Hey, a recurring villain for Jonah Hex...ooh, maybe not.

On the Fourth of July, I picked up, um, like 120 books from the EntertainMart the next town over. Among them, two issues of Jonah Hex, and luckily they were consecutive issues, since this was a two-parter! From 2009, Jonah Hex #40, "Sawbones: the First Half" and #41 "Sawbones: the Second Half" Both written by Justin Gray and Jimmy Palmiotti, with art by David Michael Beck.

The titular Sawbones is, as his name implies, a Civil War-era surgeon; albeit one that's turned serial killer on purpose as opposed to just accidentally while practicing. When a girl escapes and gives an account to the law, a wanted poster is drawn up that finds its way to Jonah Hex, who had heard tales about a Confederate doctor that put his skills to work torturing prisoners for information or escaped slaves for fun. While some Confederate officers hated him, Jonah has to admit more than a few were glad to work with him, and he had left a pile of bodies in his wake before disappearing. Jonah isn't positive it's the same guy, "but ah'll make sure ta ask him before he dies."

Unluckily for Hex, he rides into a bloodbath that wasn't his doing--for a change. He catches a bullet at the end of a particularly violent vendetta killing that ends with a bar full of people dead and the bar itself on fire. Good thing there's a doctor nearby to fix him up...uh-oh. Finding the wanted poster on him, Sawbones does sew Hex up, then a bit of torture while going on about how much they have in common. Still, Sawbones has to go into town to pick up his new students; so Hex is left bound and gagged, giving him the chance to escape by smashing through a timber with his own body. Badly injured, Hex falls in the river, but gets hung up in the branches of a fallen tree, and is then found by recurring foil/love interest Tallulah Black! Who offers to take Hex to a doctor. He politely declines.

Incidentally, the news of the end of Mad Magazine just broke; so of course the big ad for it in this one depresses the hell out of me. Weirdly, I had just bought an issue recently, with the reprint of Plop! There were also ads for Street Fighter, Dragon Ball Z Halo, and Resident Evil; all of which are still trucking along in one format or another. There was also an Esurance ad for a Star Trek contest--man, Esurance ads used to be everywhere, I had to look up if it was still a thing. And an ad for the Nicholas Cage movie Knowing, which has a 33% on Rotten Tomatoes but Roger Ebert liked it? It also feels like that was the last ad money spent on Nicholas Cage movies, now they just appear...

On to the next issue, and this may be a tough one if you're adverse to dream sequences: seven of the twenty-two pages here are Hex's nightmares, first of being captured by Sawbones. He wakes up with the standard scream, but Tallulah has been taking care of him. Hex is, ahem, grateful.

That puts Hex out for another four days, during which he has a nightmare of Tallulah going after Sawbones and getting herself killed. Hex tells her not to follow him as he goes after Sawbones, and Tallulah agrees: "I reckon ya got to git un-haunted. That's a thing ya need ta do alone." "Damn right." But she does follow him, and has to save Hex agin--er, again--when he's caught spying on Sawbones and his students. Said students are gunned down in short order, and Tallulah shoots Sawbones in the knee--which probably would've blown the leg clean off, but okay. Jonah then tortures the living crap outta Sawbones, admitting he might enjoy this, but he never cut up little girls for fun. Jonah and Tallulah are acting like this is a particularly fun date night, which is somewhat grotesque, but you can't say Sawbones didn't have it coming. Maybe Tallulah should've got cover billing on the second part, though, she does like 90% of the work; and probably for less than half the pay.