Jonah Hex

I’m a late bloomer… sue me.

This year I read Jonah Hex for the first time via the miniature reprints put out by DC Comics called DC Digests (look on ebay… I’m only missing a few at this point).

I never really cottoned to Westerns outside of the ‘Man With No Name’ films and only then because Clint Eastwood reminded me of my Dad (but that’s a whoooole other post).

I ran into a lucky patch because this series was created just for me.

A grizzled and ornery fella, Jonah Hex is a facially scarred bounty hunter operating in the lawless West of day’s past. The scar comes from Apache chief who marked Jonah with what he called “The Mark of the Demon.”A crack shot, Jonah Hex often encounters others who know him by reputation and shoot wildly whenever he walks upon the scene. An alcoholic child of a prostitute and a wife-beating maniac, Jonah Hex was just a decade too early to fit in with the 80’s comic book heroes.

The stories written by Michael Fleisher (of The Spectre fame) are both hilarious and moving… often disturbingly so. In one tale he encounters a lost samurai from Japan searching for his daughter. The duo exchange the usual odd couple banter as the trudge through the strange west looking for the innocent girl. When the daughter is revealed to have married and birthed a child for her kidnapper (whom she has grown to love), the samurai demands that Hex participate in the ceremony of sepuku… which ends with Hex beheading his new friend. I kept anticipating that there would be some last minute event that saved the man’s life… boy was I wrong.

The series ran for a stunning five years in Weird Western Tales before meeting that grand wall of anti-matter called Crisis on Infinite Earths. After an odd Mad Max-style series called, simply HEX, the character lapsed into limbo once more until the 90’s when he was revived as a supernatural western series by Tim Truman.

More recently Jonah Hex has been revived as a straight-ahead Western Hero by the duo writing team of Justin Gray and Jimmy Palmiotti (of the terribly under-rated Hawkman run). The series has been such a success that it even earned the pen of classic Hex artist Tony DeZuniga.

Not a character to be confined to one medium, Jonah Hex has also appeared in an amazing episode of Batman The Animated Series and the time-hopping ‘Weird Western Tales’ episode of Justice League Unlimited.

This is ofcourse the closer where I mention that there is a movie in the works.

I was surprised to learn that as far back as the character’s heydey in the 1970’s, filmmakers have wanted to bring the scarred gunslinger to live action.

Well, the guys behind the pulse-pounding action flick, ‘Crank‘, Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor are determined to make the Jonah Hex film a reality.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, “The filmmakers are not making a straight-ahead Western but plan to develop the character with some of the supernatural overtones in the hopes of creating a franchise.”

Suggested reading:

Showcase Presents: Jonah Hex, Vol. 1
Jonah Hex Vol. 1: Face Full of Violence

GØDLAND

Simple shapes collide to form a face gouged with deep black brushstrokes and cheekbones you could ski down… a cylinder for an arm suffers an attack from strange black worms depicting… shadows? No, I’m not talking about late era Jack Kirby characters from Devil Dinosaur, I’m talking about GØDLAND.

I stumbled toward the blinding light of hope cast by Joe Casey and Tom Scioli, unbelieving that there was hope for a recent convert to 60’s comics (Jack Kirby’s in particular). The marketing campaign was full of faces that punched your eyes out, expressions of horror and joy all at once. It was madness. I wanted in.

The first two issues sold out and I stewed in the corner until the trade was released. And was it ever worth the wait. The series is so wild and wooly that it can easily be mistaken for lampooning the Kirby style, but that is far from the truth. Embracing the soul and heart that could be found in Kirby’s Silver Star comics, GØDLAND tells the tale that we are all combined to one another… all part of the same godlike being that hovers in Kirby-dot space.

Ofcourse this is told to the reader through the voice of the cosmic dog, Maxim.

My favorite character, I have to admit, is the alien energy addict Basil Cronus. A bizarre floating skull in a jar that sits on the shoulders of a gun-toting space-suit, all Basil wants is to get off on anything that falls to the planet. For once, we get a villain that does not want world dominion, he just wants a good time.

The main character, Adam Archer, is a former astronaut who uses a cosmic energy that he still does not understand (the outer space monks didn’t have time to fully train him). Launching from a Manhattan base of operations to protect the innocent (and completely ignorant) people of Earth, he often gets no thanks and just a load of worry for his trouble. Saddled with a pair of bickering sisters, he is jealous of the USA’s glory boy, Crashman whom he begrudgingly rescues from a super villain so evil he comes complete with his own dark castle.

The series has been running strong since 2005 and collected into three trades and a gorgeous over-sized ‘absolute-style’ edition of all three collections. A beautiful and fun series, it can be a very refreshing alternative to some of the overly ‘grim’ and violent modern comics on the shelf.

Recommended reading:

Godland Volume 1: Hello, Cosmic! (Godland)
Godland Volume 2: Another Sunny Delight (Godland)
Godland Volume 3: Proto-Plastic Party (Godland)
Godland Celestial Edition

Justice League Movie News

It looks like the much rumored Justice League of America movie is indeed going forward with Blade Trinity star Ryan Reynolds all but cast as The Flash.

However, it also looks like the newest faces to become associated with the two biggest comic book movie franchises in the business are not going to be joining in the fun.

According to Moviehole.net, Christian Bale and Brandon Routh are not starring in a super hero team film. That makes sense given that a JLA Batman would be a very different ‘creature’ compared to the Dark Knight Detective we’re watching in the Chris Nolan films.

But there is a very real threat that whoever they cast as Superman in a JLA film could outshine sleepy faced Routh… and that might not be a bad thing.

Both Bale and Routh are committed to continuing their respective comic book movies, just not to fight Starro the conqueror alongside Angelina Jolie as Wonder Woman (shudder).