Review by Jamie Coville

For those that don't know who Jonah Hex is, he's an ugly, tough as nails hired killer. He very quickly turns into a bounty hunter that doesn't want to cross the law. I get the impression he started off as a one shot short story that turned out to be really popular. In bringing him back they had to find some way to keep him in the anti-hero mode. As a hired killer he was always paid to kill bad people and often the people who paid him were bad too. Hex would somehow get them in the end as well, but that type of story would've got quite repetitive very quickly. Making him a bounty hunter and still sometimes hired killer/enforcer allowed for more types of stories to be told. The early tales had an ironic twist endings which definitely was part of the appeal. With the exception of a couple of stories the writing in here is great. I'm not sure if editor Joe Orlando came up with plot or what, as John Albano is credited with script in the early issues. Later on Micheal Fleisher took over and quality is good enough to keep reading. Much of the earlier stories are short done in one tales, but once Hex was an established hit, they began doing longer stories. It's similar to Lone Wolf and Cub. The old country dialogue frequently in use grows on you like Hellblazer British slang. The black and white format is great for De Zuniga's art. I must admit, I didn't think much of him prior to reading this. I didn't see much of his work before and what little I did see didn't really register. But here in this format he shines and his work is easily one of the reasons Hex was popular. The art is a mix of static and at times very animated images and his decision making on when to use each method is bang on. It made me think of how static/stiff art can be effective in certain types of stories. At the end of the book are a few stories that are not Jonah Hex at all. Some are The Outlaw and others are Billy The Kid. I heard the reason for this was the reprint fee's for the later Jonah Hex stories were too expensive to print in this package. The additional tales a pretty good too. Most of the artwork is still by Tony De Zuniga but there is bits of Gil Kane and Jim Aparo too. Not too long ago there was a long thread on the Dwayne McDuffie message board about Jonah Hex wearing the grey confederate uniform. Some African Americans were quite offended by a "hero" (anti or otherwise) wearing it. They equated it to a hero wearing KKK white sheet or a Nazi uniform, which would be offensive and dumb. They believed the Confederate Army uniform was equally as bad because the south fought to keep black people as slaves. There was a lot of head scratching on why DC would publish such a character and veiled questioning of racist or very ignorant editors. I have to admit, I can see why they feel that way. In reading the book I believe I discovered why DC had a hero running around in the confederate uniform. At the time (late 60s and 70s) what I call "Sympathy for the Devil" storytelling was popular. Besides the Stones song we had Sidney Poitier teamed up with a racist cop in the Heat of the Night, a very politically incorrect Archie Bunker was one of the more popular characters on TV. In all cases the bad man is shown in some sympathetic light, usually with some redeeming value. The confederate uniform on Hex was a quick visual way of identifying him as a "bad man" for those browsing the racks. The redeeming badman stories were popular at the time. It was a different type of protagonist and it probably made an audience of "progressive/intellectuals" reaffirm that view of themselves because they could see the complexity of it. But I must admit this really only works for WASPish audiences because they weren't the direct targets of the "bad man." We semi-sympathetic white folks know that racism is wrong but because our direct ancestors weren't the ones being held as slaves Hex's confederate uniform doesn't affect us like it does them. We know it's bad, but we don't find it personally offensive. After all, we aren't black and it wouldn't have been us in slavery had the south won. At one point this topic was brought to the attention of the freelancers working on the current Jonah Hex series. They said they had a story planned to explain away why he continues to wear the uniform. I have my doubts it'll do anything to lessen the offense felt by African Americans. I don't think there is any story they can write that could. But back to the Showcase book. I give it a 4.5 out of 5 stars. If you can get over the uniform (like I can, I guess) it's great, entertaining reading here. If you can find it, snatch it up as it's OOP. But hopefully you'll find one with better binding. Mine's cover just popped off in reviewing it again for writing this.

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