Back in 1978, when I was a little boy, my dad would saddle up the horses and we’d ride to the local supermarket and I’d beg my dad to buy me a Jonah Hex comic book. I’d be so excited to get home and start reading with my father. He’d make it entertaining enough that I felt that I was in the movie. The Jonah Hex comic book taught me to read and to have vision of the old west. My superhero, Jonah Hex, had red hair and a scar across his right eye that dragged to his chin. I felt that I had the same physical traits because I was a kid with red hair and a bad right eye. In the 70s, many famous artists worked on Hex, making his visual presence strong and dominating. Bringing the characters to life, proving that Jonah Hex was one of the last surviving western cowboys, the scriptwriter, Michael Fleisher, added unique dialogue that had strong support for the art and brought the books together.

 

 

 

Through Fleisher’s work, the non-stop depth of the story brought us an inspiring superhero from the old west. Somewhere through the years, DC Comics resurfaced Jonah Hex with Vertigo Comics and seemed to just throw it together in a stream of graphic novels such as: “Two Gun MoJo”, “Shadows of the West”, “The Riders of the Worm”, and such. It seemed that DC Comics didn’t bring the depth to the stories as they once were. In this important error, the lack of detail brought Jonah Hex fans to their knees, making the western comic disappear for many years. I’m not trying to put down DC Comics; I just feel that they didn’t retain the traditional quality that Jonah Hex once had.

Now that I’m grown up and a comic book artist and story teller, I feel that with my own stories I can give back to Jonah Hex for teaching me to read. I’ve drawn up detailed comics and have done a short film to bring back the last cowboy and inspire the world once again on the adventures of Jonah Hex.