Weird Western Tales: Jonah Hex

Jonah Hex

by John Albano, Various (Illustrator)

One of the greatest and most memorable Western characters in comics, Jonah Hex rode the high plains in search of vengeance and justice in these 1970s stories collected here for the first time.

A former Confederate soldier, Hex traveled from town to town helping those in need, stopping evildoers but often exacting a high price.

Collects adventures from ALL-STAR WESTERN #10-11 and WEIRD WESTERN TALES #12-14 and #16-38.

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels, Westerns, Fiction, Dc Comics, Comic Book

526 pages, Hardcover

Published April 7, 2020

Reviews

[Dan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Weird Western Tales: Jonah Hex collects All Star Western #10-11 and Weird Western Tales #12-14 and #16-38 featuring Jonah Hex.

I've been a fan of Jonah Hex since Joe Lansdale, Tim Truman, and Sam Glanzman did the Jonah Hex Vertigo books in the 1990s but I've never read his original adventures until now.

Michael Fleisher, John Albano, Cary Bates, Arnold Drake, and Russel Carley handle the writing chores and Tony deZuniga, Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez, George Moliterni, Noly Panaligan, Rich Buckler, Luis Dominguez, Bill Draut, Oscar Novelle, Frank Springer, and Doug Wildey handle the art.

The stories hit all the Western standards with Jonah being an ace gunfighter and bounty hunter with his own code of honor. If you see him coming, he's coming after you for a reason. His history is hinted at but not fully explored apart from his surrender during the war between the states. We don't find out about his facial scar in this volume. The bad guys inevitably get gunned down by Hex, making for some satisfying tales. John Albano is easily my favorite among the writers.

Art wise, this is a great looking book. JLGL is iconic but Tony deZuniga's EC influenced, gritty art style is by far my favorite. The man knows his away around a desert shoot out. One thing I didn't care for in the book was that sometimes Hex is depicted clean shaven. A guy like Hex spends a lot of time on the plains and has no time for shaving.

That's about all I have to say, I guess. This is great stuff and I hope DC reprints more classic Hex. Hell, they can bring more modern Hex back into print too.

Weird Western Tales: Jonah Hex is a fantastic collection of tales featuring everyone's favorite scarred gunfighter. Five out of five stars.

[Matthew WK · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good stuff from the 70s. Impressed with the art and love the coloring. Could have benefited from a few overarching story arcs, but still something I'll read again. If you enjoy mid 19th century American West stories, give it a shot (pew pew).

[Ralph Carlson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent read! Loved it.

[Brian S · Rating 4 out of 5]

OVERALL RATING: 4 stars (8 out of 10)
Art: 4 stars
Writing Style/Quality: 4 stars
Plot: 5 stars
Pacing: 4 stars
Characterization: 4 stars
World Building: 3

[Ada]

***Who sucked me in***
Ever since I found this channel on YouTube my wishlist got even longer...
Near Mint Condition
WARNING YOU WILL WANT TO GET COLLECTED EDITIONS OF COMICS THAT ARE OUT OF PRINT!

*my wallet is crying*

[Darren K · Rating 4 out of 5]

Weird Wester Tales is a collection of the earliest Jonah Hex appearances from the mid-1970's before Hex was spun off into his own title. The stories themselves are, for the most part, pretty fantastic revisionist Western comics. All but one story in the collection are single issue stories, with one two-parter coming in late in the collection, and generally very similar in story and tone from issue to issue. This is not a bad thing. Generally, the bounty hunter Jonah Hex arrives in some small frontier town, the dead bodies of any number of villains tied to his horse, when he encounters some EC Comics level twisted evil that interrupts his steak dinner, forcing him to do some violent killing that he utterly fails to feel any guilt about before riding out of town, usually $500 richer for the bounties he turned in. Later, less effective stories often involve Hex being bushwhacked by the criminals he was tracking, and then rather than kill Hex, they put him in some sort of impossible to escape death trap that Hex quickly escapes before doing some violent killing that he utterly fails to feel any guilt about.

The first half of the collection is written by John Albano and usually illustrated by Tony Dezuniga in heavy blacks. These are definitely the most successful issues of the collection. Albano's stories are moral tales of immoral men, where justice is at best a vague approximation of what is right and wrong. Women, children and beloved pets are brutally murdered in his stories; they are utterly unsentimental. Dezuniga's artwork is spectacular. I had originally read these stories in the black and white Showcase reprints, and I did not expect colour to improve Dezuniga's art. His heavy reliance on shadow indicated to me that I would probably find the colour disappointing, but the colour is rather fantastic; it really brings out Dezuniga's art and throws his blacks into relief rather than overwhelming them. The colours are typically earth tones and greys, which may have looked muddy in the original comics, but the quality of printing and paper in this collection really make the art shine.

The second half of the collection is written by Michael Fleisher, who's work on The Spectre makes him no stranger to weird tales of vengeance, but the stories become more pat and less interesting. Hex seems less like a force of nature and more like a cowboy with a facial scar. The art is much more varied, with a range of artists handling the stories. The art is never bad, though some super-hero artists do do some issues that come across less effectively than the others. One highlight issue saw Jonny Quest creator Doug Wildey doing the art - and sound effects - and it is fantastic looking.

The biggest caveat for this collection, however, is the incredibly dated portrayal of race. Disappointingly, there is no effort to contextualise the racism of the original comics in the text pieces of the book, and instead we are left with a real bag of mixed messages. First Nations people engage in acts of savagery, but the stories always make clear that this is always in retribution for the brutality "the white man" has perpetrated on them. First Nations cultures are portrayed as layered and worthy, yet at the same time the characters still speak in broken Tontoisms. It is definitely progress from Western comics of earlier decades, but the tension between progressiveness and the old Westerns is frustrating. Even worse (as there are less examples of it so less room for depth) are the treatment of African Americans and Mexicans. The comic takes a nihilistic tone at the best of times, but it feels painful when this nihilism goes in racial directions. The stories try to present Hex as a proud Southerner who hated slavery, as even the morally flexible Hex could tell when some things were too evil to even consider, yet other issues feature ask the reader to laugh at watermelon jokes involving an African American character. That the collection fails to do due diligence and even attempt to contextualise the racism is a knock against the book, that with the less interesting later stories knocks this down from a five-star collection.

[Len Appleby · Rating 5 out of 5]

(note: this review was rejected by amazon.com for violating its Community Guidelines)

The other reviewers give a pretty good overview of the contents of this book; I simply will add that, with the price under $45 at amazon as of the end of July, 2021, if you are at all a fan of the old western comics from DC in the 1970s, or a fan of the Jonah Hex character in particular, then it’s a [really] good idea to grab ‘Weird Western Tales: Jonah Hex’.

With this volume, you get all of the initial appearances of Jonah Hex from his debut in February - March1972 in issue 10 of ‘All Star Western’, to issue 38 (February 1977) of ‘Weird Western Tales’. Note that the backup stories from these comics are not present in this compilation.

‘Weird Western Tales: Jonah Hex’ has high quality sewn binding and glossy paper stock.

The comics compiled in 'Weird Western Tales: Jonah Hex' were designed to have standalone, one-issue plots that had to be completed within 14 to 20 pages, so writers John Albano and Michael Fleisher necessarily deployed compressed narratives, with lots of speech balloons and narrative text boxes.

That said, these are good stories, all things considered, and it's no surprise that writers Justin Grey and Jimmy Palmiotti 'recycled' some of Fleisher's plots, from his lengthy run with the character, for the 2006 'Jonah Hex' series they did for DC.

[I don’t see much point to getting indignant and outraged over the treatment of minorities and Indians in the stories in this compilation. If you’re unhappy over the content of ‘Weird Western Tales’, do remember that these comics originated in the 70s and you could very well get indignant over the un-Woke content of many other pop culture properties of that era, including TV shows like 'Good Times', 'Sanford and Son', 'What's Happening', and 'Starsky and Hutch', among others. ]

One area in which these comics have not aged well is the decision by writers Albano and Fleisher to phonetically render the 'Southern' dialects of Hex and other characters. Readers will need to negotiate lots of speech balloons filled with words like 'ah' (I), 'yore' (your), 'thet' (that), and 'fer' (for), among others...........also be prepared for Mexican characters to speak phonetically accented English: ‘steenking gringo peeg !’

Artwork is provided by the Filipino artists Tony DeZuniga and Noly Panaligan, as well as Rich Buckler, and the Argentinian artists George Moliterni and Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez.

One thing that is worth complimenting DC on, is that they did not try and re-color these nearly 50 year-old comics. The original color separations were not ideal, but by staying true to the originals, the compilation avoids projecting an 'artificial' quality to the profiled artwork.

While it would seem good business sense for DC to issue additional hardcover volumes compiling the remaining issues of Weird Western Tales featuring the Hex character, as well as some (or all ?) of the 92 issues of the Jonah Hex comic book published from 1977 - 1985, the current uncertain state of DC as a comics publishing enterprise makes this no sure bet, unfortunately.........

Summing up, you will want to give serious thought to grabbing a copy of ‘Weird Western Tales: Jonah Hex’ sooner rather than later. Because when it goes out of print in the near future, the Bookjackers and speculators are going to selling copies for exorbitant prices, and you don’t want to be obliged to get it from them.

[Matthew Taylor · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read a fair few of these issues when I was a kid in the black and white Showcase Presents format. I remembered enjoying them up until John Albano left the book and falling off it, so I was curious if that would be the case here.

I’m glad to say it was not. This whole book is solid Western comics with barely a bad story among them. John Albano and Tony DeZuniga do a great job introducing the character of Jonah Hex with a series of solid (mostly) episodic stories, then Michael Fleisher takes over the series and while it took a couple issues for me to get used to his style he really expands Jonah and makes him feel more integrated into the world of the West.

For comparison, the Albano run feels like a gritty Sergio Corbucci Western, while Fleisher’s feels a bit more akin to Once Upon a Time in the West. That’s not to say one is better than the other, I’d say they’re quite comparable, and it’s a shame Albano doesn’t seem to have done more work in the comic book format as his work is remarkably solid here.

This book is quite gritty, especially considering it was coming out in the early 1970s. I was probably a bit too young at the time when I first read it. The art of Tony DeZuniga and other rotating artists does a fantastic job of removing any romantic feelings one might have towards the West.

Overall if you’re interested in Jonah or like Westerns I’d recommend this book. It collects the entirety of his appearances in All Star Western and Weird Western Tales and I would quite happily read a collection from when he graduated into his own series.

[Kyle Burley · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars.
Formulaic but entertaining collection of the stories that established Jonah Hex as DC’s greatest western “hero”.
Some terrific art by Tony DeZuniga, the best of all Hex artists.

[Andrew Oliver · Rating 4 out of 5]

Amazing artwork and some fantastic stories from the 70s