Tuesday, September 15, 2020

I'll cop to picking this issue just 'cause I wanted to listen to the Specials.


Picked out of the mountain of comics I ordered mid-COVID, from 2011, Jonah Hex #67, "Ghost Town" Written by Justin Gray and Jimmy Palmiotti, art by Jordi Bernet.

This one opens with a sheriff stirring up the townspeople, to go get that murderin' bastard Jonah Hex; who appears to have had his good name slandered again, as happens every so often. Elsewhere, a wagon and riders are ambushed and nearly all killed, when Hex shows up with a stick of dynamite. One of the surviving cowboys notes Hex didn't so much as save them, as not want to be messed with today; but the reluctant Hex helps them get their wagonful of medicine to a town afflicted with the pox. Hex then masks up--like a good citizen, or at least not a complete moron--and takes the wagon in.

Of course, this being a Jonah Hex comic, even in plaguetown somebody takes a potshot at Hex. He finds "a man on a crusade to see you dead," wearing the Confederate grays as to pass himself off as Hex. He also had the pox, and presented that as a dilemma for Hex: to clear his name, Hex needed the guy's corpse, but couldn't take it to another town without risking the spread of infection. The guy probably wasn't expecting Hex to take it upon himself to nurse him back to health. Meanwhile, outside the town, the angry sheriff and his posse question the two riders still camped out there, who don't think Hex is that bad of a guy, but you do you.

The posse arrives to find both Hex and his imposter in the bar, and the latter suggests maybe they should kill both of them to make sure. Instead, Hex kills him for the bounty; which convinces the posse he's the real deal: a bastard. They leave Hex--who said he already had the pox, so didn't care--drinking happily alone in a ghost town bar, "like church in hell with a congregation of ghosts." Sounds like a fun evening!

1 comment:

  1. Now that's a pretty badass story right there. Definitely feels like something Michael Fleisher would've wrote back in his heyday.

    Church in Hell with a conflagration of ghosts eh?
    Hopefully that's what 2021 is for us next year.

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