"I know you've hunted down some of the worst men imaginable. I heard 'bout Sawbones, El Papagayo, an' them sisters that cut men's arms off an' kept them in their barns like pigs. But this man and his gang, he makes them look like angels. His name is Loco, at least that's all anyone ever calls him. Murder, horse thieving, robbery, they're all second nature to him...but they aren't what's got half the state quaking in their boots. He's a scalper with a real specific taste. The unofficial count is 47. All of them women. We want you to drag him to hell and scalp him before the Devil."
— Judge on Loco, "Bury Me in Hell"
As any man, woman or child knows, he had no friends, this Jonah Hex...but he did have two companions...one was death itself, the other, the acrid smell of gunsmoke. And he had many enemies, some of whom made even the hardened Bounty Hunter's stomach turn.
- Examples from the Arrowverse can be found here.
- The DC Showcase short can be found here.
- The 2010 film can be found here.
All spoilers are unmarked. You Have Been Warned!
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Pre-Crisis
Vol. 1
Examples
- Issue #1—"Vengeance for a Fallen Gladiator!": Blackie LeClerc is a particularly vicious child slaver who forces runaway or kidnapped children to fight each other in street brawls. Any boys who don't fight hard enough are horridly whipped by LeClerc, who also threatens to hunt down and kill any children who try to escape his grasp. When young Pablo exposes Leclerc to Jonah Hex, LeClerc guns Pablo down and buries Hex alive, later trying to pin all his crimes solely on his partner.
- Issue #23—"The Massacre of the Celestials!": Samuel O'Rourke is a hulking brute who supervises the railroad staffed mainly by Chinese laborers. Withholding their pay from them, even if their families starve, O'Rourke kills a man for trying to fight back and then loads up dozens of laborers into a room to have them gunned down and pocket their pay before opting to simply hire new laborers to do the same again.
- Issue #26—"Death Race to Cholera Bend": Dr. Roy Jameson is a ruthlessly greedy man who seeks to profit from a recent cholera outbreak. To do so, he kills his own partner when he intends to sell the cure for free, then lures Jonah Hex into a trap with his allies in order to execute him. When he believes he's succeeded, Jameson kills his own allies to avoid sharing the profits, then moves on to the infected town. Openly telling the citizens that they can either pay him $100 or suffer a slow and painful death by disease, Jameson extorts everyone in the town, gloating about the fortune he rakes in by the end of the day.
- Issue #38—"Iron Dog's Gold!": Hoby Callender, a self-serving weasel suffering from an exceptionally bad case of Chronic Backstabbing Disorder, introduces himself cruelly shooting an eighty-year-old Native chief after the man refuses to tell him where a canyon full of Cree treasure is. Hoby manipulates a blind old man and his little grandson into leading him to the treasure, and along the way disposes of a wounded member of his gang before dumping the rest of them down a cliff to save his own skin. Hoby then betrays and kills both the old man and his grandson, then tries to finish off Jonah Hex to claim the gold for himself.
- Issues #70-71—"The Mountain of the Manitou!" & "The Masquerade!": The Manitou is a self-proclaimed God who believes it is his destiny to rule the Native tribes. A lecherous monster who threatens to spare a woman should she "please" him, the Manitou reveals his supposed vision to Jonah Hex: after destroying the barriers to a river, he plans to wipe out all settlements in the valley under the water, framing a Native tribe to initiate a massive war and to force the Native populations to follow him while he leads a war of genocide and is worshipped as a god.
- Weird Western Tales Issue #12's "Promise to a Princess!": Mr. Craig was the first villain Jonah Hex ever fought and set an impressive standard for his foes to follow. The first citizen of the town that Hex blows into, Craig is in the middle of attempting to exterminate the local Pawnee tribes out of racism and greed, selling them smallpox infected blankets that result in the death of dozens across entire villages. Mr. Craig later spearheads another attack against the weakened tribes that spares not even the children. In the end, Craig's own evil ends up dooming not only the Pawnees but his entire town—and himself—to smallpox.
Post-Crisis (May Also Include Pre-Crisis)
Examples
- Issue #1—"Giving the Devil His Due": Victor Romanoff is the head of a traveling fight show that pits dogs against children. Using either poor young boys or simply kidnapping them, the kids are made to fight savage dogs with a high risk of death when the dogs are starved before the fight. One boy is bitten by a rabid dog, with Victor condemning him to a slow, wasting agony for it and simply preparing to allow the other boys to be massacred by the next fight.
- Issue #12—"Bloodstained Snow":
- Mr. Dice, cruel ruler of Dice Valley, simply can't abide the presence of Mormons on his land. Not content with having run an entire community of people into starvation and squalor, Mr. Dice goes the extra mile by placing a bounty on every Mormon man, woman, and even child in the valley, then enlists the most sadistic bounty hunter he can find to torture and slaughter his way down to the very bottom of the list.
- Ringo differs from Jonah Hex in being a brutally sadistic murderer hired by Mr. Dice to slaughter a host of Mormons out on the mountains. Planning on killing them all, women and children included, Ringo guns down a small group of Mormons who came to beg for supplies, and has his ally Doc Grummet torture the man until he "can't scream no more", something Ringo relishes doing to hapless victims.
- Issues #16-17—"The Ballad of Tallulah Black" two-parter: Simon is a brutal hired thug who massacres Tallulah Black's entire family—including the elderly and children—just to sell their land to his employer. When Simon later finds Tallulah alive but traumatized from the ordeal, Simon spends hours torturing, mutilating, and raping her until her entire body is covered in scars. Simon later claims remorse when confronted by Tallulah, truthfully intending to gun her down if she falls for it.
- Issues #19—"Texas Money": Madam Blood has been murdering men for as long as she's been courting them, amassing to a mine full of 20 dead bodies. Killing as much for pleasure as for greed, Madam Blood has no issue threatening to maim her own prostitutes or murdering dozens of innocents merely as collateral to her attempt to kill Jonah Hex.
- Issue #24—"All Hallows Eve": Esmeralda Moorland, the Prairie Witch, is a rare magical foe for Jonah Hex, having separated El Diablo from his host to achieve her dark aims. Having numerous townspeople possessed by demons to turn them into her dark slaves, Esmeralda intends to unleash them on the town and see it massacred to build her forces further before moving on to further conquests.
- Issues #40-41—"Sawbones" two-parter: William "Sawbones" Zimmerman, a former doctor during The American Civil War, made a name for himself via horrible experiments and live dissections of prisoners of war, with his apprentices and himself also carrying out the same vivisections on Black people. After the war, Sawbones takes to kidnapping and murdering innocent young women without even the pretense it is for anything but enjoyment. When Jonah Hex falls into his hands, the doctor attempts to torture him to death as well, revealing he has a group of like-minded fellows he's trained that he intends to spread into the country, killing those they can via horrible means, all in the name of twisted "science".
- Issue #63—"Bury Me in Hell": The outlaw known as "Loco" is a vile mass killer of women who has slain over 40 victims via scalping. Loco's latest victim was scalped while her husband was forced to watch, at which point Loco raped and maimed the man himself, leaving him alive just to suffer. Later massacring a wagon convoy and taking the young boys to be raped, Loco is cornered by Jonah Hex at his home, where Loco showcases skulls mounted as trophies and the body of one of the children he kidnapped, long-dead but kept by Loco for his deviant purposes.
Others
Examples
- Hex:
- Reinhold Borsten is a power-hungry man who let the world be destroyed for the sake of his own self-advancement. After learning of a future nuclear holocaust from a dying time-traveler, Borsten covered up his death and went to the future to take power, leaving behind his wife and daughter to die in the process and ensuring over 150 million deaths. To secure his position, Borsten then makes friends with the Conglomerate by capturing warriors from various time periods, putting them in stasis to manipulate them into thinking nothing is wrong, and then tricking them into fighting to the death for his own entertainment, also allying with S'ven Tarah to receive superpowered soldiers and Take Over the World. When Jonah Hex destroys his operation and he's saved by his doctor, Borsten murders him to ensure his own survival, blaming Hex for everything that went wrong and intending to hunt him down further.
- Issue #16—"The Slayer and the Slave": The Xxggs lord and commander are two members of the hostile Xxggs race, the aliens who will take over the Earth in the future. After making their way to Earth, the Xxggs killed all who resisted and enslaved the remainder, reducing the human race significantly and turning them into cattle. When the commander then learns of S'ven's time traveling attempts to subvert their race, he orders his forces to follow him and sabotage him, seeking to ensure their subjugation of Earth can continue without consequence.
- Two-Gun Mojo, written by Joe R. Lansdale: Doc Cross Williams is an abuser of Voodoo, a murderer who took the brain dead Wild Bill Hickock and made him the first of his zombie slaves, using him to gather others by killing all who stood in the way. With numerous deaths, the victims are taken, tortured and force-fed hallucinogens and other drugs to agonizingly turn them into zombie slaves. Sweeping across the frontier while killing at will, Williams later even resorts to cannibalizing his slaves to survive while abandoning others to die when the Apache prove a threat.
New 52
All-Star Western Vol. 3
Examples
- Thurston Moody is the director of Gotham sanitation and, despite being introduced as a concerned father, is one of the most monstrous villains Jonah Hex faces. In truth a member of the Court of Owls, Moody uses his connections to build a base for them in the sewers, providing them easy access to the city. To create this base, Moody kidnaps and enslaves children, specifically targeting poorer children since the police won't look for them and exposing them to rats, beatings, and various illnesses. This operation claims dozens of children, with many being reduced to vegetative states from the exhaustion. When faced with the choice of leaving behind his son or facing the Court's vengeance for his exposed operation, Moody chooses his own life, fleeing Gotham without caring if his missing son is alright.
- Issues #4-6's "The Barbary Ghost" three-parter: Bo Long is a Chinese crime lord who rules his portion of San Francisco with an iron fist. Enriching himself via a Protection Racket, Bo reacts to every slight against him with extreme violence, throwing Yanmei's father through his family's window and instigating a gang war just because the man didn't pay him in full. Having the Tsen family killed in various brutal ways, Bo also keeps a harem of Sex Slaves for his pleasure, even killing his own right-hand man to save himself when Yanmei sticks him with dynamite.
- Issues #7-9note : Davis S. Winters, Hiram Coy, and Lenore Robbins are the leaders of the August 7, a group of Southerners incensed by the loss of slavery. Believing that immigrants pose a danger to their way of life, the August 7 targets immigrant-heavy institutions, including multiple mills and a tenant building with children inside. When Jonah Hex pretends to be interested in joining the group, they task him with blowing up a boat full of immigrants, making it clear they will have him killed should he refuse to do so. After learning that Hex was a mole, they force him and Amadeus Arkham onto a dinghy to make them go down with the boat as well, intending to use their heinous massacre to galvanize Southerners into a second revolution.
- Issues #19-20—"Panning for Gold" & "Gold Standard": Clem Hootkins is a notorious bank robber who covers up his crimes by massacring everyone in sight. After entering Red River Junction and learning that no lawmen are present, Clem has his men open fire on the entire town with a Gatling gun, intending to kill everyone in the entire town just to cover for his bank heist. Gloating about murdering almost 300 people in one move, he then blows up the bank to try to take the town with it.
- Issue #23—"Man Out of Time": Stanley Cooper, after losing his job and his marriage, decides to go on a rampage. Learning that his wife was attending a breast cancer awareness rally, Stanley drives his car straight through the crowd, killing dozens of innocent people and wounding dozens more, including an eight-year-old girl. After making multiple passes to rack up as many casualties as possible, Stanley pulls out two submachine guns, intending a wholesale massacre of everyone present out of pure spite.
- Issues #24-25—"Justified" & "Blood, Sex & Magic": The unnamed demon seeks to take advantage of the Burning Man festival in order to create Hell on Earth. Utilizing the large amount of sin produced by the festival, the demon has his Ki'yathe demons possess hundreds of innocent people, destroying their souls and reducing their bodies to mindless husks. Gaining enough power to enter the mortal plane, the demon does so and immediately begins feeding on Jonah Hex's and Gina Green's souls, expressing admiration for Hex's death-filled life. Although John Constantine kills him, the souls his demons possessed die with him, leaving hundreds of innocents dead in a single evening.
