New Stuff Reviewed: Jonah Hex #56, plus Rawhide Kid - The Sensational Seven

As some of you already know, I don't read much in the way of new comics lately. However, today when I made the rounds at my local comics shops, I picked up a couple.

First off, I picked up the latest issue of Jonah Hex. I had had this comic in my monthly pull, back before I lost my job 16 months ago (I've finally reentered the workforce and have been back to work for almost a month) and was sad to drop it. I thought today was as good a day as any to re-acquaint myself with Mr. Hex.

Of course, this month's issue proudly announces that Jonah Hex is "Now A Major Motion Picture", came sealed in a polybag with a miniature movie poster and contains two short Jonah Hex stories and a four page interview with movie director Jimmy Hayward and comics writing team Justin Gray and Jimmy Palmiotti (Who I am glad to see have stuck around) .

The cover is a nice piece by Darwyn Cooke. My wife and I chuckled as we observed that Warner Bros. can cast Josh Brolin if they like, but all the DC artists have cast a 70's Clint Eastwood since this series relaunched nearly five years ago.



Shortly after I picked up my Jonah Hex, I looked up to see a brand new Rawhide Kid sitting proudly on the shelf. Clearly, the good folks at Marvel were not going to pass up the potential Western market created by the release of a Jonah Hex movie and have swooped in (in true Marvel fashion) for the kill.



Now I don't know about y'all, but for years I've daydreamed of how great it would be if either DC or Marvel finally got it into their heads to do a full-out "Magnificent Seven"-style story featuring their stable of Western heroes. And this mini-series promises to deliver just that. I can't say as how I ever pictured that the posse of seven gunslingers would be recruited by Marvel's newly gay version of Rawhide.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not anti gay or anything. I just never, in all my years of reading Rawhide Kid, would have pictured a scene like this one where he's a-doin' Annie Oakley's hair:



He's still just as tough and just a quick on the draw, only now he's a little more "Queer Eye for the Cow Guy".

Anyway, the plotline centers around an old enemy with his own private army having kidnapped Wyatt and Morgan Earp. RK and Annie decide to round up some help and go rescue the Earps.

There's also a cameo by a new, scary version of the old West Ghost Rider.

I don't know how this will pan out, but I was fairly entertained and look forward to part two.

CSI- Wild West!

Homer Fleming's Buck Marshall, Range Detective debuted in Detective Comics #1, in March of 1937. Buck would remain a regular feature up until issue #36. Detective Comics was the first comic book dedicated entirely to a single theme. In this case, detective stories. Each issue was 64 pages with various features. Most of them in color, but a few, like Buck were in black and white.

The story reprinted below hails from a later issue, #27. A comic book which is most often reprinted only because it marks the debut of another, more famous detective, Batman.

As you can see, Buck has moved on from being strictly black and white, to black, white and one color. Also, unlike his first appearance, Buck now has a pinto horse named "Pepper".







On a sidebar, I have a reprint of Buck's first appearance in Detective #1, but this just seemed like a better story to me. It is worth noting, however that in the previous story, Buck is also tipped off to the fact that someone has moved a murdered man's body by the presence of yellow clay.

What The HEX Goin' On Here? All-Star Western #10

The recurring heroes in Western comics were traditionally cut from heroic cloth. Guys like Red Ryder, The Lemonade Kid, NightHawk... Maybe some of them wore masks, but they weren't outlaws or bandits, just guys with secret identities. And even the guys who were "outlaws" were never really bad. Guys like The Rawhide Kid, Kid Colt, The Outlaw Kid, the Two-Gun Kid (Weren't there any grown-ups in the West?) were branded as outlaws, but they were all falsely accused.

Sure, there were a few misfits, mostly Indians or "half-breed" characters who weren't accepted by the folks they tried to help. But the reader knew about their troubled, noble hearts and so that was okay.

This approach lasted from the Golden Age of the late 30's all the way through the 1960's. And then, in 1971, a new type of hero began to surface in the fabric of American Western comics. The ANTI-hero. What's an anti-hero?

"In fiction, an antihero is generally considered to be a protagonist whose character is at least in some regards conspicuously contrary to that of the archetypal hero, and is in some instances its antithesis." - Wikipedia

Jonah Hex is not a typical hero. He is not handsome (although he may have been once). He is not noble (He kills men for money). Jonah Hex is a horribly disfigured Confederate veteran who makes his living as a bounty hunter. And he's mean. Plumb, mad-dog mean.

Enjoy his debut in All-Star Western #10, "Welcome to Paradise"