Friday, November 29, 2019

Jonah Hex: Shadows West

Jonah Hex: Shadows WestJonah Hex: Shadows West by Joe R. Lansdale


Jonah Hex: Shadows West contains Jonah Hex: Two-Gun Mojo #1-5, Jonah Hex: Riders of the Worm and Such #1-5, and Jonah Hex: Shadows West #1-3.

Jonah Hex: Two-Gun Mojo was my introduction to Joe Lansdale, one of my favorite writers, but I never had the chance to read Riders of the Worm and Such or Shadows West in their entirety until now.

Jonah Hex, he of the hideous facial scar, is a gunslinger of The Man With No Name caliber, a force to be reckoned with in the old west. In this volume, he goes up against an undead Bill Hickok, subterranean human-worm hybrids, and protects a bear-faced child from the denizens of the wild west show.

Tim Truman handles the art chores on the three volumes within. The art style is dirty and gritty as hell, a maturation of his style on Scout years earlier. You can almost smell the stink coming off of Jonah Hex and the rest of the characters. He also knows his way around the grotesque, which he puts to good use with zombie Wild Bill Hickok and the Autumn Brothers and the rest of the worm cousins.

Joe Lansdale gives Jonah Hex a dose of his usual mojo storytelling. There are hilarious jokes, blood, gore, lost worlds, and balls to the wall action. I have to think Jonah Hex is spiritual kin to Hap Collins and possibly a stand-in for Lansdale hisownself at times.

I would read a hundred more Jonah Hex tales by Lansdale and Truman. 4.5 out of 5 worm cousins.

View all my reviews

No comments:

Post a Comment