There are Claremont subplots that wrapped quicker than this. And with better closure!

Now, granted, if I blog three issues of a formerly monthly comic, over the course of just over seven years, it is going to feel like it's been dragged out a bit. Was it really? Let's see! From 1984, Jonah Hex #83, "Blues in the Bottle...Stopple in My Hand!" Written by Michael Fleisher, art by Tony DeZuniga.

Jonah's marriage to Mei Ling may be over, but so what? He still has Emmylou...which is trading down and I suspect Hex knows it, but he doesn't even have Emmylou, she had taken the stage to St. Louis. What Hex doesn't know, besides why she was going, is that she never made it there, she was abducted by bank robbers; two of whom were women. Disgruntled, Hex opts for a bit of the bottle, perhaps not noticing a lot of the townspeople giving him side-eye, like a bomb they expect to go off sooner rather than later. Two thugs were tasked with keeping tabs on him, but one gets the bright idea that a soused Hex would be easy pickings. There's two more coffins, but best get some more ready...

While Emmylou tries and falls to escape her captors, there's a mysterious and sudden dearth of hotel rooms in town, so Hex is bedding down--and still drinking--in the stable. Two locals lead out the horses and tell the stablemaster they'll build a new one after the fire, that they're starting right now in the hopes of getting Hex. Hex escapes (on his conveniently saddled horse!) and leaves town, which doesn't improve his mood any. He doesn't even kill those guys: he didn't expect to be given a parade, but maybe hadn't expected to be burned out, either. Frustrated over the downturn in his life, Hex throws his guns--his "matching Dragoons"--in the lake. He is awakened in the morning by the extraordinary loud and grating Catherine Rebecca Smollett of a Christian temperance farm, and I have to figure she's just lucky his guns were in the lake. Still, he hangs out on the farm for a few, which does have to be a vacation of sorts for him, before the three bad guys that had been planning on ganging up on him with the first two, I guess, catch up to them. Hex has to kill them with a knife, a pitchfork, and a sickle, respectively.

Catherine tries to tell Hex maybe it would be for the best if he left, and Hex agrees, figuring he was about as saved as he was likely to get...I'm curious if he helped himself to the bad guys' guns, although I can't imagine they would've been as good as his old ones. 

 Also this issue: still another USPS Statement of Ownership. Total Number Copies Printed (net press run): Average number of copies each issue during preceding 12 months: 220,700. Single issue nearest to filing date: 197,556. Paid circulation, actual number of copies of single issue published nearest to filing date, 63,973.