Required Western Reading: Jonah Hex

Published by DC Comics, the current incarnation of Jonah Hex (Volume 2) remains pretty much as you might have remembered him from when his adventures first began appearing in print in 1972--a surly, disfigured, former Confederate soldier turned bounty hunter whose violent acts of vengeance beget a moral code. For good or bad, Jonah, as well as a number of recurring characters, also bare slight resemblances to those seen in the little-seen 2010 missed-opportunity-of-a-film, Jonah Hex. (But that is a commentary for another day...)

The current series of the comic book adventures borrows its visual style heavily from two sources: Spaghetti Westerns and Joe Kubert's Sgt. Rock comics from the 1960s. As you can see from the splash page to the right from the recetnly released issue number 63, the broad panoramic vistas and solitary imagery are beautifully presented in vibrant color.

Fortunately for the casual comic reader, the new run is much loosely episodic than the more modern comic book, so one need not purchase every issue to date (though I'm seeking out all I can from the current run) to understand the stories that take place.

 

Most are self-contained adventures guided by the steady hands of writers Justin Gray and Jimmy Palmiotti, and are only a single issue in length... though there are some longer stories, most notably the "Six Gun War," which carry over more issues. The modern comic reader will tell you that this single issue/single story approach is a most unusual in this age of decompression story telling, wherein most "stories" which would have in the past been begun and concluded in one issue are regularly stretched over six for the purposes the publisher collecting and selling them as part of a trade paperback.

For the Spaghetti Western fan, or those interested in well-crafted comic adventure, I would strongly recommend picking up an issue at your local comic specialty store.