Broken Frontier

Jonah Hex is asked to recover a religious relic stolen from a New Mexico town. The trail leads Hex to a silver town ruled by a local dictator, and Jonah has a problem with authority.

As this story opens, Jonah Hex is in a New Mexico town, recovering from wounds received on an unknown previous adventure. When bandits attack and steal the town’s most precious religious relic – a cross of gold – the mortally wounded priest asks Hex to return the favor of his care by recovering the cross. And you thought modern healthcare costs were high?

Jonah and a young woman from the town journey in search of the bandits and finally find them, caught by the petty dictator of a silver mining town, Branson Ironside. Men will do anything for gold and Jonah knows it so he is prepared for a fight to get the cross back. How Jonah prepares for a fight, though, and how someone else prepares for a fight are two very different things.

Writers Justin Gray and Jimmy Palmiotti turn out another great issue in this revival of the Western genre. It is interesting to see them return to some of the forms and plot themes that played out in many of the Jonah Hex stories of the 1970’s. The ‘done-in-one’ format is one of those borrowed forms and it works very well in this current run by allowing new readers to pick up issues as they can. You don’t need to have read Jonah Hex #1 in order to read #2.

Another form that the writers are borrowing from the older series is the idea of these stories as kind of Western morality plays. Those who do evil will have evil repaid to them in kind, and usually in an amount equal to how bad they were. For some of these villains, that is pretty bad. Of course, morality plays can be stale, boring, and border on the preachy but Gray and Palmiotti never fall into this trap. They keep the action moving at such a brisk pace that things have no opportunity to get boring. They also keep the dialogue sharp and throw in enough gallows humor to make an executioner laugh. In this they are ably aided by artist Luke Ross, who has a terrific touch with faces (even Jonah’s scarred one) – particularly eyes. Even when there is no dialogue you know what the characters are thinking.

Ross was, admittedly, an interesting choice for this series. His pencils and inks are rather smooth, lacking the rough, gritty texture you would expect in a Western, but he has grown on me. He certainly has done his research on the Old West and it shows in his depiction of the streets and buildings of the two towns that appear in this story.

Some have accused Ross’ images of being too "pretty" for a Jonah Hex series, but I think, perhaps, the problem may lie more in Jason Keith’s colors. Keith’s work is lush and beautiful but a shade too bright. There is no sense of dustiness, or wear to cloth, people, buildings, or horses. He would do better to tone down the color a bit and perhaps add a hint of a sepia cast.

There are subtle elementals at work in this issue, from the cross of gold, the silver that feeds the town, the iron fist of Ironside and, of course, the hot lead of Jonah’s guns. It is wonderful to see DC taking a chance on a long forgotten genre and letting these two stellar writers take the reigns was a brilliant move. If you’ve never picked up a Western comic before, definitely pick up this one; it is a good introduction to the genre and perfect for new readers. Don’t let the old ‘Horse Opera’ stigma fool you; there is a lot more here than meets the eye.