Broken Frontier

After helping a posse, Jonah gets an invitation to dinner… and more than he bargained for.

Writers Justin Gray’s and Jimmy Palmiotti’s old west is a place of morally ambiguous people and they continue that trend here with another done-in-one. This time, however, they steal a couple of pages from some movies and the results are a bit mixed.

Jonah has joined a sheriff’s posse (because he’s being paid of course) to bring in a gang of bad guys but when the posse is pinned down, Jonah acts with a courage and foolhardiness that only the damned can often muster. This act gains him the respect of the sheriff and an offer to come to dinner – an offer that Jonah is most uncomfortable to accept. He gets even more uncomfortable when he discovers the sheriff and his wife have ulterior motives…

I don’t want to give too much away here but most, judging from the synopsis and the story title, can guess where this story goes. In fact, just having read the solicitation, then seeing the story title on the second and third pages in I knew exactly where this story was headed… and that is a problem. Normally Gray and Palmiotti are good at the twisty plots and the unexpected revelations but this story went exactly where I thought it was going to go and played out pretty much exactly the way I thought it would play out. The biggest problem is that this story cribs a little too much from the plots of some very familiar movies, stories, and even songs. It is still a good read but most of that is due to the art.

And speaking of that art – J.H. Williams III is a fan favorite and critically acclaimed for his style and he proves why with this issue. He manages to blend the realistic with amazing and subtle artistic touches. He also really goes to town on Jonah’s gruesome features emphasizing the scarring. Williams also sets some beautiful looking scenes with a cinematographer’s eye and yet never loses sight of the darkness of the subject matter or characters. It is his work here that raises the story above the ordinariness of the plot.

For longtime readers of Jonah Hex, there is nothing here to hate or dislike but it just does not quite come up to the high expectations Gray and Palmiotti have trained us to expect month after month. For anyone new looking to jump on, this is perhaps not the best example of what the title is capable of. Of one thing I am certain, though – the art brings this story to an entirely new level and continues the trend of comic book art greats who have worked on this character. Jonah Hex stories always provide challenges and Williams rises to meet them.