Broken Frontier

Welcome back to Broken Frontier’s weekly issue by issue roundup of events from every corner of the DC Universe! This is where to come to catch up on what’s been happening with your favorite DC characters and how events in their books affect the DCU’s recent "Bigger Picture". We also point out any interesting continuity tidbits, link to suggested background reading and examine any pertinent questions raised by events in the week’s releases.

Spoiler Warning: Read no further if you’ve not had your DC fix this week and don’t want to hear about key story elements.

Jonah Hex #46

Jonah and his allies are able to save Tallulah Black and Bat Lash from El Papagayo’s firing squad in the nick of time. Bird lovers look away now - the bandit’s pet parrot is a casualty of the showdown! After refusing to divulge the hiding place of Quentin Turnbull the Mexican mercenary is left in the less than tender hands of the supernaturally-empowered El Diablo.

Meanwhile Turnbull has hired a number of international assassins and killers to put paid to Jonah and, in flashback, we see more of the infamous Fort Charlotte Massacre that cost Turnbull his son and played such a prominent part in his hatred of Jonah...

The Bigger Picture: Lazarus Lane was most recently seen in the contemporary DCU finally handing over his supernatural legacy to Chato Santana in the six-issue El Diablo miniseries.

Interesting to note that the central character of another DC release this week, the titular hero of The Red Circle: The Hangman #1, was also a victim of the horrors of the Civil War. A Jonah Hex/Hangman crossover seems full of story potential to me...

Continuity Corner: The flashback sequence depicting the Fort Charlotte Massacre comes direct from the pages of Weird Western Tales #s 29-30 (1975). It’s this selfsame framing of Jonah as a traitor that leads to Quentin Turnbull’s long-standing hatred of the bounty hunter, who he blames for his son’s death in that incident. The Showcase Presents: Jonah Hex collection contains those issues (and other relevant stories) for those wanting to find out more about the beginnings of the Turnbull/Hex enmity.

The Palmiotti and Gray writing team presented Jonah’s "origin", as discussed with Jeb in flashback this issue, in the current series Jonah Hex #s 13-15 and available in trade paperback format.

For the latecomers to ATDCU I thought it worth re-iterating this week some of the Hex-related background information from previous editions of this feature as there’s plenty of recent trade paperback reading available for those wanting to find out more about the cast involved in the current "6 Gun War" story arc:  Bat Lash, one of DC’s more charming Western heroes, debuted in Showcase #76. His short-lived early 1970s Bat Lash series is also collected in his own Showcase Presents volume. Lash first appeared earlier in the current Jonah Hex series in #3 and had his own miniseries in 2008 that has since been published as a trade. Scarred heroine Tallulah Black initially appeared in the current Hex series in #s 16-17 (April-May 2007) and El Diablo made an appearance in #11 (Nov 2006). Click on links for more details of relevant trades.

And, finally, in deference to the recently deceased avian chum of featured villain El Papagayo: Mexican criminal gunslinger El Papagayo, and his trademark parrot, first appeared in Jonah Hex Vol.1 #2 (May 1977) in Turnbull’s employ. He would go on to be a constant thorn in the bounty hunter’s side over the years. While their ultimate confrontation has never been documented El Papagayo was last seen, chronologically, in Hell in Hawk & Dove Annual #1 (1990), proving that his crimes do eventually get their comeuppance

Questions: Could the Persian assassin Turnbull hires have any link to Ra’s Al Ghul’s League of Assassins? Will this be the final confrontation between Turnbull and Jonah?

Solomon Grundy #6

It’s the day before the Blackest Night darkens the DC Universe and Grundy’s escape from S.H.A.D.E. leads to yet another death and rebirth for the character. S.H.A.D.E. operatives Frankenstein and the Bride find their pursuit of the villain hindered when his "friend" Bizarro intervenes on his behalf. Behind the scenes Etrigan the Demon and his mysterious employer continue to manipulate events and more details about Grundy’s mortal life as Cyrus Gold are revealed.

Green Lantern Alan Scott and the Phantom Stranger arrive just in time to see Frankenstein use the Sword of Michael to apparently end Grundy’s life once and for all. But if Grundy is really to go to his eternal rest then Cyrus Gold must still face his killer and forgive him...

The Bigger Picture: The Phantom Stranger and Green Lantern Alan Scott have been seeking to end Grundy’s cycle of birth and rebirth to stop the character becoming a major threat when the Blackest Night comes and allow him some form of redemption by forgiving his killer. Etrigan’s mysterious ally is the same individual who witnessed Grundy’s first murder in 1875 in Solomon Grundy #2 and very probably behind his curse.

Bizarro is also currently appearing in a major role as one of the Aberrant Six in Strange Adventures. As Solomon Grundy takes place in the week before Blackest Night Bizarro presumably either appears here after the events of that miniseries or else there are two Bizarros running around in the DCU at the moment. Bizarro and Grundy formed their unlikely friendship in #2.

Continuity Corner: When Frankenstein blows Grundy’s head off with his gun the monster regenerates it in a way that ties in with his previous origins as a failed plant elemental. That facet of the character was revealed in Swamp Thing #87 (Dec 1987)

Questions: Just who was the entity that Grundy made his agreement with and what was the full story behind it? And why is Etrigan the Demon working with him to deny Grundy his redemption? What is the relative continuity behind Bizarro’s recent appearances? Who murdered Cyrus Gold and can Green Lantern and the Phantom Stranger end his curse before the Blackest Night? If not what role will Grundy play in that event?

What part does the conflict before the dawn of man between the Spectre and his demonic "brother", seen in issue #1, play in Grundy’s true origin? And will said origin reconcile all the many conflicting versions of Grundy’s beginnings as seen in places like Swamp Thing #87, Seven Soldiers #1 and Green Arrow #53?

The Red Circle: The Hangman #1

In the darkest days of the Civil War army medic Dr. Robert Dickering finds himself deserted behind enemy lines, tried and, despite his innocence, sentenced to death as a Union spy. As he is about to be hung a supernatural force appears to him in a vision offering him a chance to live again throughout the ages as the ultimate judge of the accused.

For well over a century Dickering fulfils this role as the costumed vigilante known as The Hangman. In the present day we meet him once again, working as a hospital doctor and performing his duties as The Hangman at night. As the issue draws to a close a badly injured young man, caught in an explosion on a boat, is rushed into the casualty department. His near-delusional mumblings to Dr. Dickering moving us into the next installment of the Red Circle arc...

The Bigger Picture: The story arc continues next in The Red Circle: Inferno #1.

Continuity Corner: This issue sees the first of a series of one-shots from DC integrating a number of the old Archie Comics heroes into the DC Universe. The original Hangman made his first appearance in Pep Comics #17 (July 1941) taking on his crimefighting identity to avenge the murder of his super-hero brother the Comet, who had starred as a backup character in the book until that issue. The Hangman meted out justice there and in the multi-titled Special Comics #1 (Winter 1941-42), The Hangman #s 2-8 and then as a backup when the comic was renamed yet again as Black Hood Comics.

The character dropped off the radar around the mid-1940s and only made short-lived later appearances in places like the 1960s and 1980s Archie super-hero revivals. A version of the Hangman was also featured briefly in the Impact line in the early ‘90s – DC’s last foray into the publishing world with the Archie characters.

And, yes, I too am deeply disturbed by the cover of Special Comics #1...

Dickering reads stories of the Hangman’s exploits to a hospital ward of children from a copy of a book called "Weird Western Tales". Long-term DC fans will, of course, recognise Weird Western Tales as the ‘70s genre title that first introduced us to Jonah Hex in #10, albeit when the book was still called All-Star Western.

Questions: Is the supernatural entity that gives Dickering his powers an agent of Heaven or Hell? Who is the badly-injured young man who arrives at Dickering’s hospital? Who is the "Frank Verrano" he mentions? And who, or what, are the Dark Men he refers to?

Rounding up...

In The Warlord #5 Travis Morgan and his allies look to take the war back to Ned Hawkins, the billionaire from the outside world who financed the investigation to Skartaris back in #1 and has subsequently set himself up as an all-conquering god in the other dimensional world. The Warlord makes use of the same portal that Hawkins’s team used to journey to Skartaris to raid a Tibetan Chinese Army outpost for weaponry. Morgan’s effort may be too late though – he returns to the struggle just in time to witness Hawkins using an Atlantean War Machine to bury the Shamballan army (including Machiste, Tara and Jennifer Morgan) in an avalanche...

That’s it for Part 1. Join us tomorrow when we finish our roundup of this week’s DC releases...