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This collection features six lushly illustrated tales of Hex's travels in the old West, dodging bullets, righting wrongs and courting death.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Definitely worth picking up,
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This review is from: Jonah Hex : Guns of Vengeance (Paperback)
While I was never a dedicated fan of the Jonah Hex / Weird Western Tales series DC put out in the 70s and 80s, I definitely liked the reincarnation of Jonah Hex in 1993's `Two Gun Mojo'. Freed from Comics Code constraints, Joe R. Lansdale, Tim Truman, and Sam Glanzman put together a blood-splattered storyline with plenty of eerie goings-on, pathos, and Lansdale's unique sense of warped humor. "Riders of the Worm and Such", the 1994 follow-up, went more for humor than horror, but was still an entertaining read. Lansdale was going through a burst of productivity in the Western genre at this time (his coeval title for Dark Horse, `Dead in the West', is worth searching out, but be advised it goes a bit too over the top with the grue).
Jonah Hex now has his own ongoing series, up to issue #33 as of early July 2008. It continues to be one of the few Western titles with any kind of staying power on the comic store shelves. Compilations of earlier issues in this series are now seeing distribution as softcover graphic novels, hence `Guns of Vengeance', which features issues #7 - #12. In this series, Hex occupies a Wild West where homicidal behavior and moral depravity are steeped into every nuance of daily life. This is the perfect setup for lots of violence, and `Guns' - or rather, Jonah and his trigger-happy compatriots - delivers. Every bullet strike calls forth a detailed, over-the-top spurt of gore, and in some stories the body count gets high enough to carpet the streets with corpses. The stories in `Guns', which are written by Justin Gray and Jimmy Palmiotti, are all standalones rather than multi-chapter stories, and center less on the horror or supernatural themes that are the bread and butter of the `Weird Western' titles. `Jonah Hex' focuses more on Spaghetti Western-inspired plots revolving around revenge and retribution. Gray and Palmiotti occasionally provide moments of black humor, but only the `Gator Bait' tale (i.e, Jonah Hex issue # 10) comes close to a Lansdale-style grotesquerie. Featuring a family of inbred backwoods types who enjoy feeding the occasional trespasser to their pet alligators, `Gator Bait' is simultaneously funny and grisly and one of the better stories in the compilation. Overall, the artwork in the `Jonah Hex' series is good, and the issues compiled in `Guns' don't disappoint in this regard. The artwork by David Michael Beck, Paul Gulacy, Luke Ross, and Dylan Teague has an appropriately realistic style with lots of washed browns, grays, and blues. Moebius set a high standard for modern Western comic art with his famous `Lieutenant Blueberry' series, and DC's editorial staff seem to recognize this in assigning artists to `Hex'. While the long-term fate of the `Jonah Hex' series is never secure in this superhero-focused world of comics retailing, I'll be looking for more compilations to appear on the store shelves and I'll be picking them up. If you feel some nostalgia for the Old School titles like Marvel's `Two Gun Kid' or `Rawhide Kid', the old Weird Western Tales series, or Lt. Blueberry, treat yourself and grab a copy.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Western Vengeance by Hex!,
By
This review is from: Jonah Hex : Guns of Vengeance (Paperback)
Jonah Hex issues 7-12 put into graphic novel form makes for a fun read with our favorite Western bounty hunter, who makes his own rules about who lives and who dies -- with scripts by Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray.
The first story One Wedding and Fifty Funerals starts with a gunfight between Jonah and several armed men, as the town of Blood Creek, Texas burns in the background. No dialogue at first -- just flying bullets causing a lot of damage. A jilted lover comes in on a wedding with a gang of hoods, catches the wedding tent on fire and start in on killing. Brian told her not to wed another. With her former husband's blood on her hands, she has Jonah hunt the guy down. "Dead or Alive?" Jonah: "When is alive an option?" Love that! Great little story, unusual and depressing ending! Luke Ross art full of large panels and action throughout. Never Turn a Blind Eye has several heads sans bodies in a wooden box. Why? What happened? Gruesome! But that's not the story! An old friend of Jonah's stumbles into a bar and tells him the Bedroll Killers are coming into town after him. He asks protection from the marshal. It seems his pal is not telling the whole story -- and a colony of Germans out for revenge, things get out of hand. Detailed art by David Michael Beck. Tony DeZunica's detailed pencils come to play in a gripping Western tale called Ambushed. A girl gets killed in an accidental shooting and her mother desires revenge -- for four long years until she meets Hex and this time there's no turning her away. Hex is the ugliest I've seen with DeZunica's pencils. Phil Noto's pastels are an interesting mix of blood and water in this tale, "Gator Bait", in Black Swamp, Louisiana, as Hex wrestles gators! A dying man asks for retribution with a knife sticking out his back. "Retribution comes at a price!", Jonah says. The hunt begins. He finds the killer family and they want him in the swamp with their gators. Jonah has other plans. This is the most graphic of the stories so far. Art Thibert draws a hideous scene of skeletons hanging by rope on a tree. And one body -- Jonah Hex! A bunch of carney (carnival) freaks witness the goings on. After they move on, El Diablo rides in and cuts Hex free. "I would stay," he says, "but vengeance calls and I must answer..." I love this kind of supernatural, suspenseful dialogue. Ironically, the carney guys are in trouble, being mauled by a gang of thugs. El Diablo (host of a vengeful spirit and all that) and Hex work well together to save them, but Hex still has to get his revenge on them-- "I'm a few bodies shy a' my quota." Luke Ross returns in "Bloodstained Snow," advertised as a Weird Western tale! A bunch of bounty hunters were hired to kill Mormons. Hex gets rescued in the snow from being thrown to the ground, starving. He is taken in by the Mormons and they explain the situation. Especially when one of the Mormons has had his tongue cut out and teeth wrenched from his mouth! Gruesome! Great collection of stories -- from the bloody Old West! Other Palmiotti Tales: Random Acts of Violence Last Resort Jonah Hex: Counting Corpses Jonah Hex: Luck Runs Out
0 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Rotating artists spoil the series,
This review is from: Jonah Hex : Guns of Vengeance (Paperback)
After Jonah Hex: No Way Back and Jonah Hex - Face Full of Violence, my third foray into Jonah Hex land was something of a disappointment.
Collecting issues 7-13 of the Gray/Palmiotti series, this volume has no less than seven artists. That is a new artist every issue, with a new style and interpretation. I didn't mind in "Face Full of Violence" that there was one story drawn by Tony Dezungia, the original Jonah Hex artist, with the rest by Luke Ross. That worked well. The artists are all good in their own way, but a new artist every issue is just too much. It doesn't help that the artists can't even agree on what Jonah Hex looks like. His scared face allows for too much variation, and sometimes Hex is a good looking guy with a minor affliction, and sometimes he looks like a monster who would scare Two-Face. Sometimes there is one strip of skin connecting him mouth, sometimes there is a whole crisscrossed network of scar tissues. Although it didn't have my favorite art, "Bloodstained Snow" was a great story, set in Hex's pre-Bounty Hunter days (although he doesn't look any younger) when he is helping a persecuted Mormon group. I have to say, for a former soldier in the Confederate Army, Hex sure does have some modern liberal leanings in terms of prejudice and racism. "The Hanging Tree" was good as well, showing the return of a the carnival from first collection's story "A Cemetery Without Crosses," and co-stars supernatural cowboy El Diablo. Just like when Bat Lash showed up before, El Diablo helps to place Hex in a wider universe, making him not such a grim loner. Do disappointing, but still worth getting. I hope they sort out the rotating artists by the next collection, which I definitely plan to pick up.
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