Comic Book / Jonah Hex (2005)

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly all rolled into one.^note Cover by Frank Quitely

"When a man knows there's no place in Heaven waiting on him, then he'd best be wise to cozy up to the Devil. And so, Jonah took it upon himself to dispatch as many sinners as Hell could accommodate and never look back "

— Jonah Hex #1 (2005)

DC Comics ongoing comic, launched in 2005, following its most famous Western character, the Apache-raised, ex-Confederate turned Bounty Hunter: Jonah Hex. Written by Justin Gray and Jimmy Palmiotti with a cast of rotating artists, rather than an ongoing singular narrative each issue is a one-off adventure from Hex's roaming life as a Bounty Hunter across the American West. The series would also occasionally feature other obscure and lesser-used DC Western characters whom Hex would encounter throughout his travels.

Published from 2005 to 2011 and numbering 70 issues, the series was augmented by a graphic novel released in 2010, Jonah Hex: No Way Back, to coincide with the movie released around the same time.

The series was cancelled with the advent of the New 52 but a new title, All-Star Western, under the same creative team of Gray and Palmiotti continued the adventures of Hex as part of the company-wide reboot at the time.

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Tropes found in this series include:

• 10-Minute Retirement: "Outrunning Shadows", issue #34, sees Hex genuinely try to give up his ways as a bounty hunter (ala Unforgiven) but it appears circumstances, or The Lord if you ask Hex, won't have it that way.
• Action Girl: Tallulah Black is the most notable throughout the series but the one-off nature of the series usually sees Hex coming across and teaming up with a few.
• All Asians Know Martial Arts: Mei Ling, when first properly brought into the series, is shown displaying kung fu skills despite her never displaying any during the original run of Jonah Hex comics.
• American Civil War: Hex's time in the conflict is called back to frequently. Issues #13 - #15 are him tracking down former Union corrupt officers who crucified him and left him for dead floating down river.
• Anachronic Order: The series mostly consists of done-in-one stories and are set whenever the writers fancy in Hex's long life.
• Author Appeal: The Canadian setting of "The Hunting Trip" was the request of the guest-artist for the issue Darwyn Cooke.
• Arc Number:
  • The first six-issue arc of the run is, appropriately, titled "The Six Gun War".
  • In Issue #50, "The Great Silence", Hex is given an offer of collecting 50 wanted bounties from an unseen Oil Barron.
• Arc Villain: Quentin Turnbull, Hex's Arch-Enemy, makes his first appearance in the series as this in the "The Six Gun War" storyline.
• Back for the Finale: The final issue of the series sees some of the few reoccurring characters in the series make return appearances^note  Though some as just fever-induced hallucinations including Tallulah Black, Bat-Lash, Woodson Hex, Mei Ling, and the Creepy Child Hex occasionally sees when near death.
• Badass Long Coat: Hex has a Confederate-grey duster to go along with his standard Confederate uniform.
  • Tallulah Black also rocks one that is unsurprisingly black.
• Bandito: El Papagayo, one of Hex's few reoccurring foes, first shows up in the series in "The Six Gun War" as The Dragon to Quinten Turnbull.
• Battle Trophy: Victor Sono, an Italian immigrant turned outlaw, gains the moniker of "Star Man" for his collecting the badges of corrupt sheriffs he kills.
• Bears Are Bad News: Hex is attacked by one in issue #18, "I Walk Alone", but he makes it quick work of it. He then helps himself to it's corpse given his dinner just got overcooked right before it attacked.
• Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Averted in the case of Tallulah Black. Though the severity of her scars seem to be Depending on the Artist.
• Because You Were Nice to Me: Victor Sono had Hex dead-to-rights but let him go, and gave him the monetary equivalent of the bounty on his head so Hex's efforts in finding him wouldn't be wasted, on account of Hex saving him as a child and he considers this making them even.
• Berserk Button: Jonah has few but probably the most consistent one is any form or hint of child abuse. The first issue even has Hex going after child kidnappers to drive the point home.
• Black-and-Grey Morality: Hex has some morals he'll stick too but it's very easily to see that if Hex weren't the protagonist we were following he could easily be a villain in another person's story.
• Bloodier and Gorier: Unrestrained by The Comics Code as previous Hex comics were, this series takes full advantage of the possibilities to include just about all the sorts of violence one would expect to find in a Western.
• Body Horror: There's how Hex got his famous scarred half of his face obviously but the series is full of all sorts of mutilations done to the human body.
  • Probably the most egregious is in "Four Little Pigs: A Grindhouse Western" where a pair of misandrist sisters have been keeping four men prisoner in their barn and have removed their tongues, lips, and other parts of their skin.
• Bounty Hunter: Hex, obviously but he runs into his fair share of villainous ones throughout the series.
• Call-Forward: In "The Hanging Tree", Hex's infamous fate to end up stuffed and put on display gets referred to by a carny fortune teller he inadvertently ends up rescuing.
• Calling the Old Man Out: Subverted in the final story with Jonah's father, where instead of "The Reason You Suck" Speech expected by Woodson, Jonah waits for him to be ambushed and shot in the gut before telling him "I came here to watch you die". Woodson alternates between explaining it was Tough Love and self-pity.
• Canadian Western: "The Hunting Trip" is set in the Canadian Northwest Territories circa 1882-83. It features Hex inadvertently rescuing a young, mute, boy after his father died and him running afoul of some Mounties who don't care for an American bounty hunter in their country.
• Carnival of Killers: The "Six Gun War" storyline has Quentin Turnbull hiring various killers with different specialties to deal with Jonah Hex and and his companions.
• The Cavalry: Subverted. The U.S. Calvary are almost always in the role of antagonists or villains whenever they pop up in the series.
• Christmas Episode: "Christmas With The Outlaws" is, of course, set on Christmas that sees Hex defending an old man, his daughter, and his current bounty from a gang of vengeful vigilantes and the bounty's former gang.
• Church Militant: Probably one of the most recurring plot elements in the entire series. Many of Hex's adversaries or bounty targets claim they act on behalf of God or pose as religious authority figures.
• Circus of Fear: The first issue of the series sees Hex track down a child kidnapper to one of these.
• Cold Snap: Occasionally there will be an issue set in a snowy setting to contrast typical desert setting of Westerns
  • "Christmas With The Outlaws", issue #5, takes place on a snowy Christmas somewhere in Texas.
  • "Bloodstained Snow", issue #12, is set snowy Utah.
  • "The Hunting Trip", issue #33, is set somewhere in the wilderness of the Canadian Northwest territories.
  • "Snow Blind", issue #65, has Hex finding himself stuck boarding with a lonely Frontiersman in some snowy mountains when his horse dies on account of a blizzard.
  • "Caskey Canyon", issue #66, has Hex drift into a town set somewhere in a remote valley that's been overtaken by a blizzard and beset by cannibalism.
• Comic-Book Fantasy Casting: Luke Ross' issues of the series clearly depict Hex as a younger Clint Eastwood on the non-scarred half of his face.
• Creepy Child: When close to death a peculiar young girl will appear before Jonah and Tallulah Black inquiring on if they're ready to die and warning them not to go into the woods. She appears to be the ghost of the baby girl they have together, who dies in infancy.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: Said for word-for-word by Hex when he lets loose from rapid dogs on a Repulsive Ringmaster who had been kidnapping kids and forcing them to fight wild, rabies-infected. animals.
  Jonah Hex: Normally I'd hang you. But I figure your actions warrant something really cruel and unusual.
• Cute Mute:
  • "The Time I Almost Died", Issue #4, has one of these and her inability to communicate through speech is a plot point of the story.
  • The narrator of the "The Hunting Trip", issue #30, is a mute writing about back when he was a child and rescued by Hex from wolves in the Canadian wilderness after his father had died from a bear trap.
• Darker and Edgier: Grey and Palmiotti made full use that the series didn't have to confine itself the The Comics Code anymore.
• Death of a Child: In "The Great Silence", Jonah and Tallulah's newborn daughter dies at the hands of religious extremist who believed the child to be a spawn of Satan due Jonah and Tallulah's lives as bounty hunters.
• Deep South: Issue #10, "Gator Bait", has Hex in Louisiana and tracking down a family of murderous swamp dwellers.
• Differing Priorities Breakup: Hex's brief marriage with Mei Ling ends when she runs off the in the night with their child as she knows it's unlikely Hex will ever truly be able to move on from his violent ways.
• Distaff Counterpart: Tallulah Black is pretty much a female Jonah Hex, right down to even a scarred face.
• The Dog Bites Back: Said word-for-word by Chako during the "Six Gun War" story arc.
• The Dreaded: Hex's reputation proceeds him far and wide regardless of whatever small or isolated town he ends up roaming into.
• The Drifter: Hex's travels take him far and wide across the North American continent over the course of the series. Though his preference seems to the American Southwest given how much he operates out of there.
• Due to the Dead: Despite his hatred of the both of them for his miserable and abusive childhood, Jonah ends up making sure both his parents get some form of proper burial.
  • In No Way Back, Hex takes his mother's body, Virginia "Ginny" Hex, from the desolate border town he discovered her to the residence of the family she had after leaving Jonah as a boy. The final scene is Hex making peace with his mother at her grave site, saying he won't visit again but he doesn't blame her for leaving.
  • In Issue #69, "The Old Man", Woodson Hex, Jonah's father, this overlaps more with Karmic Death however. Jonah waits for him to be ambushed and shot in the gut before telling him "I came here to watch you die". While he said he originally planned on leaving Woodson's body out for the buzzards to chew on, he does end up burying him. Only he fills the grave with the gold Woodson spent three decades of his life, and what he originally abandoned Jonah over, looking for.
• Dying Town: Played for Comedy in Issue #30 where the town of Desperation used to be former Boom Town but once the Copper Mines dried up now has a population of just six (not counting Jonah and the two horses).
• Even Evil Has Standards: The one time Woodson Hex, Jonah's abusive alcoholic father, is shown in any form of a positive light is when he helps take part in a manhunt to kill a pedophilic murderer.
• Eyepatch of Power: Part of Tallulah Black's origin was suffering a gun shot to the eye that leads her to wearing this.
• The Freak Show: Hex nearly gets killed by some of these on account of them trying to get revenge for him killing the ringmaster who watched over them.
• Funetik Aksent: Hex's dialogue is written to how his accent would most likely sound. Most notably substituting an "Ah" sound in place of "I".
• Gatling Good: How Hex kills an outlaw at the end of one issue who had alluded him over a decade.
• Generation Xerox: Jason Hex, Jonah's son by way of his first wife Mei Ling, is a spitting image of his father save for the obvious facial scarring.
• Gratuitous Rape: There is a fair amount of sexual violence in the series but probably the most ignominious is in Issue #21, "Devil's Paw", where it opens with a trio of travelling ladies stopping by a cantina where they are repeatedly raped by the denizens of the bar until they're finally killed. It has no bearing on the actual story of the issue and doesn't come back until the ending of the issue when Hex stumbles upon same cantina and kills the passed out rapists.
• Grave-Marking Scene: Issue #56, "First True Love", shows that Jonah makes a yearly visit to the grave of his first love; White Fawn.
• Grim Up North: How the Canadian Northwest territories come off in "The Hunting Trip", Issue #33.
• Historical Domain Character: Thomas Edison appears in a story when Hex is hired by a former employee of his to track down an invention that said employee believes Edison stole from him. Nikola Tesla is also made reference to.
• Historical Villain Downgrade: Thomas Edison is presented as less villainous than usual modern media depictions of him and presents a fairly logical counter-argument to Hex that the former employee who had hired Hex over the accusation he stole an invention simply lied to him.
• I Owe You My Life: Tallulah Black displays a fierce loyalty to Hex on account of him helping aide in her revenge of the men who killed her family and scarred her body.
• Injun Country: Issue #23, "Who Lives and Who Dies", sees Hex hired as a guide through Apache territory for a scientific expedition that has him and the group he's been hired by get caught up in a three-way conflict between the Apache, Kiowa, and U.S. Calvary.
• It Runs in the Family: The narration of issue #25, "My Name Is Nobody", is taken from an in-universe history book written by Hex's "supposed" grandson, Woodson Hex II, who is stated to have been a notable bounty hunter and private detective in the 1930s and 40s.
• Just Desserts: The ending of issue one sees Jonah let loose some rapid dogs on a traveling circus ringmaster who had kidnapped children and forced them to engage in fights with wild dogs and other animals.
• Ku Klux Klan: In issue #36, "Seven Graves, Six Feet Deep", Hex is inadvertently rescued by early Klansmen from ex-slaves who planned on killing Hex for mistakenly believing Hex killed one of the ex-slaves' wife. The Klansmen think Hex is sympathetic to their cause on account of him still wearing the Confederate uniform. They soon find out they are wrong.
• Long-Lost Relative: The graphic novel, No Way Back, has Hex discover he has a half-brother, Joshua Dazzleby, from when his mother ran off him as a kid.
• Mad Doctor: George Zimmerman from the "Sawbones" two-parter storyline is essentially a Confederate version of a Nazi Doctor. He even has a German surname to drive the point home.
• The Mounties: A rare villainous example in American media in "The Hunting Trip", Issue #33. They're shown not taking kindly to an American Bounty Hunter coming to their country.
• Mythology Gag:
  • In Issue #25, "My Name is Nobody", sees an elderly Hex introduce himself under the alias of "Mr. Albano". John Albano being Hex's co-creator.
  • Issue #33, "The Hunting Trip", while being harassed by some Mounties Hex introduces himself as "Fleischer". Michael Fleischer being the long-time singular writer of Hex from the mid-70s to late-80s.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: A semi-frequent occurrence in Hex's life that justifies his sour disposition as far he's concerned.
  • Issue #11, "The Hanging Tree", opens with Hex being nearly lynched by traveling Circus Sideshow attractions for him killing their their ringmaster back in the first issue of the series.
  • In "I Walk Alone", after trying not get involved, at the urging of a runaway woman he ends up in a gunfight with a group of men that kills them all and later tracks down their home being told by the woman they a group of cannibals. Only to find out the woman had gone crazy from the death of her husband and had made it up.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: In Issue #28, "Townkiller", Hex delivers a particularly nasty one to a man who had earlier approached him with an offering of killing an entire town after an angry mob from said town lynched his friend. When Hex refuses, the man does it himself by blowing up the town church during a Sunday service. When the man tries to brag about it to Hex that turned it he didn't need Hex's help, he receives one of the nastiest beatings in the entire series. Hex pointing out killing entire town means he also killed babies, pregnant women, children, the elderly, etc. He also just seems insulted someone would openly brag about such a crime out in public for all to hear.
  Jonah Hex:: "The fact that ya came back here ta hoot an' holler on how ya didn't need muh help ta sort it out...Well, that makes it worse."
• No Kill like Overkill: The epilogue of "Christmas With the Outlaws" has Hex kill an outlaw, who had escaped out from under him 10 years earlier, with a Gatling gun at point blank range.
• No Party Like a Donner Party: "Casket Canyon", Issue #66, has Hex comes across a town that has resulted to this due to the intense winter they're suffering through.
• "Not So Different" Remark: In Issues #40 - 41, William "Sawbones" Zimmerman says this to Hex when has him bound and at his mercy. Commenting on how both of them have primarily made their way in the world via killing people and have gotten so good at it they've elevated it to an "art form". Hex just uses guns while Zimmerman uses surgical equipment.
• Origins Episode:
  • Issues #13 - 15 act as something of an origins episode for Hex as we receive flashbacks to the pivotal moments of his life (His abusive father, him being sold as a slave to the Apache by said father, his service in the American Civil War, to how he got his facial scarring) as Hex is tracking down some ex-Union officers he has a vendetta against.
  • Issues #16 - 17 act as this for Tallulah Black.
• Quick Draw: Jonah, naturally. It's actually discussed in issue #17 when he's training Tallulah Black on gunfighting that being quick on the draw doesn't mean much in a gunfight if you can't aim
• Pay Evil unto Evil: A favored tactic of Hex whenever he's dealing with a particularly nasty individual.
  • The first issue of the series ends with him feeding a carny ringmaster to some rapid dogs after uncovering he'd been kidnapping kids and forcing them to fight said dogs as part of his traveling circus.
  • "Four Little Pigs: A Grindhouse Western" ends with Hex having a pair of religious extremist misandrists get devoured by four men they'd been keeping prisoner and had mutilated their bodies.
• Pet the Dog:
  • In issue Issue #36, "Seven Graves, Six Feet Deep", Hex has a Klansman at gunpoint dig graves for a group of ex-slaves, who were gunned down in cold blood by said Klansman and his comrades, rather than leave their bodies unattended in the wilderness for the wildlife to devour. The ex-slaves had earlier tried to kill Hex, mistakenly, believing he killed one of their wives. Hex then digs the eighth grave him for the the aforementioned wife.
  • Issue #37, "Trouble Comes in Threes", has Hex give a cache of stolen gold to a down on his luck elderly Prospector.
• Pinkertons: Hex runs afoul of some in "Return to Devil's Paw".
• Repulsive Ringmaster: The villain of the first issue is one. He's been kidnapping children as a part of his travelling circus and forcing them to fight rapid, rabies-infested, dogs.
• The Savage South: How Mexico is portrayed in "The Six Gun War" storyline.
• Sequel Episode: The series can mostly be read in Anachronic Order due the one-and-done nature of the majority of the issues but occasionally an issue will pick up on the events of a previous issue. Whether in the form of a dangling plotline or a returning character.
  • "The Hanging Tree", Issue #12, sees Hex nearly get lynched by some vengeful Circus sideshow attractions for him killing their Ringmaster in the first issue of the series.
  • "Return to Devil's Paw", Issue #29, sees Hex find himself at the mercy of some vengeful Pinkertons who think he made off with a cache of stolen money from a bounty target he was hired to track down in a previous issue; "Devil's Claw", Issue #21.
  • "Outrunning Shadows", Issue #34, picks up on the end of Issue #28, "Townkiller", where it reveals the prostitute's What the Hell, Hero? speech had more of an effect on Hex than he let on.
• Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness: Bartholomew Aloysius Lash, or more simply Bat-Lash, is this.
• The Seven Western Plots:
  • Revenge Story
    • Issues #13 - #15 are a revenge story of Hex tracking down the ex-Union officers who during the war crucified him.
    • The following two issues, #16 - #17, are revenge story mixed with an Origins Episode for Tallulah Black.
  • Calvary and Indians story.
    • "Who Lives and Who Dies", Issue #23, sees Hex and a group who've hired him as a guide get caught up in a three way war between between the Apache, Kiowa, and U.S. Calvary.
    • "Return to Devil's Paw", Issue #29, is a Subversion of the story type. The story sees a contingent of the U.S. Calvary kill a previously-unknown and hidden away tribe that had rescued Hex from some Pinkertons. Hex manages to get at least one survivor to safety.
  • The Marshal Story
    • "A Crude Offer" starts off with Hex assisting a U.S. Marshal and his aides in taking down an outlaw ring.
• Shout-Out:
  • Many of Hex's bounty targets are named after fans who frequented Gray and Palmiotti's website in the early-2000s.
  • One story featuring Thomas Edison is titled "The Men of Tomorrow"
  • To many Westerns;
    • The title of the trade that collects the first six issues, A Faceful of Violence, is one to A Fistful of Dollars.
    • Chako's near hanging in Issue #4, "The Time I Almost Died", mirrors a shot◊ of Gary Sinise in The Quick and the Dead.
    • "My Name is Nobody", issue #25, shares the same name as the Spaghetti Western parody film
    • "Issue #30, "Luck Runs Out", has a luckless outlaw and his gang try to break into a safe by using dynamite to break it open. Only for the dynamite to then destroy the entire safe and the money along with it. Reminscient of a scene from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
    • The ending of Issue #33, "The Hunting Trip', evokes the ending of Shane with Hex departing from his current setting despite the obvious pleas of a child to stay.
    • The title of Issue #50, "The Great Silence", is one to the 1968 Spaghetti Western film also called The Great Silence.
    • "Shooting Stars", Issue #54, has Hex wrongly accused of killing a local sheriff with the last name Kane. Sheriff William Kane being the name of Gary Cooper's character from High Noon.
    • The film Heaven's Gate is nodded to in the graphic novel, No Way Back, when Hex visits a town of the same name.
• Shown Their Work: Various issues make references to real-life historical events that would have been recent news at the time and not often remembered nowadays.
  • Issue #12, "Bloodstained Snow", makes reference to the persecution of the early Mormons in the U.S. and the Mountain Meadow Massacre of 1857 by Paiute Indians and Mormons against a 100 traveling Californian-bound pioneers.
  • Issue #22, "The Men of Tomorrow", gives a brief history of the then-popular fad of Dime Novels.
  • Issue #33, "The Hunting Trip", brings up The Mounties being founded, in part, to help crack down on whisky trading rings.
  • Issue #36, "Seven Graves, Six Feet Deep", the early development of the Ku Klux Klan beginning in Tennessee is shown.
• Sins of the Father: El Papagayo's vendetta against Jonah is on account of Woodson Hex, Jonah's father, killing his entire family as a kid. El Papagayo than vowed he would wipe out the entire Hex bloodline.
• Steampunk: "The Men of Tomorrow", featuring Thomas Edison and references to Nikola Tesla, is a departure from the series usual tone with this issue. Featuring things such as steam-powered Automatons.
• Swamps Are Evil: The times Hex visits a swampy environment in the series leads one to this interpretation.
  • In "Gator Bait", Issue #10, Hex hunts down aclan of murderous swamp people who have tortured and murdered an interracial couple and their child.
  • In "Too Mean To Die!", a wounded Hex is hunted down by another clan of murderous hillbillies after he had been forced to kill, in self-defense, one of their kids who had tried to kill Hex.
• Teeth Clenched Team Work: Just about anytime Hex teams up with anyone, though it's worth noting it's usually one-sided on Hex's part. Whoever he ends up having to temporarily team up is usually more accommodating. Very noticeably present whenever it's with Bat Lash or Chako Jones.
• Ugly Guy, Hot Wife: Hex's facial scarring makes him this during his brief marriage with Mei Ling.
• The Vamp: A two-parter has Hex dealing with a Madame, known as "Madam Blood", who kills miners during sex and the picks their pockets of whatever gold findings they have.
• Vigilante Man: Victor Sono, an Italian immigrant turned outlaw when bigoted NYC sheriffs killed his father on his first day in America.
• Weird West: The series mostly plays itself fairly straight but will occasionally delve into this territory, homaging it's roots among the Weird West comics of the 70s and the various 90s Vertigo Hex titles.
• Whole-Plot Reference:
  • Issue #12, "Bloodstained Show", with its plot of Hex caught in the middle of a conflict between Bounty Hunters and a group of persecuted Mormons hiding out in the wilderness in snowy Utah brings to mind the Spaghetti Western The Great Silence
  • "The Hunting Trip", Issue #33, can be seen as a darker version of the Shane. Like the film, the drifting gunslinger is largely seen from the perspective of a young child and the ending sees said drifter move on without the child, having parted some life lessons the child will take with them. Only unlike Shane, Hex never tries to form a bond with the child and the lessons the child learned from Hex were more inadvertent rather than intentional.
• Wretched Hive: Whether it be New York City or some desolate frontier former Boom Town, just about every town Hex ends up traversing to throughout the series could be described as this.
• Why Don't You Just Shoot Him??: Multiple times throughout the series there are characters who have Hex dead to rights but don't kill him for one reason or another. Even Hex in these instances brings up what idiots they are for it.
• Wild West: Well, duh?
• Worthy Opponent: Victor Sono, one of the few bounty targets Hex goes after who gets the better of him and escaping with his life. Hex and Sono even note in a meetup of their similarities of devoting their lives to their own sense of justice. Worth noting, Sono considers this of Hex but Hex himself however would never admit it.