All Star Western was a DC Comics series written by Justin Gray and Jimmy Palmiotti, part of the New 52 line. It recounted the adventures of Jonah Hex and his allies in the 19th century.
In the days before the Golden Age of heroes, somebody still had to maintain law and order. And that someone was Jonah Hex. Accompanied by Dr. Arkham, Hex hunts after the kidnapper Thurston Moody, facing all manner of trouble along the way.
In addition, for the first 21 issues (save for the first issue) each issued featured a backup story centered around other DC Western-themed characters like Bat Lash and El Diablo.
This series contains examples of:
- Abusive Parents: One of Dr. Arkham's initial impressions of Hex is that he probably had an abusive father.
- Age Lift: In an inversion of the usual habit of making characters younger due to the sliding timescale of comics, Amadeus Arkham is actually older in the New 52 continuity. He's shown as a child in 1901 in Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth, but here he's depicted as an adult in a time where he wouldn't have been born yet in the Post-Crisis era.
- The City vs. the Country: The main thematic underlining of Hex's sojourn in Gotham. Suffice to say, Hex really hates Gotham.
- Comic-Book Fantasy Casting: Hex, as usual, by some artists is drawn to look like Clint Eastwood. Fairly noticeable in the Darwyn Cooke drawn issues where Hex's infamous scars have been healed and he bears resemblance to a young Eastwood right out of the Dollars Trilogy.
- Country Mouse: Hex, more use to small frontier towns and the open vastness of the American West finds himself suitably chaffing in the Urban Hell that is 19th century Gotham.
- Facial Horror: As in other comics he's been in, Hex has his badly scarred face with the bulging white eye and the exposed mouth tendon.
- Funetik Aksent: Hex's dialogue substitutes an "Ah" sound for "I".
- Genre Shift: To Gray and Palmiotti's previous Jonah Hex (2005) series. Instead of the Anachronic Order done-in-one nature of the previous series, this has the more standard multi-issue arcs and explicit ties/references to the larger DC Universe. The title's time in Gotham makes it also more of a 19th-Century City Noir than the more standard Western setting and plots of the previous series.
- Good is Not Nice: Jonah Hex is not pleasant to be around, but if you want someone brought to justice, he's the guy to talk to.
- Grand Finale: Issue #34 is both the end of this volume of All-Star Western and to Gray and Palmiotti's entire tenure on Jonah Hex that started back in 2005.
- Happily Ever After: Jonah Hex, of all people, gets as close to one as he can with ending of the series in Issue #34. More specifically, he ends the series with his iconic scarring having been healed, rekindles his relationship with Tallulah Black, avoids his infamous posthumous fate to end up as a taxidermy display on traveling Wild West Show by killing and having his imposter take his place, and literally sails off into the sunset in search of a more peaceful life.
- Non-Indicative Name: Despite being called "All-Star Western", it mainly takes place in Gotham City...which is on the East coast. Bordering on Artistic License – History as well.
- Riding into the Sunset: Fittingly enough for a Western-based comic but more like sailing into the sunset. The last issue of the series has Hex and Tallulah Black buy a boat and sail off into the open waters, looking to move on from their lives and find some sort of peace
- Sequel Series: To Palmiotti and Grey's previous Jonah Hex (2005) series. Nothing explicitly contradicts that series given Hex's adventures are generally set over a century before whenever the current era the DC Universe is and some characters from that title even pop up. But unlike the previous series, this contains more explicit references and ties to the larger DC Universe.
- The Watson: Dr. Arkham serves as the Watson to Jonah Hex.
- Wretched Hive: Gotham, as usual is, in the series also has all the nightmarish qualities a modern audience would expect to find in a 19th century American city.
