snaps her neck as he is pulling her to safety. When her kin
come hunting for her, they discover Jonah cradling the dead body in his arms. They beat
him and take steps to hang him, but a pack of elitist “good ole southern boys” show up,
 mistake him for a racist as well, and rescue him then take him into town with them until
he recovers from the attack. That night, Jonah joins them by the fireplace and takes part
in a discussion with them on race and the state of the south. The men confess things
they’ve done and affirm their allegiance to the old ways of the south. Jonah, sickened
and furious, ultimately guns them down in their own home rather than allow them the
chance to spread their beliefs and in that moment, decides never to rid himself of his
confederate uniform, but rather to wear it always as a reminder of the poor woman who’s
death, the evil that all men are capable of, and his own crime in fighting for the south in
the war.

Palmiotti and Gray have also introduced Jonah to his son Jason. In this issue, an
elderly Jonah is caught in a firefight with a group of bandits and is saved by a “man of
the law” who turns out to be his son. Neither realizes it at the time or at least admits to it,
but later Jason tracks Jonah to a bar in town and confronts him. Ostensibly, he wants to
make sure Jonah knows he exists and that he has chosen a more honorable path in the
fighting the evil of the west, but then goes on to say he wants nothing to do with the
bounty hunter and his dark legend. He leaves Jonah sitting alone, thinking of the past
with only his drink as company.

The current series deals with the social problems of today set against the backdrop
of the old west, and in perhaps one of the most memorable issues so far, Jonah is accosted
by a young man seeking vengeance in the name of his “friend” who has been hanged
unjustly. Jonah can tell the young man wants blood for blood, not simply justice, and
turns down the job. The story then reveals that the “friend” who was hung, was actually
the young man’s lover, hung not for crimes, but merely for his sexual preference. The
next Sunday when the murderers, and all of the other folk of the town, are gathered in
the church the young man acts without Jonah, trapping them inside and sets the church
ablaze where they all perish in flames. Mission accomplished, he returns to Jonah to
brag. Jonah is taken aback by the ghastly deed and forces him to face the horror of what
he’s done before sending him to hell via a bullet in the name of the children who died in
the church as punishment for a crime they did not commit.

While many of the titles created in the 2005 boom, as well as older titles that were
relaunched, have met with cancellation, the new Jonah Hex series continues strong today.
Its adult themes and fast-paced tales have made it one of DC’s strongest and most popular
non-superhero titles, as well developing a strong following for the character. So much so
that DC has begun releasing the back issues of the 2005 series in collectable trade
paperbacks that each contain six stories for the extremely low price of $12.99. The high
renewed interest in the character has also led DC comics to include Jonah in its Showcase
Presents line. The Showcase Presents line collects classic issues of DC’s most popular
titles into massive, five hundred page tomes for $16.99 each, a great value with the only
draw back being that they are black and white to offset the cost of so many pages at so
low a price. The first Showcase Presents: Jonah Hex volume collected together
almost all of Jonah’s early appearances. The second volume picks up with the start of the
1977 series. If Jonah’s popularity holds, it is likely his entire history will be reprinted in
this new format.
 The growing popularity of comics themselves, as well as the high interest in
Jonah’s own monthly title, have also taken the surly gunfighter beyond the comic’s page.
He has made appearances in several DC cartoon properties and there is currently a Jonah
Hex feature film in the works. In the final article in this series, we’ll take a look at
Jonah’s leap to the TV screen, the silver screen, and onto the shelves of toy stores
everywhere.

Stay tuned to the Abandoned Towers website next month for the conclusion to the
Chronicles of Jonah Hex!!