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BOOK REVIEW! DC SHOWCASE PRESENTS JONAH HEX VOLUME ONE (DC Comics, 2005)

Never was a fan of comic book westerns. They didn't exactly settle well with my own sense of ranch house fun 'n jamz since westerns were obviously aimed at the rural kinda kids who liked to run, jump, play athletic games and climb trees 'stead of just loaf around in the bedroom eating Cheetos like I was wont to do. Good for them but for this suburban pudge it was superheroes and early Marvel Age monster reprints only, and for a change of pace there were a variety of efforts from the Archie Comics Group that usually helped put a smile on my puss after long hard days of all that psychic bending over I hadda do. Westerns though...maybe they were just too historical for me 'r sump'thin'.

An' as far as I know amongst my "peers" there weren't many other cowboy comic fans that I can think of. Being the seventies 'n all it was more'n obvious that tee-vee and theatrical westerns were in decline, and I'd gander that a fair enough portion of the audience for these kinds of sagas were either dying off or heading in other directions in search of their adventurous throb thrills. Only knew of one western comics fan and I used to thumb through her collection of Marvel reprints if only to gander upon the various by-now famous artists who lent their pen to the giddyap cause...Dave Berg, George Woodbridge, Russ Heath...

You can sure as shootin' bet that I can remember when the grotesquely scarred character by the name of Jonah Hex made his comic book debut given the ads hyping his arrival in quite a number of the DC titles that I just happ'd upon. Sheesh, with campaign like that who but some ten-year-old gal into the romance titles could ignore him, but even with alla the publicity directed at the guy I sure didn't take the bait---I passed on those ALL STAR WESTERNs that this obvious "anti hero" was popping up in whilst on my way to the latest MONSTERS ON THE PROWL even if the guy had somewhat of a gory appeal that would have perked the budding sadist in me. 

Like I said westerns just seemed outta my bailiwick and besides sheesh, weren't DC just plagiarizing themselves what with a character whose physical deformities were slightly similar to Batman's longtime nemesis Two Face? Seemed kinda unoriginal but since Sky Saxon was famous for swiping from himself after he swiped from the Kinks maybe it was on the level after all.

Hex's a true loner, a suspicious of everyone (with good cause) bounty hunter which was a profession that, at least according to a good portion of the tee-vee westerns I've seen o'er the years, was about one step below cleaning bovine foreskins. He was also a Confederate soldier who switched to the North and whose face got scarred after being branded with "The Mark of the Demon" which I guess was an Indian version of the old squealer zig-zag that was so popular in various New York City social circles. Well, that's one story, but whatever it sure does help out this pretty creepy (and thusly lovable in his own inimitable way) character's socio-comicology makeup rather swell. And even though he earns his living in ways that might have been taboo in societies both polite and impolite, you do get the feeling that he is a whole lot more moral than the denizens he frequently encounters, both polite and impolite at that.

I don't think I coulda handled these comics age twelve being such a nerve-frayed fear-crunched kid that I was. Now I can enjoy HEX frayed nerves and all. Way back when I woulda been bejabbered over the craven violence, heartlessness and the definitely cruel aspects of Hex. He makes his enemies go through the roughest of just desserts that are so extreme that he could even make Mr. A. shudder. In one of these sagas he gives a desperately ill guy a vial of medicine then shoots it out of his hand, and when another particularly evildoer is bitten by a rabid wildcat and pleads with Hex not to let him die alone, the scarred one tossed the corpse of the guy's brother at him! Ain't no shortage of gutbusting tragedy here...children drowned in quicksand, acres of Indians rotting in the sun, escaping Confederate POWs mowed down with gatling guns. Best part about it's that you could have bought an ish with enough pennies picked up off the sidewalk!

Fred Wertham was still around when these mags first hit the racks, and you know that he'd just die after a good five pages or so, it's that over-the-top violent and definitely against any code I can think of comics or otherwise! I'll tell ya, these must have been a quite refreshing (and needed) change from those heavy handed morality tales that were popping up in most all of the other DC titles of the day!

And oddly enough I like the art! "Oddly" if only because I never cozied up to alla them fine-penned Filipino artists that DC was pushing on us in the seventies, believing that their work was just too danged detailed and complicated for stories such as those seen in your standard comic book. However, original HEX artist Tony DeZuniga does a fantab job on this what with him capturing the whole filthy and definitely un-hygenic aspects of the Wild West, thankfully without piles of horseshit hunked up all over the place.

As a bonus DC stuck some pre-Hex ALL STAR WESTERN sagas at the tail end of the book. Good 'nuff with more De Zuniga art'n all, but the stories just don't hold up to the visage of HEX's merciless world. Like the breath mints at the restaurant they're free so don't complain.