Jonah Hex #14 V2 "Retribution, Part 2 of 3"

Jonah Hex #14 V2 Feb '07
"Retribution, Part 2 of 3"
Justin Gray and Jimmy Palmiotti, story - Jordi Bernet, art and cover 

Fathers and Sons -  Jonah Hex walks into a bar and sits down with his back to the wall, facing the only door. The local deputy asks the sheriff "Was that?" and the sheriff replies that the deputy better tell the Reverend to dust off his Bible. Shortly a young boy enters the bar and walks up to a lone man leaning on the bar, drinking. The boy entreats his father to come home for supper. The man turns on the boy, but the boy persists and finally the man slaps his son to the floor as we get a very close look at Jonah Hex watching the entire drama.

Greeley, Colorado, 1851 - Jonah, as a young boy is watching his father, Woodson, load up the covered wagon. Jonah is wanting to know why they have to leave and Woodson crawls out of the wagon and kicks Jonah into the dirt. He yanks the boy up by the hair and tells him to never question him again. He continues to verbally abuse Jonah until Jonah spits in his old man's face.

Woodson knocks him to the ground an Jonah lunges for Woodson's pistol. The father breaks a bottle over Jonah's skull and then drags him to the outhouse, lifts the seat and throws his son down into the gut wrenching filth. Throughout the night Jonah tries to crawl out, falling back time after time. When he finally emerges from the outhouse, he is greeted by darkness and his father sitting there with a pistol trained on him. Woodson hands Jonah the pistol and the chance to rid himself of the abusive father forever, but Jonah only stares at him silently. Woodson gives forth some words to live by and then tells Jonah to clean up, they leave for California in the morning.

Black Hills Apache Territory, Arizona, 1851 - Jonah and Woodson pull up to a pueblo in the wagon. He begs the Apache for safe passage through their land and is told that the toll must be paid in either gold or blood. Woodson says that he aims to make his fortune in California and return to Colorado to reclaim his lost farm. Woodson glances at Jonah, the son he has never wanted and has always hated and then kicks Jonah from the wagon, stating that the Apache can have him and do with him as they see fit. Woodson will return in six months and buy Jonah back three-fold.

A medicine man stares at Jonah, whispers some incantation and the Apache tell Woodson that they have a deal.

The Black Hills, Two Years Later - Jonah is out chopping wood when he hears a scream. He finds the chief being mauled by a puma, which Jonah quickly dispatches with the axe. Jonah then helps the chief back to camp and help. Because he saved the life of the chief, Jonah is elevated from slave to son of the chief and is looked upon lovingly by White Fawn. As they walk in the moonlight, they are approached by Noh-Tante, the chief's real son. Noh-Tante has no good feelings towards Jonah and tells him that the chief wants the two of them to raid a traveling Kiowa camp of their ponies.

They both head off into the darkness and Jonah makes short work of the lone sentry. Noh-Tante grabs the ponies and then trows a knife into Jonah's left leg and then sounds an alarm. Several Kiowa come rushing out and Jonah single-handedly kills the entire tribe.

Present Day - The man in the bar pulls a knife on the boy and the bartender is trying to diffuse the situation. The man pulls his pistol on the bartender and Jonah lifts his own pistol and tells the man to drop the knife. The man turns and growls that it ain't Hex's business. Jonah replies "It is now." and places a single bullet right above the man's eyes. He falls to the floor dead and.....

The boy grabs his father's pistol and aims at Jonah's back as Hex leaves the bar. The boy pauses and then drops the gun into the pool of his father's blood.

Hex is now on the street and six armed men approach, demanding that Jonah take them to where he has hidden Col. Ackerman's weapons. Things escalate and one man tells Hex that he will kill hex and he is dead serious. Hex replies "Got that partly right". (Yeah, I actually laughed at that line) A huge gunfight results and Jonah shoots five of the six men. The last one is about to shoot Jonah in the back when a bullet suddenly rips through the man's leg. He falls into the street as the boy from the bar walks out with a smoking pistol.

The boy says to Hex "You're welcome." Hex then finishes off the wounded man and walks down the street to his horse.

Statistics for This Issue
Men Killed By Jonah - 6 in the street, 1 in the bar, 10 Kiowa, and a Puma (I'm not counting the puma) for a total of 17
Running Total - 592 (432 past, 55 future, 15 Vertigo, 100 V2)
Jonah's Injuries - Knife in the leg, slapped, punched, bottle to the head, kick to the ribs, thrown into an outhouse.
Timeline - Well, 1868, flashback to 1851 and 1853. The flashback covers a few months and then a day. Current day; about 15-30 minutes.
Rape Percentage - 42% (6 out of 14)

Man o man o man. This one stays very very true to the original origin and does tie back into the Ackerman revenge storyline, but over all the absolute best panels are the two where Jonah kills the drunken father in the bar and considers it a favor to the boy.

In the boy, Hex saw everything that he was and knew what would become of the lad if he didn't intervene. I can only imagine Hex was wishing that someone seventeen years earlier would have done the same and rescued him from the hell that lived/lives.

Again, Justin and Jimmy produce a book that demands to be read out loud, with the framing captions ringing in the ear so very much like actual texts from that era.

Next Issue - Jonah returns to the Apache, in more ways than one.

Jonah Hex #20 "Phantom Stage to Willow Bend!"

Jonah Hex #20 Jan 1979
"Phantom Stage to Willow Bend!"
Michael Fleisher - story, Vincente Alcazar, art - Luis Dominguez, cover

Our tale begins with Jonah Hex upon his horse on a hill overlooking the Willow Bend stagecoach being robbed. Jonah really doesn't have an interest in the robbery, but he figured that somehow, some of the robbers just may have a bounty on their heads. He dismounts, pulls his rifle and take careful aim.

Down below the robbers are badmouthing the old driver when suddenly one of them is shot off of his horse. Just then another one falls, and then a third. The robbers are spooked and return some fire but a fourth falls and as they ride away, a fifth robber is shot from his saddle. Jonah rides down to collect his bounties and the old driver is thanking him for the help.

Jonah dismissed the gratitude, saying he was in it for the money. The driver said that he knew that Jonah wasn't doing it out of the kindness of his heart, Hexes don't do anything unless there is a profit to be made. Jonah's jaw drops open as he suddenly recognizes his father is the driver! They load up the bodies and head on for town.

During the ride back, Woodson keeps jabbering nonstop, saying that he has heard tales of Jonah. He knew that Jonah would become the fastest Hex, but he would always be the craftiest Hex. Woodson steals Jonah's cigar and then asks what happened to Jonah's face. Jonah decides to ignore the old man, pulls his hat over his eyes.

We then have a flashback (almost 25 years) to July, 1851 (putting this story in 1875 or early 1876) when Woodson decides to head to California to the gold rush. Woodson and Jonah with a bunch of Apaches. Woodson sells the Apaches a whole shipment of moonshine in exchange for a pile of pelts. The Apaches then bring out another load of pelts and tell Woodson that these are for Jonah, as they had agreed earlier. Woodson takes the pelts in order to get a grubstake up for the gold rush and leaves Jonah with the Apaches.

Back in the present, the stage arrives at Willow Bend and Woodson introduces Jonah to Mr. Barton, owner of the stage. Barton tells Jonah that there is a bounty on each of the outlaws and then offers Jonah a job guarding tomorrow's shipment to Willow Bend. Barton explains that his stage has been hit repeatedly and tomorrow they will be sending a quarter of a million dollars in Double Eagles.

Let's see, a Double Eagle is a $20 gold piece that contains about .9675 ounces of gold. 12,500 coins are required to equal $250,000. 12,500 X .9675 oz = 12093.75 oz / 16 oz = 755.86 pounds. And in case you are wondering, the face value of the shipment today would be 4.3 million. But the face value of the gold would be just over 8 million. But these are Double Eagles and if they were minted in Carson City, then they would be worth about $1700 each (the San Francisco coins are worth far less) so the total worth of the stash would be $21.25 million. Nice pickings, IF ya can move all 755 pounds of it. But I digress.

Jonah takes the job but requests some carpentry tools, extra long reins and extra clothes and he tells his dad that they are pulling out at 4 AM.

The next morning the stage approaches a narrow gulch and high up in the rocks overlooking it are five armed men. They carefully take aim and are able to shoot the stage driver dead center but to their surprise the stage keeps going. Inside the stage are Jonah & Woodson. Woodson is congratulating Jonah on his good idea of putting dummys up on top of the stage and then controlling the reins from inside the stage itself. Woodson says that he always knew that Jonah was the fastest Hex but HE is the craftiest and then he knocks Jonah out with a whiskey bottle.

Woodson stops the stage and the robbers come down form the hills. While the strongest cowboy in the whole world unloads the stage, one of the men asks Woodson what they should do with Jonah. Woodson replies, "Yuh mean muh boy? Muh flesh an blood favorite son? We ain't got no choice but tuh kill im. After all, he's a Hex, ain't he? If'n we don't kill im, he'll just dog us down and kill us all." He has the men douse the stage in kerosene and light it on fire.

This panics the horses and they bolt. Inside the flaming stage, Jonah comes to and realizes that:

A) The stage is on fire.

B) The door is locked.
He totally misses

C) There is no glass in the door window and

D) if stage doors locked, they would lock from the inside.

So he decides the only way out is to kick a hole in the roof and crawl out the top. Jonah sees that the stage is heading for a cliff, he jumps down on top of the horses, trying to stop them and at the last minute jumps from the horses as the whole shooting match rockets over the edge of the cliff. Jonah manages to snag onto a tree limb and save his neck.

Much later we find Jonah buying a horse from a farmer and he takes off after the robbers & his pappy. That night the robbers are camped and have a fire going when Jonah steps out of the shadows with both pistols drawn. One of them draws and Jonah sends three of them packing toot sweet. Jonah confronts his dad, demanding to know where the other two robbers are.

One of them calls Jonah's name and Jonah spins, shooting him dead and getting nicked in the right shoulder. The last robber steps between Jonah & Woodson and as he is about to gun down Jonah, Woodson throws scalding coffee into his face and then shoots him dead.

Jonah thanks his dad for the save and Woodson replies that he has been thinking about what he had done and was feeling some remorse. Woodson suddenly grabs his chest and topples over. Jonah picks him up, loads him on a horse and takes him to a doctor.

At the doc's, the sawbones opens the door and says, "Forget it mister! No medicine known to man is ever going to cure that face of yours." Jonah throws open the door and hauls his dad inside. The doc tells Jonah that the doc needs to examine Woodson alone. Several minutes later the doctor comes out and tells Jonah that Woodson has had a heart attack.

Jonah goes into the room and sees Woodson lying on a table, barely gasping for breath. Woodson asks Jonah for one last favor, could he please have a fancy funeral. Jonah agrees and asks where the money is buried. Woodson says that he and the gang hid it in ....... and then he dies.

Jonah leaves the doctors and the next day after the funeral the doc asks if Jonah loved his dad. Jonah replies that he hated the old man but he guesses that a man only has one pa and then Jonah rides off.

The doctor returns to his office to find Woodson getting dressed. Woodson pays the doc, asking if the funeral for the box of rocks was a good one. The doc says that Woodson's instructions were followed completely and then says that it all seems kind of cruel. Woodson replies that Jonah & he play jokes on one another all the time.

Later in a mountian cave we see Woodson digging up something and then riding off, laughing to himself the whole time.

Statistics for this issue:
Men killed by Jonah: 9
Running Total - 195
Jonah's Injuries: Knocked out with a whiskey bottle and a bullet wound to the right shoulder.
Timeline: The opening reference in the flashback would place this in 1875 or 1876. I'm more inclined to say 1875 because Michael Fleisher was a very lazy historian and everything happened in 1875. This story covered 3 days.

The body count was pretty high in this one and I liked the relationship between Jonah & his dad. It seemed pretty traumatic to have Jonah meet his dad and then have him dead 3 days later. The title, while dramatic, is very misleading. I guess you could consider the stage to be a phantom since it appeared that no one was driving it.

Next Issue: This one is full of whore slappin, double crossin, crowbar swingin, child beatin, Hex drownin, and everything ends with a bang. Oh, and Jonah has a really close shave.

Jonah Hex #7 Vol.1 "Son of the Apache"

Jonah Hex #7 Dec. 1977
"Son of the Apache"
Michael Fleisher, story- Ernie Chan & Noly Panaligan, art, Ernie Chan (Chua), cover

Since Jonah Hex #13 (vol2) is 'retelling' the origin of Jonah Hex, I thought I would present the first pre Superboy Prime Super Punch Retcon version (or as I like to call it "fpSPSPRv"). But first a little back story. In Jonah Hex #2, Jonah is framed for a murder and is then considered a wanted man. Other events between 2 and 6 indicate that this story takes place after WWT #30 and would place this either in 1875 or after (I will have to do more extensive research concerning time of year inidcators in those stories to see if it happens AFTER 1875).

The story opens in Hennessy, Texas with a cowboy starting to manhandle a saloon girl. At a nearby table, a gentleman in a fine suit stands and asks his table mate to excuse him. The other man refers to the gentleman as "your lordship." The gentleman interveens on behalf of the saloon girl, but teh cowboy turns and punches the man. As the man picks himself up, he tells the cowboy that he accepts the challenge to the duel. The friend of the gentleman produces a case with two sabers. When the cowboy starts to draw his pistol, the gentleman spins arouns and knocks the gun from the cowboy's hand. The cowboy takes the offered saber and the duel starts in the saloon.

The cowboy is quickly disarmed and the gentleman says that he will show compassion & not kill the cowboy. As the man turns to leave, the cowboy grabs at a gun on the bar. The gentleman sees him in a mirror and turns, throwing the sabre through the cowboy's heart.

The sheriff storms in, demanding to know what is going on. the gentleman introduces himself as Count Henri D'Aubergnon, recently from France, here in the States to hunt the most dangerous of game, man, and the most dangerous man, Jonah Hex, a wanted outlaw.

Meanwhile, on the far outskirts of town, Jonah is talking to an elderly man, Mr. Vanden, who has hired Jonah to rescue his daughter that was kidnapped by the Apaches. Vanden asks how well does Hex know the Apaches, but Jonah doesn't answer & rides off to find the young lady.

We are treatd to a flashback stating it starts "more than twenty years, to a fateful day in July, 1851. Jonah Hex was then thirteen years old." Jonah is loading a wagon with moonshine as his father sits under a tree drinking. His father, Woodson (we learn his name at another time), is an obvious alcoholic, slaps Jonah and beats him with a belt. Once the wagon is loaded and they are on their way, Woodson explains that he is gonna trade the moonshine for a few squaws and a grubstake for the California gold rush. (Ginny, Jonah's mom, left her husband just over three years prior in 1848).

At the Apache camp, the Indians give Woodson a stack of pelts in trade for the moonshine and another stack of pelts in exchange for Jonah. Jonah is flabbergasted and starts crying as his dad gets on the wagon to leave. Woodson tells Jonah that he would be better off with the Indians instead of a drunken lush like his old man. Jonah fights off two Indians holding him back and runs to his dad who slaps him down and tosses off a slim promise of coming back to get Jonah once a fortune has been made. Jonah turns to fight off the Indians but is subdued and spends the next two years as their slave.

Then one day (1853) as the chief is at a river, a large puma attacks the aging chief. A nearby brave is unable to shoot the puma for fear of hitting the chief when suddenly, Jonah leaps forward with a knife and kills the puma on the spot. The chief is so grateful that he declares that Jonah Hex is now considered a brother to the chief's son and is due all honor of a true Apache. Jonah learns to ride, hunt and fight better than anyone, even the chief's son, Noh-Tante. White Fawn, a lovely girl, even takes a liking to him. Noh-Tante cannot hide his hatred & jealousy.

Later, (A YEAR later, we learn in issue #8. 1854) when both boys turn 16, they are sent on a mission to steal the finest horses from some nearby Kiowas. That night, as Jonah & Noh-Tante sneak into the camp, Jonah kills a Kiowa guard/. Noh-Tante releases all of the ponies and then shouts a war cry to alert the Kiowas. He kicks Jonah into a rock, knocking him out & leaves him for the Kiowas. back at the Apache camp, Noh-Tante tells the chief that he saw Jonah killed by the Kiowa.

Back at the Kiowa camp, Jonah awakens to find himself surrounded by Kiowas. TO BE CONTINUED!!

Statistics for this issue:
Men killed by Jonah: 1 Kiowa and one puma

Running Total - 134
Jonah's injuries: Slapped & beaten by his dad, struck on the head twice and knocked out.
Timeline: The opener is post 1875 (or post death of Turnbull in WWT #30) and the flashback takes place in 1851, 1853, and ends in 1854. This was one of the few times that we got to see Jonah's dad and he really is a filthy drunken sob. There isn't a lot of characterization on Jonah's part, we just are privvy to see the terrible childhood he had and the hardships he had to face. The five-page opening with the Count seems like a waste of space, but it does tie in with the previous issues and provides a nice framework for the flashback (the best part coming in issue #8). The cover does cause one to wonder if Hex's scar was caused by the puma attack, but no, we find out what happened next issue.

Next Issue: A rigged tomahawk fight, the Mark of the Demon, and (believe it or not) a two-headed coin.