Book-A-Day 2018 #139: Jonah Hex: Shadows West by Joe R. Landsale, Tim Truman, and Sam Glanzman

Time never stops. And so the once-hot revisionist takes on a neglected character get neglected themselves, and re-emerge in a new format for something like an anniversary.

Or, maybe, y'know, Jonah Hex was always a  quirky character, even in the context of Bronze Age western heroes -- already pretty far out on the branch of quirky and unusual -- beloved by a small cult rather than particularly popular at any time.

Well, whatever.

If you're confused, here's the short version of a typically long and convoluted comics history: Jonah Hex was a scarred Western hero in '70s DC comics, jumped into a post-apocalyptic future for the '80s because all the other cool kids were doing it, and has bumped around the fringes of various DC media properties since then, mostly back in Western mode as if Hex never happened. Some of the best stories about him were three mini-series in the '90s, all from the same creative team: written by Western/horror/thriller/Texas novelist Joe R. Lansdale, penciled by Tim (Scout, Grimjack) Truman, and inked by Sam Glanzman.

And, eventually, those three miniseries were all collected together, under the title of the third miniseries: Jonah Hex: Shadows West.

(It can be surprising to realize that miniseries you missed "a few years ago" and still intend to check out is now just shy of twenty. Again, time never stops.)

The first Lansdale/Truman/Glanzman story was Two-Gun Mojo, which started out the "weird West" direction slowly -- Lansdale has an introduction about that story where he points out that he thought Hex already was a character with a lot of supernatural stuff in his stories, but that when he went back to re-read the '70s comics, that had all been in his head. Nearly everything in this tale of a traveling medicine man and his "zombie" freak show could be explained with comic-book rubber science -- it doesn't have to be supernatural. But it could be.

Two-Gun Mojo also immediately showcases just how much chaos and destruction surround Hex: he manages to escape, in the end, but he tends to be the only one who does.  And it's got Truman in the full flower of his mature style, full of little lines going everywhere and loving depictions of every millisecond of violence. (It's a style that can't be easy or quick, which may be why Truman tones it down by the third story, Shadows West.)

In the middle of the book is the quintessential modern Hex story, Riders of the Worm and Such, the one that also almost put a legal kibosh on the series and its creators. You see, Landsale wrote in a pair of evil, creepy brothers named Johnny and Edgar Autumn, and Truman drew them to somewhat resemble the actual Winter brothers. It may have been meant as a weird homage, but the Winters were not pleased, and sued to have the comics suppressed on defamation grounds.

(Pro tip: if you're writing a real person into a story, even under a thin veil, make sure you have their approval if you want to make your fictional version cartoonishly evil. Saves a lot of time and aggravation.)

Riders starts from much the same place as Two-Gun -- Hex is in a jam, with a bounty on his head, trying to get away -- but quickly gets more baroque and clearly supernatural. Lansdale is at his best with the deeply weird, and Truman draws great monsters, which leads to great dialogue and action sequences.

Shadows West, the last of three stories, is shorter than the other two -- only three issues rather than five. It also has that less-obsessively detailed Truman art style, which means Hex's world doesn't feel quite as real or lived-in. It's supernatural almost from the beginning, and the plot is a little more simplistic and obvious -- mostly an extended chase sequence. It's still fun, and still the same kind of story as the first two, but there's just less of it, in a whole lot of ways.

But the whole package is impressive: three big weird Western stories, four hundred pages, with one very distinctive lead character and a wickedly twisted take on the Old West. The world needs more weird comics; buy this one to encourage the world.