Jonah Hex: Christmas In An Outlaw Town

Christmas is all about family, so they say. Even for Jonah Hex, who's spending this holiday season with his dear ol' dad. Wait, would that be the same dear ol' dad who sold Jonah into slavery when he was just a kid? Well, at least they don't have to watch the umpteenth repeat of Only Fools & Horses.

The Tarantula

Weird Suspense Featuring The Tarantula was another cry for help from Michael Fleisher, the writer once described as 'bugfuck crazy' by Harlan Ellison, and was another misguided misfire from the much maligned Atlas Comics.
Fleisher and gang probably thought: Kids like monsters, they'll like a monster hero. But what they forgot is that the best monster heroes are, in some way, sympathetic looking. Morbius, Swamp Thing, even The Zombie, are all designed to not be too horrific.
Give the kid's a frisson of fear, let them enjoy grossing out their parents, sure, but let's not go overboard here.
I vividly remember seeing the Atlas line the day the first issues came into our local newsagents, and how repulsed I was by Ironjaw and The Tarantula especially. I reneged and bought Ironjaw 'cos Neal Adams had contributed a Conanesque frontis, but there was no way I was gonna buy Weird Suspense, not even with a Dick Giordano cover. It looked Horrible.

So how does it read today? Actually pretty good all told, IF it had been a back-up buried somewhere in Creepy. As a newstand, kid friendly colour book, it's the right story in the wrong format. I mean, not only is The Tarantula revolting looking, but he eats people. He's a hero who eats people.
And as for using him to shill Flintstones toys, alongside the equally nightmare inducing Moorlock 2001? Yeah, that's really not gonna work out...

You have to give Pat Boyette credit for the art though, I never liked his work as a kid, but here he does exactly what's needed and I defy anybody not to feel a shiver at the scenes of giant tarantula's roaming the countryside, plucking screaming victims and carrying them off to feast.
Like pretty much all the Atlas books, the third issue brought a turnaround, with Gary Freidrich taking over the scripting, and introducing a Karen Pageish secretary who's secretly in love with The Tarantula's alter ego, Count Lycos, and a sense of them actually being two separate indiviuals and that eating people might be, I dunno, a bit wrong.
That's all nonsense of course, and Fleisher's madness is preferable, but still, as an adult The Tarantula's great, but as a kid: Uurrrr! Yuk!

Jonah Hex

He was a hero to some, a villain to others...and wherever he rode, people spoke his name in whispers.

He had no friends, this Jonah Hex, but he did have two constant companions; One was death itself...the other, the acrid smell of gunsmoke....

Hardly ever bought westerns back in the Bronze Age. Hardly ever bought war books either, or the DC mystery titles for that matter. Didn't see the point when there was all those superheroes flying around. 

Sure, occasionally I'd pick up a Kid Colt Outlaw or Rawhide Kid if there was nothing else in the shop, but somehow Jonah Hex almost completely passed me by. I was aware of him, but just wasn't that interested.

More fool me, 'cos as I've since discovered as an alleged grown-up, Jonah Hex is one of comics' great anti-heroes, right up there with Conan or The Punisher.

Plus, he's purtier than both of 'em.

Designed by the late, great Tony DeZuniga, Jonah is a mean, deadly bounty hunter who retains an inner goodness he's not often keen to show off. Disfigured and tortured by Apaches, his face is half good / half evil, just like his christian / satanic name, and he comes with a compelling backstory you only slowly discover as the original series progresses.

For most of his Bronze Age career, he was written by the barking mad Michael Fleisher, Mr. Misanthropy himself, and was a case of a writer and character being a match made in Hell.

There was a not especially great movie a couple of years ago, with a miscast Josh Brolin, and I wouldn't bother, as clearly nobody realised that a Jonah Hex movie had already been made, sort of. It was called The Outlaw Josey Wales. But for a proper adaptation, far better to check out the animated one, part of the DC Showcase series. Here's a fan made trailer to give you a flavour:

                                     

While here's his first appearance, sort of. This is a fill-in / reprint of Jonah's debut, wrapped round a new prologue and epilogue that gives an added dimension to the original story, and for once, it's a fill-in idea that worked. Here's the deadliest gunfighter in the West: