Jonah Hex: No Way Back

Collects: OGN

Released: June 2010 (DC)

Format: 136 pages / color / $19.99 / ISBN: 9781401225506

What is this?: Bounty hunter Jonah Hex deals with the family he never knew he had while being pursued for his father’s sins.

The culprits: Writers Justin Gray and Jimmy Palmiotti and artist Tony DeZuniga

Released to coincide with the Jonah Hex movie, Jonah Hex: No Way Back is probably better than big-screen version.

I’m just guessing, though. I haven’t seen the movie. I was really excited to see it, but then most of the reviews confirmed the dire news the trailers were showing: it was less Jonah Hex and more Wild Wild West 2,⁴⁸ and no amount of Megan Fox in a corset was going to get me to see that. Once was twice too many already.

Despite lacking corseted whores with hearts of gold, No Way Back is a solid little Western tale. It has an excellent pedigree; artist Tony DeZuniga is one of Hex’s co-creators, and writers Justin Gray and Jimmy Palmiotti are co-writers on the regular Hex series. Those three know what makes Jonah Hex work — bad men, a clear moral sense from Hex, lots of gunplay, and a high body count — and it’s all present here.

Gray, Palmiotti, and DeZuniga tell an important story about Hex’s wanderings, involving Hex’s rarely seen family, family he didn’t know he had, and one of his most frequent enemies, El Papagayo. Most of the character bits in No Way Back have been told before, but they’re not exactly well-known parts of his story: his mother running away with a traveling salesman, his father giving him to the Apache, the source of his mutilation. The idea of Hex having a previously unknown brother apparently came from idea bruited by DeZuniga and Hex’s original writer, John Albano.

It’s a lot to fit into 136 pages, especially since not only does El Papagayo reveal a connection between himself and Hex’s father but also because the stakes in Hex’s fight with him are larger than comics readers are used to between a hero and one of his recurring villains. It is ambitious; it feels cramped. However, I think what I term as ambition is really an attempt to tell a story a movie audience would be more interested in. (Or maybe it’s just DC loosening the creator’s reins to let them tell a big Hex story.) Let’s face it: despite tons of popular comic book movies over the past decade, the popularity of comic books has not increased measurably. It would make sense DC wanted something different than the normal serialized stories to offer to moviegoers when Hex came out; a big, self-contained story that told a good deal of Jonah Hex’s backstory might be just the trick.

For me, No Way Back doesn’t have to be a big story, but for the purpose it was commissioned for, it did. I can be satisfied with any story from Hex’s life, as long as it fits the character and is exciting, but there would be no reason to do an original graphic novel for that. Gray and Palmiotti get to do that in the Jonah Hex series; they’ve told almost five years of those stories. I can’t blame them for wanting to raise the stakes or DC for allowing them. However, the major revelation of the existence of Hex’s brother combined with the use of Hex’s most recognizable foe not in the movie makes me feel as if the importance of the plot is being shouted at me.

Perhaps I’m being too picky. But that feeling of 200 pages of plot being crammed into 136 pages of OGN isn’t completely in my head. The fight scenes are abbreviated, with only one good twist and one extended fight in the whole book. Unfortunately, there are times in that fight when DeZuniga’s art isn’t at its best, either lacking clarity or fluidity.

DeZuniga’s art is actually my only other niggling complaint. DeZuniga is almost 70 years old, and for a 70 year old, his work is excellent. But his line isn’t as straight or sharp as it once was, with some scenes lacking detail, and as I mentioned, his action scenes were occasionally lacking. I have to admit, however, he can still draw Jonah Hex’s scarred face, Western scenes, and pretty ladies well.

I have, in the past few years, wondered when the Big 2 companies would end their reliance on the monthly comic book and go straight to publishing original graphic novels. Now that the future of comics looks to be electronic, that day will probably never come. But No Way Back shows me why I was probably wasting my time waiting. Comic book readers are programmed to expect every story to further the character’s narrative or fill in his backstory. But No Way Back feels … unconnected. It fits in a place in Hex’s story — 1880, according to Wikipedia, but I didn’t see anything confirming that in the book — but it doesn’t feel like it connects to anything before or after. That might be because I don’t regularly read comics with Jonah Hex, but I don’t think so.

Still, No Way Back is a fun and violent read, despite my niggling concerns.

Rating: (3.5 of 5)

Essential Tomb of Dracula, v. 4

Collects: Stories from Tomb of Dracula Magazine #2-6 and Dracula Lives! #1-13 and Frankenstein’s Monster #7-9 (1973-5, 1979-80)

Released: March 2005 (Marvel)

Format: 576 pages / black and white / $16.99 / ISBN: 9780785117094

What is this?: A chronological retelling of Dracula’s life, from Marvel’s pre-1980 stories (except Tomb of Dracula)

The culprits: Too many to list; includes Marv Wolfman, Mike Friedrich, John Buscema, Gene Colan, and Gerry Conway

The release of Essential Tomb of Dracula, v. 4, was a bit of a surprise, given that the previous three volumes had completely collected the comic book series. But Marvel still had some vampire material lying around — mostly from black and white magazines it published in the ‘70s — so they bundled those stories together into another, presumably final, volume.

One aspect of v. 4 that sets it apart from other Essentials is that rather than reprinting the stories in the order they were published, Marvel ordered them by when they occurred in the life of Dracula, the central character. After reading through the stories, this is not only the better way to organize the stories but really the only way; Dracula Lives, for instance, published stories of Dracula’s past as one feature and a continuing serial of his present as another in the same issue. To publish those in periodical order would have split the present-day stories, ruining the flow.

Ordering the stories this way works best if there is a narrative flow to them. Other than that present day feature, however, there is none. Worse yet, there seems to be no real plan behind Dracula’s reign of Euroterror. Dracula attacks and attacks and attacks; occasionally, he is attacked. Despite his claims to nobility and character, Dracula is constantly at the mercy of his animal nature. However, Dracula never seems to own up to this, and there is really no one to call him on it. Worse, there seems to be no consequence to the stories. New vampires are created and disappear before the next story. Dracula is staked and returns to unlife for the next tale.

After going through Dracula’s first few centuries, it’s easy to feel there’s no point to his stories — it’s just rehashing the same plot points over and over. There are few horror-comic plot twists or really cruel endings for Dracula’s victims, as if the writers feared making Dracula too awful.

Then there are the slips on vampire lore. Chirping about continuity problems on most comics can be seen as nitpicking, but the weaknesses and restrictions on Dracula and other vampires are part of popular culture. Does Dracula need to be invited inside a home? Sometimes, but not always. How long does it take for a vampire to rise from the grave? Everyone, including Dracula, says three days, but frequently they arise the next night. How effective are crosses — can Dracula attack someone with a cross, or does he need to have a proxy attack? Sources vary. Running water poses no problems; occasionally, no thought is given to the coffin filled with earth Dracula needs to rest in. How much power does daylight have — does it destroy a vampire, like decapitation, or does it merely immobilize the vampire, like a stake? Dunno. And this is putting aside things like Dracula not using his hypnotism or turning into mist or other errors in tactics.

But I don’t want to dwell on the negative, because I’m a negative person and have truly impressive negative dwelling skills. “Bounty for a Vampire,” by Tony Isabella and Tony DeZuniga, is an effective and nuanced Weird Western from Dracula Lives #13, with a former marshal who has seen weird things hunting vampires in Transylvania. Peter Gillis and John Buscema’s story of a ballet dancer who loses her humanity and empathy (“Pavanne from an Undead Princess,” Tomb of Dracula Magazine #5) is the most moving story in the collection. “A Death in the Chapel” from Dracula Lives #6 features the final combat of Dracula and Father Montesi, the discoverer of the vampire-destroying Montesi Formula. The continuity and continuing stories in Frankenstein’s Monster #7-9 (by Mike Friedrich and Buscema) and the modern tales in Dracula Lives! was a welcome respite from the episodic stories that dominate the collection. And although the story in “The Pit of Death” by Doug Moench and DeZuniga (Dracula Lives #10-1) didn’t make much of an impression on me, the protagonist’s revenge on Dracula was nicely innovative.

Also, Marvel does include some supplementary material to the collection. There is a prose recap of Dracula’s history near the beginning of v. 4, and there is an extensive cover and promotional image gallery near the end. Gene Colan’s original pencils from unused pages of Tomb of Dracula #70-2, which were collapsed into #70 when the title was canceled, are included for those who wondered how the story might have ended up had Colan and Wolfman been allowed a little more space for the stories.

The art, overall, is uneven, but Dracula art from Colan is always welcome. Colan contributed seven stories that appear in the collection, most of them in the book’s second half, and they are uniformly highlights — shadowy, evocative, with a Dracula who is simultaneously bestial and suave. Buscema drew the three issues of Frankenstein’s Monster, and although those issues are not going to go down as his greatest, they are John Buscema drawing Dracula, Frankenstein’s Monster, and shapely gypsy women, and there’s nothing wrong with that; his pencils on other stories in the collection, such as “Death Vow” (inks by Klaus Janson) from Tomb of Dracula Magazine #4, are more impressive, evocative and as shadowy as Colan’s work. Other artists who manage to convey more than a modicum of horror or menace include DeZuniga and Vicente Alcazar in “Here Comes the Death Man” in Dracula Lives #7.

Still, those enjoyable parts can’t really save the book. There’s a lot of repetition and stories that just aren’t worth the time. Also, the reproduction on v. 4 is strangely murky, making it difficult to read. I would have thought that since the original material was originally from black-and-white magazines, that wouldn’t have been a problem, but I was wrong.

The question you have to ask yourself is: how much do you want Gene Colan and John Buscema stories? If the answer is a lot … well, you might want to buy the original magazines. But if that isn’t an option and you still want to see them and are willing to wade through a lot of forgettable Marvel vampire stories, buy this book. Otherwise … borrow it from a vampire fanatic and skim it.

Rating: (1.5 of 5)