"The End" Week: Jonah Hex #70!

Let's see, we've looked at the end of his original series and All-Star Western, and I always misremember Hex as running 20 issues: it was only 18, and yet we've still never blogged it? And we aren't here, either! From 2011, Jonah Hex #70, "Weird Western" Written by Justin Gray and Jimmy Palmiotti, pencils by Ryan Sook and Diego Olmos, inks by Mick Gray and Jimmy Palmiotti.

In 1904, Jonah Hex is a long-in-the-tooth old coot, who needed spectacles to play cards; which is how George Barrow is able to bust up to him with a shotgun and lay him out. Wow, that was over quick...No, in death, Hex is visited by his old, dead, friend Jeb Turnbull; who implores him not just to lay down and die, but man, you've been dead for ages, give it up already. He asks why Hex still wore the Confederate uniform: because he died in the war, and this was all a dream.

Of course, Hex then has another dream; still old, playing cards with El Diablo and Bat Lash, while his wife Mei Ling and his current side-piece Tallulah Black both cradle infants; before getting shot by his drunken pa. Then, a visit from a charming little girl, who is scarred like both Hex and Tallulah.

One more nightmare, where Tallulah shoots his hungover ass; before we finally get to the real world, where the injured Hex is still unconscious in a medicine man's cave, brought there by Bat and Tallulah. Hex eventually comes out of it, but refuses to tell them what he saw. Tallulah had her own near-death experience before, and mentions seeing a little girl; Hex keeps mum. But, the medicine man seems to hear her as well...

While this was the last issue, the very next month Hex would return, with the first issue of All-Star Western in the New 52 launch: there's an ad page for "The Edge" books, which included Deathstroke and Suicide Squad. Huh, All-Star Western would outlast those two--and the other "Edge" titles--but hasn't gotten a relaunch since? Deathstroke's had one, the Squad several. He would appear in...ugh...Death Metal...uh, that's all right. No thanks.