GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #202: I RODE WITH JESSE JAMES

I'm a huge fan of westerns. Those of you who know me know that and probably look the other way. When I was a kid I loved all the classics and GUNSMOKE and RAWHIDE and THE LONE RANGER and all of that. But my interest waned as I grew older. It was practically dead by the time UNFORGIVEN came out.


I saw that one in the theater. Amazing experience. At the time I believed it to be the last great western, and I gave up on the genre. So did most of America. Every once in a while we'd get something like, say, AMERICAN OUTLAWS, but for the most part the western was gone.



Fast forward a few years. I started reading PREACHER by Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon. They reawakened my interest in westerns. I looked back at the old movies and TV shows I loved as a kid, and it all came back to me. I loved the genre again, and I desperately hoped for a resurrection.


I think we might be on the cusp of a revival. THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN is back in headlines, and WESTWORLD is posed to become HBO's next greatest hit. Tarantino put out a new Django movie, and THE H8FUL EIGHT was fucking amazing, especially with a score by Ennio Morricone. That makes me so happy.


When I was a kid I didn't read westerns. I only watched them. When I rediscovered the western I started reading them starting with GONE TO TEXAS from BF Carter. (Side note: I recently discovered that Carter was a white supremacist. That came out of left field for me. His Josey Wales books are arguments for the fair treatment of Native Americans. I can't believe a racist wrote those two books. But, well, it's historical record that he was in the KKK.)


I dug into Zane Grey and Louis L'Amour and everything else. Fucking Larry McMurtry, guys. Read LONESOME DOVE. It'll change your life. By the way, if you're wondering I would choose L'Amour as my favorite western writer. Read his nonfiction book EDUCATION OF A WANDERING MAN, and you'll understand why. Frederick Faust, better known as Max Brand, was a beast of a writer. He could write novels in weekends. That's a pulp writer for you. But L'Amour was the best. Interestingly enough, he was a member of the Communist Party for a while with Jim Thompson, my favorite crime writer. Very unusual for a writer so many patriotic readers identify with.


Not too long ago I finished another collection of L'Amour's hard-to-find westerns from his pulp days. It reinforces something I've noticed in a lot of other westerns: many western protagonists have a history fighting for the Confederacy, and very few of them believed in the racist views. They looked at themselves as rebels. They wanted their own way of life. They didn't condone slavery; they just wanted to live free, and they didn't want to be under the yoke of the Union.


Also, just about everyone rode with Jesse James. From Josey Wales to Jonah Hex, they put on their gray uniforms and fought by the side of the boys from ol' Missour-ah. If Jesse James had really ridden with all of these fictional heroes (or anti-heroes, as per your perception) he would have whipped the shit out of the North.


Unless some of these guys are talking about the bank/train robbery days. In which case Jesse James would have beaten the daylights out of the Pinkertons. Never mind fuckin' Robert Ford.


If all of those protagonists existed in real life, Jesse James would have been Al Capone before Al was even born.


Something to ponder for those who give enough of a shit about the western.


PS: The character of Jesse James has been portrayed maybe a thousand times in books and cinema. My favorite, however, is the movie version of THE ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES BY THE COWARD ROBERT FORD. I haven't read the book, but from what I understand the movie is probably the closest we will ever come to the truth. If you haven't seen it, you should. Check out the masterful score by Nick Cave and violinist Warren Ellis. It's my second favorite score of all time. #1 is Ennio Morricone's THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY. #3 is THE DARK HALF from Christopher Young. #4 is . . . I'm not going to sit here all night. Just fucking watch the movie. Enjoy the score. Remember the western. 'Cause it's coming back, and it might be here for a while. The blues and the birth of rock and roll. And the western. True American art forms.

EVERYONE'S GOT ONE #32: GOODBYE, JONAH HEX

Art by Timothy Truman

DC canceled ALL STAR WESTERN this month, and it doesn’t surprise me one bit. In a brief conversation I had with Jimmy Palmiotti, he told me that it’s a tough book to sell, which is why they were trying all sorts of gimmicks in it. Even though he didn’t say anything at the time, I could see it in his eyes. If Jonah Hex’s book isn’t canceled yet, it soon would be.

And now it is. I’m actually kind of glad. I’m a longtime Jonah Hex fan, and to see all the ridiculous bullshit they were putting him through hurt. I kept reading because I’m a completist. I have all of his appearances, even the stupid one in TIME MASTERS #3.

Back in the ‘Seventies, Jonah Hex first appeared ALL STAR WESTERN, an anthology book that featured regular characters. Some, like Bat Lash and El Diablo, were fun, and others, like Pow Wow Smith, were on the boring side. Hex was easily the best of the bunch. Shortly after his arrival, the book changed its title to WEIRD WESTERN TALES and got rid of the shittier characters to focus on the good ones. Hex was so popular that he eventually got his own book (leaving WWT to Scalphunter, who was fun but was no Hex). Hex’s solo book lasted quite a while, but interest in westerns started to wane, and in the first crime DC ever committed against him, they pulled a stunt designed to save the book. They should have just canceled the book. It had obviously run its course. Time to cut your losses.

No, they teleported Hex into the future and had him fighting aliens and villains who dressed like students at Nuke ‘Em High, using lasers and spaceships and all sorts of shit. They called the new book HEX, and it did not do very well. It swiftly came to an end, and Hex faded into obscurity . . .

. . . until Joe R. Lansdale saved him by reimagining the book as a horror western. Granted, the idea is almost as crazy as sending him to the future, but Lansdale is an incredibly talented guy. When he had Hex fighting an undead Wild Bill Hickok and shooting the shit out of underground monsters, it actually felt right. In all of Hex’s career, nothing supernatural ever happened. Weird? You bet. But supernatural? Never, not until Lansdale got his hands on him. He did three series, which were all fucking amazing. He’d planned a fourth one, in which Hex would go up against the God of the Razor, but I imagine it didn’t happen because he would have probably lost rights to his own character to DC, even though the book was being done at Vertigo.

Hex once again disappeared until DC, for some ungodly reason, decided to bring him back the way he’d been before the Vertigo books, and though it’s never stated, it’s also suggested that it happened before the events of HEX. (Thank fucking Christ.) I loved this new resurrection. It felt just like the old books but had a harder edge, all the way through to the end.

If only they hadn’t made that stupid fucking movie. If only they’d let the book end with the old DC continuity.

DC, please. Whatever you do, don’t bring Hex back again. If for some reason you decide to ride this old dog once again, here are a few tips:

1. Don’t ever send Hex to Gotham City. Ever. There is no reason for him to be there. It’s a western book. He doesn’t need to hang out in the Batcave decades before it becomes the Batcave. He certainly doesn’t need to battle the lost tribe of natives living down there, as well as the giant bats.
2. Don’t ever send Hex to the future. Ever. Did you not see how HEX worked out? No one wants that shit. I guess they figured he’d fare better in his future, our present. Pure garbage.
3. Hex does not need to be a part of your stupid crossovers. He works best when he’s at the fringe of the DCU.
4. Fuck you and your need to have him cross paths with Booster Gold. And while I’m at it, fuck you, Booster Gold. I never liked that guy.
5. Hex’s most distinguished feature, the thing that got him the most attention when he first came out, is his hideous facial scar, which is known as the Mark of the Demon. So obviously DC had to get rid of it. Seriously, in the last few issues of ASW, he looks like a regular dude, nothing special at all.

And if for some strange reason you want to bring Hex back to the big screen, here’s an idea for you: don’t give him superpowers. He doesn’t have them and doesn’t need them. He’s a badass, heavy-drinking dead-shot with very few morals and an insatiable urge to fuck every whore in sight. It’s the perfect mix. Don’t add or subtract anything from it. [This isn’t a rant about the movie, though. I already did that here.]

The end of the recent book is kind of good, though. It was finally starting to get better after they got Hex back to his own time and way the fuck away from Gotham. (He met Batman, by the way. And Superman. And John fucking Constantine. And everyone else they hoped would get superhero readers interested in the book.) I hated his new look, but the stories were finally getting back to the basics.

But we’re better off without this series. Before I go, I should mention that they did something really clever in that final issue. For those who haven’t read it yet, SPOILER ALERT FOR THE REST OF THIS PIECE.

Waaaaay back in the day, when DC did a one-shot for their biggest western characters, they told the story about how Jonah Hex died: he was gunned down in his old age. He just wasn’t fast enough, and his eyesight was failing him. However, a sideshow guy had Hex’s body taxidermied and put on display. Eventually, he wound up in a warehouse, forgotten. His body somehow manages to last a long time, because Hex eventually finds it in the last issue of HEX. While the New 52 rewrote a lot of backstory, Hex’s remained fairly intact, and DC decided to hold on to this part of the old canon. In the future (our present), Hex finds his taxidermied corpse in a museum.

BUT! The final issue of ASW pulls a neat little trick on us. Remember, Hex lost the Mark of the Demon when a plastic surgeon fixed his face, so it would be impossible for that body to be Hex, not unless he managed to fuck up his face again in the exact same way, and how likely is that?

Turns out, when Hex gets back to his own time, there’s an asshole pulling all sorts of awful shit, and he’s calling himself Jonah Hex. He even looks a lot like Hex.

So yeah. Guess who that taxidermied corpse REALLY is. In the meantime, the real Jonah Hex has gone off to, um, become a pirate on the high seas. All right, maybe that wasn’t thought through all that well, but I really liked the trick with the corpse. It would be interesting to see if the DCU will hold onto that when they eventually go back to the old continuity.

Holy shit. I write a lot about Jonah Hex. Maybe too much. I’m going to stop now.

COOL SHIT 1-30-14

[Friendly reminder: Cool Shit is not a comic book review. It’s just what I think is the best gathering of books that came out this week. Because of this, there will be spoilers. The spoilers for this week are in the last selection, ALL-STAR WESTERN #27.]

WRAITH #3: Charlie Manx is one of the finest villains in horror history, and it’s good to see that writer Joe Hill has decided to do a comic book series about him. The antagonist of NOS4A2 has walked into the middle of a prison bus escape. A former circus geek, a movie mogul who accidentally killed his lover during a moment of kinky sex and a moral father who might have committed murder to avenge the wrongful death of his son (we still don’t know for sure if this is the case, but it sure looks that way) have crashed their prison bus and have taken their guards captive. The mogul happens to be a friend of Charlie Manx, and he contacts the creep to help them escape the authorities. The only problem is, they have to go to Christmasland to do it . . . I love the reactions of all three criminals in the back of the Wraith as they first realize how strange the car is, and then when they see Christmasland and its toothy denizens with their own eyes.

SERENITY: LEAVES ON THE WIND #1: Looks like FIREFLY has returned to comics yet again. The Browncoats may be making a comeback in this book. A new revolution is beginning, thanks to Mal’s actions at the end of the film. Could it be that the Alliance is about to come to pieces? And what the fuck is Jayne doing off on his own? I just have one problem: can we please, pretty-fucking-please, stop using the leaf-on-the-wind phrase? It’s getting driven into the ground. That scene was very moving in the film, a very powerful moment, and to see it constantly cheapened over and over again is nauseating. Also, who wants to take bets that writer Zack Whedon is going to bring Wash back to life somehow?

ALL-STAR WESTERN #27: At first, I was going to say that this was the single worst issue of anything that ever featured Jonah Hex in it. Even worse than the Booster Gold issues. Almost the whole book is a waste of time. First of all, the first seven pages are dedicated to Superman showing off to Hex, flying him around and then throwing boulders into the air so he can use his heat ray eyes to make them explode. Fuck that shit. Most of the rest of the book shows Hex’s girl showing him around a Jonah Hex exhibit at a museum, and this includes a display of his taxidermied corpse. So it would seem that the New 52 is sticking to canon on that point. That’s kind of cool, but it’s not enough to redeem the rest of the bullshit of this book.

And then . . . then came the last panel. Oh please, I beg of the DC gods, let this be the last issue of ALL-STAR WESTERN. This would be the perfect ending to the series. Jonah Hex dies in a drunk driving collision, his motorcycle versus a big rig 18-wheeler? It makes perfect sense. Let it end here. Don’t give us a next issue which starts with him in a hospital bed covered in bandages. Or even worse, don’t let this be the way he gets back to the Wild West. That’s stupid. He’s got to be dead. Look at all that blood. Hex doesn’t have super powers. It should be next to impossible for a motorcyclist to survive crashing into a truck head on. I know, there’s no way DC will go with that. But I can hope. Fuck me for being a completist. If I had the willpower to quit this series, I’d take my THE FOLLOWING stance with it. (I refuse to watch the new season of THE FOLLOWING because I think the ending of season one is the perfect ending to that story.)

COOL SHIT (and SHIT SHIT) 7-25-13

JUDGE DREDD #9:  The world of Dredd is pretty crazy sometimes, but this is the craziest to come from the new IDW series.  Dredd wanders out into the Cursed Earth, looking for a hovercraft that “could save Mega-City One.”  Instead, he finds a family of mutie hillbillies running an amusement park with some of the most ghastly rides ever.  My favorite is the Kamikaze Matterhorn.  One of these guys has the ability to touch someone and make them apathetic, which is what he does to Dredd, and now Dredd has to face off against all these freaks and even worse, the Mirrored Madhouse.  (And no, it’s not what you think it is.  It’s far more insidious.)

FERALS #16:  This time out, we take a break from Dale Chesnutt to explore the life of Major General Richard W. Arthur.  It’s a fascinating look at someone who was born Feral, but he never knew it.  Even now, he seems to be in denial.  Even after he finds himself in a life and death battle with another Feral.  And to top it all off, he’s kind of an important guy in the government . . . .

CROSSED:  BADLANDS #33:  It’s good to see David Lapham back on the series.  I wasn’t too impressed with Christos Gage’s story.  Now, we return to Amanda, Lorre’s old victim/survivor.  She’s still living in her fantasy world with her two companions, but now that’s about to be fucked.  It would seem that a group of religious Crossed have moved in on her territory . . . .  I miss Raulo Caceres on this book, though.  Miguel Ruiz isn’t bad, but Caceres is a fucking genius.

RED TEAM #4:  Whoops.  It seems that for all the planning that the Red Team goes through, they dropped the ball on this one.  Thinking to take out a Bernie Madoff type (except this guy was found not guilty), they off him without thinking that maybe the reason the guy got off in court was because he’d made a deal with the prosecution to turn weasel on his friends.  Now all of those guys are going to walk free.  Like I said, whoops.  This leads to a few changes in policy, but it’s not enough to keep certain members of the team for losing it in a questionable bar bathroom with a date rapist . . . .

And now for some SHIT SHIT!  That’s right, 3 books really disgusted me this week.  Let’s start with . . . .

JUSTICE LEAGUE DARK #22:  Ah yes.  Behold that cover.  Then take a look around inside to see that our boy John Constantine is hanging out with the big superheroes this issue.  Sure, he had a run in with Flash lately, but now he’s rubbing elbows with the likes of Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman.  And yes, he’s a bit snarky, but for the most part, he doesn’t give them any crap.  Since when does Constantine not give the capes a hard time?!  Oh right.  I’m sorry, I keep thinking this is MY Constantine, not the pisswarm version in the New 52.  This leads us directly to . . . .

CONSTANTINE #5:  JLD continues right into this issue with Constantine hanging out with Shazam.  Why would he do that?  Well, remember when I said, back when DC brought John Constantine back to the DCU, that they were going to turn him into a superhero?  I was speaking metaphorically.  I guess I was wrong.  In this issue, they turn him—quite literally—into a superhero.  I can’t believe it, either, but look at that picture above.  Do you think I made that up?  I can’t tell you how much this disgusts me.  And then there’s this happy horseshit:

ALL STAR WESTERN #22:  Yep, this asshole is Dr. Arkham’s great-great-grandson.  As much as I despised the idea of bringing Hex to his future—our present—at the very least, it got him away from having a sidekick.  That was worth a lot to me.  And now, even that is undone.  Yeah, this new Dr. Arkham is Hex’s new sidekick.  Oh, and by the way, it looks like they’ve given up on finding a backup story for each issue, but instead of taking pages out and letting us keep an extra dollar, they thought this story was so good that we needed more of it.  Fuck.  (One more thing:  it’s hinted that Hex will be hanging out with Batman in the next issue.  After what’s been going on with Constantine, that shouldn’t surprise me one bit.)

C2E2 2013: MEETING JIMMY PALMIOTTI

Ladies and gentlmen, after being a huge JONAH HEX fan for nearly 15 years, I finally have a few issues signed.  No, none of the classics, sadly, but they’re still kick-ass issues.  The first five from the new JONAH HEX.  Not the ALL-STAR Hex, but when he first came back after Lansdale’s final run.

At first, I was going to thank Jimmy Palmiotti for finally getting Hex out of Gotham, back to his element, but I didn’t want to become the whiny fan, and besides, Palmiotti was too nice to take shit from me, since thanking him for that would mean complaining about the storyline (and the stupid sidekick idea).  In fact, aside from James Cosmo, Palmiotti was probably the happiest to be there.  He greeted me with one of the strongest, most enthusiastic handshakes I’ve ever experienced at a show, and he had one of the most natural smiles I’ve ever come across.  He was eager to talk about Hex, and when I told him I had every appearance, he was all the more excited to talk about the book.  He strikes me as an actual longtime fan of the book, which is rare in this day and age of making classic characters “their own,” whoever “they” might be.

I should mention that I met Palmiotti before the DC New 52 panel, at which some awful news about the future of Hex was revealed.  Chances are, I would have still played nice, because Palmiotti is a hell of a guy and I like him, but part of me would have wanted to beg him to abandon this foolish idea.  Besides, the story’s done already.  There’s no going back.

C2E2 2013: THE NEW 52 PANEL

All right, this was the panel I was least interested in.  I don’t care much for DC (just like I don’t care much for Marvel).  I only read their books when it’s a character I love (which is rare), or if a book is written by a writer I respect.  Not surprisingly, it was the most overcrowded panel I attended at the con.  Standing room only.

You know why I went there.  I have only 2 DC interests, and believe you me, these days they are waning.  I didn’t even know who most of the panelists were.  I recognized Peter Tomasi, Bob Harras, and Doug Mahnke, but I had to resort to the internet to identify the others as Bobbie Chase, Charles Soule, Sterling Gates, Kyle Higgins, Aaron Kuder, and Patrick Gleason.

(Before I go any further, I should mention a pretty decent thing the DC folks are doing:  We Can Be Heroes.  It’s an Indiegogo charity to fight hunger.  They’ve raised more than 2 million so far.  You can get some pretty cool stuff, like exclusives, special editions, extras, all sorts of stuff.  If you buy these things, DC matches your donation.  Not bad, eh?)

Anyway, I didn’t really care much about what their topics, for the most part.  They say there are no plans for a new Robin just yet, but then they hinted that there might be a new Robin soon.  You know, the usual Big Two bullshit.  In the meantime, they’re portraying Batman going through the five stages of grief, and at the same time, it looks like Nightwing has moved to Chicago.  That got a cheer out of the room.  It would seem that the guy who killed Dick Grayson’s parents is still alive and living under an assumed name.  Nightwing is in Chicago hunting him down.  The villain sounds like a SAW ripoff.  That could be cool, but ultimately, it’s not a thing for me.  Oh yeah, and the new Batwing is the son of Lucius Fox.  They also talked about SUPERMAN UNCHAINED, which is coming out the Wedneday just before the new Superman movie is released.  Scott Snyder is writing that one, but hell.  It’s Superman.  I can’t bring myself to care.

The stuff I was there for:  John Constantine and Jonah Hex, of course.  It would seem that the DC writers have been planning something called the Trinity War in the Justice League books from the start of the New 52, and that includes JUSTICE LEAGUE DARK, for some reason.  It involves Pandora and the Phantom Stranger.  I kind of like the Phantom Stranger, but he does not need his own book.  Am I the only one saying that?  Guys like him can’t have their own books.  They need to be enigmatic, showing up in other people’s books from time to time.  If you give him his own book, he loses all of that shit.  Besides, constant exposure to him will eventually wear thin.

ANYWAY . . . the new SWAMP THING writer has a few plans for John Constantine outside of the Trinity War.  He goes to a small town in Scotland that has grown something called a Whiskey Tree (and I don’t know what that is, but it sounds like I might be reading that issue of SWAMP THING).

And then there’s ALL-STAR WESTERN.  You know how recently I was gleeful that we were finally getting Hex back to his western roots?  And then he teamed up with Booster fucking Gold?  Well, I’m about to get even more disappointed with the series.  Coming soon, Hex will be TIME TRAVELING TO MODERN TIMES.  Oh yeah, and while he’s in the 21^st Century, he’ll be GOING BACK TO GOTHAM CITY.  Motherfucker!  Are you shitting me?  Do you remember the last time Hex time traveled?  We got stuck with fucking HEX.  How well did that work out?  It was canceled after 18 issues (which was 18 too many, if you ask me).  I can only assume that we’ll be losing this book pretty soon.

One of the last things they talked about was a free guide that will be coming out at the end of the month in comic book stores everywhere.  It’s a list of all the DC graphic novels and the suggested order you should read them in.

I didn’t have the stomach to stick around for the Q&A session, I was that disgusted.  At least they gave me a copy of BATMAN #701 for free.  It was actually a pretty good read, but since it was written by Grant Morrison, I wasn’t that surprised.

COOL SHIT 1-3-13

G.I. JOE:  COBRA #20:  With all the attention I pay to THE TRANSFORMERS here, one would think I’d bring up G.I. JOE a bit more often.  The thing is, all three books have been lagging, ever since they did that stupid Hunt for Snake-Eyes thing.  Let’s face it, the only way that story arc could have worked out in an awesome, unexpected way was if Snake-Eyes really did turn out to be a traitor, and he died in a very obvious, very gruesome fashion.  Now that the bullshit is out of the way, we can get back to the grown-up G.I. JOE kind of action IDW has been getting us hooked on ever since they picked up the series.  Flint and Lady Jaye are in serious trouble as they infiltrate a Red Oktober installation on a mission that doesn’t even exist on paper.  Now that they’ve been captured by a crew of thugs and murderers who have no regard for human life, it falls on Joe HQ to sort things out behind the scenes.  The problem:  the only person who seems capable of doing that is Tomax Paolo, who has been a prisoner of the Joes for . . . how long now?  Coming soon, they’re going to discontinue the three series in favor of three new series.  Personally, I think we’d be better served with one series, considering how for the past couple of years, we’ve been treated to one long story broken up over three monthlies.  Might as well just consolidate the whole thing.  I can understand having one main JOE book and then having a SPECIAL MISSIONS book, just like back in the ‘Eighties and ‘Nineties, but come on.  I have faith in the storytelling, but do we really need three JOE books?  That's kind of like breaking up an adaptation of THE HOBBIT into three movies--oh, wait.

AMERICAN VAMPIRE #34:  Now that we’ve been through several decades worth of story, we’ve finally reached the mid-point, according to writer Scott Snyder.  At first glance, it’s a sedate issue, but when you think more about it, it’s a harbinger of things to come, and is thus a very important issue.  With a bit of quick exposition, we learn the fate of Will Bunting, the first chronicler of Skinner Sweet’s life, and who has replaced Bunting at the VMS.  We also get to see Abilena Book in her old age as she denies having been granted visions by being bitten by Sweet years earlier.  We get to meet the new enemy of the series, and we get a massive slap to the face in regards to how things are going to go for the rest of the series.  Here’s the problem:  THEY’RE GOING ON HIATUS.  Snyder says the next story is written, but he also says that they’re taking some time off to recharge their batteries (and to give the artist more time to illustrate the series, as he doesn't want to take any more breaks).  I can only hope that Vertigo will actually still be around when they do come back.  Many of you are familiar with my ranting and raving in regards to HELLBLAZER’s cancellation, and how I believe that Vertigo will be gone by the end of 2013.  I love FABLES and all the related titles, but I’m pretty sure they could survive in the DCU and make everyone a lot of money there.  Right now, AMERICAN VAMPIRE is the only book that has me hoping that Vertigo will survive.  They’ve done a lot of great work over the years, including my two favorite books of all time (PREACHER and TRANSMETROPOLITAN, even though the latter did, indeed, start out at the short-lived Helix).  HELLBLAZER, the Lansdale JONAH HEX, THE SANDMAN, 100 BULLETS, I could go on forever about all the wonderful books they’ve done.  Maybe Shelly Bond can do great things now that she’s in charge (and I know she’s edited many good books that I’ve enjoyed over the years), but considering all the really, really, really, really, really bad decisions DC has made recently, Vertigo is a dog with rabies.  It’s only a matter of time before someone puts it down.  I hope AMERICAN VAMPIRE gets finished before that happens.

COOL SHIT 5-5-11

AXE COP: BAD GUY EARTH #3: This mini-series comes to a happily-ever-after ending, much like a lot of children’s adventures do. (Except for Sockarang’s Mom, may she rest in peace). More insane childish play from six-year-old writer, Malachai Nicolle. It makes me want to break out my old toys and have a few adventures of my own. The best part? President Zombie Bear Cop. I guarantee you will never come across anything like that in another book, not even in GOD HATES ASTRONAUTS. Well, probably.

JONAH HEX #67: Remember how, in my “review” of the movie, JONAH HEX, I said that having Hex wanted was a stupid idea and that it only ever came up to serve a short-time plot in the comic book series? Lo and behold, this month’s JONAH HEX has the scarred bounty hunter wanted (at a more respectable $1,000). This time, some pox-infested lunatic has cut up his own face and has started slaughtering women and children, pretending to be Hex so he can ruin the man’s reputation and hopefully get him shot in the process. Hex, of course, doesn’t take kindly to this plan and aims to do something about it . . . .

JENNIFER BLOOD #3: Garth Ennis’ Jen-Jen continues cutting a bloody swathe through the mobsters who did her wrong. We get a few more hints at what they might have done to her and her family, but still nothing concrete. This month’s gangster comes to a very, uh, gutsy end. [INSERT CRYPT KEEPER CACKLE HERE.] My favorite scene: when Jennifer’s neighbor corners her in the bathroom with his pants down, and she fantasizes about what she’d like to do to him. Then, her actual solution had me rolling on the floor, it’s that good. Why aren’t you reading this series? Am I not pimping it hard enough?

THE BOYS #54: Okay, I’ve been silent on this book for long enough. Wee Huey learns more about the secret history of the Boys from the main man himself, Mallory, over several glasses of whiskey. Holy shit, just flip through the pages of this book. There are so many words in here, it’s like Kevin Smith wrote this issue. It’s almost an actual prose story. But it looks like we’re finally going to learn a few interesting things about Butcher in the next issue. Stay tuned for more cool shit, folks.

FUCK YOU, JONAH HEX!

First of all, let me say that this is not a review. Reviews don’t include words like "I" or "me" because a critic is trying to convey the idea that he is not a person, that what he is saying is truth and not opinion. Old journalism trick. No, this is strictly opinion. This is a smear job, even though the movie JONAH HEX probably doesn’t need it. It didn’t even break even, so it’s almost certain there won’t be a second one.



No, this is personal. Because I love Jonah Hex, and DC betrayed my love by allowing Warner Brothers to make a shitty movie out of a wonderful comic book series. This isn’t the first time they’ve done this. It still hurts whenever I think about what CONSTANTINE did to my beloved HELLBLAZER. So I feel the need to excoriate the movie JONAH HEX. This is vengeance, pure and simple.


First of all, let’s talk about Hex’s background (because this is where the movie drops the ball big time). They make no mention of how Hex’s father sold him into white slavery as a child to the Apache. It’s a long story, so I won’t go into it here, but what it comes down to is this: according to the movie, Quentin Turnbull, played by John Malkovich, is the one who gives Hex the Mark of the Demon. Anyone who has ever enjoyed the JONAH HEX series from DC knows this is absolute heresy. Because of a misunderstanding, Hex gets a heated tomahawk to the face by THE APACHE WHO RAISED HIM TO ADULTHOOD.


And let’s talk about the Mark of the Demon a bit, because the movie people fucked up the make up. You see, they forgot about the eye. The scar starts at the mouth, then moves up and widens Hex’s eye, which is clearly blind throughout the comic book series. Did Josh Brolin, the actor who played Hex in the movie, have an aversion to eye make up?  Maybe wearing a cataract contact lens bothered him.


Anyway, in the movie it is Turnbull who uses a branding iron to fuck up Hex’s face. As he’s doing this, his men murder Hex’s family. Wait, family? Hex didn’t have a family in his background. Sure, later on in the original comic book series, Hex married a woman and had a child with her, but this is not background stuff. This is part of the story. Not only that, but his wife and kid eventually leave him . . . but according to the DC canon, they are both still alive and well.

To make matters worse, the movie folks depict a scene in which, after Hex has been burned by Turnbull’s branding iron, he uses a heated tomahawk to cauterize the wound. Why? Didn’t a BRANDING IRON do the job already? So in the end, it looks like Hex himself gave himself the scar on his face. BULLSHIT! Have the screenwriters even read the original series? Or did they just see a picture of Jonah Hex?

All right, let’s move on to the animated opening credits. Why is it that every movie made out of a comic book series has to have some form of animated credits? Is it just Hollywood’s way of reminding you that hey, this is just comic book stuff? Nothing too important. This kind of garbage just takes a viewer out of the movie and takes credibility away from the storytellers. Believe me, there isn’t enough credibility to waste here.


There is one background thing the screenwriters get right: Hex did kill Turnbull’s son. However, well, it’s a long story. Suffice it to say, Hex didn’t kill him because the guy was a superior officer during the Civil War who had ordered him to burn down a hospital. The truth is a lot weirder than that.


And now, we come to the biggest transgression against the comic book series EVER. According to the movie, Hex was so close to death because of his encounter with Turnbull that he suddenly has the ability to talk with the dead. WHAT?! Where did they get that stupid fucking idea?


All right. This movie is clearly a horror movie. In fact, it’s technically a Weird Western Tale. To those who don’t know, Weird Western Tales are a subgenre of both horror and westerns that combines the two. It was actually named because of the long-running DC series called WEIRD WESTERN TALES, which originally was called ALL STAR WESTERN, in which Jonah Hex made his first appearance.


While some of the other characters in WWT were supernatural (El Diablo comes immediately to mind), HEX NEVER HAD ANY HORROR ELEMENTS TO HIS STORIES. Sure, a lot of strange things happened, but there was nothing that couldn’t actually happen in real life.


Some of you might bring up the Vertigo Hex stories penned by Joe R. Lansdale. Let me make this perfectly clear: I love Lansdale’s work, and his Hex stuff is top notch. However, it is clearly not a part of the actual canon. Nor is the ill-conceived series, HEX, which took place after the original JONAH HEX series ended, catapulting Hex into the distant future. Bottom line: Hex is not magic. The end.


I will give Brolin this much: he does the best he can with the crap he’s given. However, it’s very clear that he’s no fan of the original Hex series. No paycheck is worth this horrible rape of a movie.


Something the movie folks get right: the booze. Hex drinks a lot, and a lot of it ends up slipping out through the hole in his mouth. It’s a nice touch, but it’s certainly not redemptive.


For example, why is the BOUNTY HUNTER Jonah Hex wanted by the authorities? No reason is ever given for this. Sure, in the comic books the occasional story required that he be wanted dead or alive, but this is not good enough for the movie. And they’re willing to give a mere $500 for him? That’s pretty low even for wild west standards, considering how dangerous Hex can be.


Well, they do make a half-hearted attempt at explaining this, but it makes no sense. Apparently, Hex turned Turnbull in during the Civil War (which just did not happen in the books; again, the truth is much weirder and you should read it for yourself). This is just another rape of the series.


Enough about Hex. Let’s talk about some of the other characters for a moment. Aidan Quinn plays President Grant as part of a storyline that was actually covered in the original series, although in a different way. In the books, Turnbull was going to assassinate Grant, but in the movie, Turnbull just wants to attack Washington, DC, with a giant cannon and a bunch of radioactive cannon balls. However, Quinn simply isn’t drunk enough to play Grant, who in real life was an exceptional boozehound.


Will Arnett. I love his work, especially his ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT stuff (and if you haven't seen LET'S GO TO PRISON, you should). However, he’s just such a funny guy that his serious work cannot be taken seriously. Really, why did he think that he could play a military man with any credibility?  He tried, but the task is impossible.


Megan Fox. A lot of people like to give her shit (rightfully so; ever see JENNIFER’S BODY?), but she is kind of nice to look at. However, the character she plays is based on someone from the books who is HORRIBLY SCARRED. Dangerous? You bet, but she is anything but pretty. In the books, she's a bounty hunter, not a fucking whore like in the movie.  You’re probably getting tired of the word “rape” in this so-called review, but seriously. Tallulah (Lilah here) is a total betrayal of what the character is about in the books. And as a side note, could her relationship with Hex be any more clichéd? The hooker with the heart of gold and the man who wants to take her away from it all, but he’s too afraid because people around him tend to die? Ugh.


Then there’s Turnbull himself. Malkovich plays him as a psycho, which he certainly wasn’t in the books. He was a southern gentleman, and he never got his own hands dirty. He was the kind of person to hire out his villainy. In the movie, he constantly kills people who get in his way. It’s over the top, like everything else in the movie.


Did I mention that Hex’s horse comes with mounted mini-Gatling guns? First of all, the sheer idea is ridiculous, and secondly, when did Hex ever need anything more than his Dragoons?


Jesus Christ, this is getting long, but I still have plenty of bile left over.

The thing that baffles me is the snake man in the brawl in the middle of the movie. Why is he around? Didn’t the filmmakers “horror” the movie up enough? They just had to throw this acid-drooling asshole in?


And the giant cannon Turnbull uses was created by Eli Whitney? The Cotton Gin guy?


And explosive crossbows? Holy shit, can you get any more stupid than this?


All right, so the mystical Indians save Hex after he’s close to death, at which point Hex pukes out a crow. Fucking typical bullshit.

But the thing that really gets to me is when Hex is hallucinating as he’s near death. He thinks he comes upon Turnbull and winds up having a fight to the death with him. Why does this scene exist? Is it because the movie is on the short side, and they needed something to pad it out?


Or maybe they just wanted something to refer to later in the symbolic final battle between Hex and Turnbull? That’s right, as they physically duke it out, Hex has constant flashbacks to his earlier hallucination, so that it all matches up with what is actually happening in the present. Why would the filmmakers do this? There’s no point, it’s not cool, it merely annoys the shit out of me. I doubt that I’m the only Hex fan out there who was insulted by this awful movie.

All right, another thing I liked about the movie: people constantly asking Hex what happened to his face. This is purely from the Lansdale Hex books. However, the snarky answers he gives are never as good as the ones Lansdale gave us.


Fine. I’m done raving. What it comes down to is this: the JONAH HEX movie is an absolute rape of everything I find enjoyable about the JONAH HEX comic book series. We must stop a sequel from ever being made, just in case DC and Warner didn’t get the message. If you really want to see a good Hex story told in movie format, pick up UNDER THE RED HOOD.  There’s a special feature which retells a Hex story from the current series at DC, and it’s written by Lansdale hisownself. THAT is what Hex is really about.


I’m drunk and angry, so I’ll stop now. There isn’t enough whiskey in the world to forgive what Hollywood did to Hex. Hopefully, I’ve convinced you that this is not a movie worth watching. If I’ve made you curious at all, I apologize. As I said earlier, this is a smear job. If I am the last person in the world to ever watch this movie, I’ll be happy.


That is all.


JONAH HEX
Written by Neveldine and Taylor (Holy shit! It all makes sense now! These jackholes were responsible for the CRANK franchise. No wonder this movie sucks so much.)
Directed by Jimmy Hayward
82 minutes (which is far too long, if you ask me)
$17.99 at Amazon (which is far too much, if you ask me)
2010

SHIT SHIT 1-13-11

Sorry folks, but nothing interesting came out this week. In fact, it was such a small week, I’m surprised. I can actually afford tonight’s outing at Shark City. Weird.



However, since it’s the new year, I thought I would take this opportunity to mention a few things that are bothering me about the world of comics these days. Grab a helmet and buckle in. I’m kind of angry.


DC, you are my first target. Don’t worry, it’s not about the content of your books. It’s always been bad with very few exceptions. (All right, I’m still pissed off that HITMAN got canceled. It was the best book you put out since the original JONAH HEX. Fuckers.) No, my gripe is with the presentation of your new books. It’s a nice design, and it jumps off the racks, so I guess it does its job. Maybe it’s a bit plain, but that’s just my opinion. The problem, though, is the lack of identification of those who worked on the title. Where are the writer and artist’s names? I will always buy JONAH HEX, even if you send him to the future again. However, the only time I’ll read, say, BATMAN or SUPERMAN is if they are written by people I admire. I followed BATMAN when Ed Brubaker helmed the title. I read Brian Azzarello’s SUPERMAN. I would never have read GREEN ARROW if not for Kevin Smith. When their runs ended, I stopped reading. So if Garth Ennis starts writing TEEN TITANS (for whatever ungodly reason), it will benefit your company to put his name on the cover. I, for one, will buy it.


Next up: alternate takes on the G.I. JOE and/or TRANSFORMERS universe. The main story lines for these books are good enough for me. The occasional mini-series is awesome. But I don’t give a fuck about what’s going on in a parallel universe to these characters. 100% of the time, it’s lame. It’s worse than lame. I hear you say, “If you don’t like them so much, don’t read them.” Fair enough. However, there is always the danger of the alternate world crossing over with the main storyline, and nothing would piss me off more. The TRANSFORMERS ANIMATED books are horrible, by the way. I tried them, and they made me want to jab a heated sewing needle into my asshole. And while we’re at it, can we kill the TRANSFORMERS MOVIE line of books? And if G.I. JOE NOIR comes back for more issues, I will take hostages.

To a lesser extent, I hope the resurrection of the original G.I. JOE Marvel series doesn’t last long. The idea is cool. Get Larry Hama to continue the series that captivated me when I was a kid. But the new Joe books kick the shit out of this relic from the past. In fact, the book kind of comes off as naïve. Let the old continuity die. It soldiered its way through many years in the ‘Eighties and ‘Nineties; it has earned its rest.

One more thing: Nice Stargate, TRANSFORMERS PRIME. Who are you going to rip off next?


Here’s some praise: thank you, Vertigo, for seeing the wisdom in dumping JACK OF FABLES. It was an awesome book for a long time, but the last year or so has sucked a donkey dick. This is a smart move. That is all.