You’re Trapped In Here With Me: All-Star Western #22 Review

When I reviewed the first issue of All-Star Western almost two years ago now, I was semi-enthusiastic, but bemoaned the fact that the creative team of writers Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray, and artist Moritat, had taken Jonah Hex off of the western frontier and dumped him into Gotham City. As I recall, I referred to the book as “Crocodile Dundee with dead hookers,” because dropping Hex into an urban setting, even in the late 1800s, felt like a well-trod fish-out-of-water story.

So you would think that All-Star Western #22, which features Hex being stuck in modern, 21st century Gotham City, would drive me absolutely fucking apeshit. Because on paper, if All-Star Western #1 was Crocodile Dundee, All-Star Western #22 should be Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles. Seriously, this book has all the elements that should drive me up the Goddamned wall: Hex baffled by a radio? Yup! Hex shocked and offended by the forward nature of modern conversation? Uh-huh! Hex amazed by an automobile? Hell, yes! If you go down the list of the classic fish-out-of-water stories, the only thing that’s missing is Hex trying to take a shit in a phone booth!

So case closed, right? I wasn’t thrilled with Hex in old Gotham, so I must hate Hex in modern Gotham, correct? Well, you’d think so… but it’s really the opposite. I enjoyed the hell out of this issue, not in spite of the fact that it was a fish-out-of-water story, but because of it. Because All-Star Western #22 isn’t a fish-out-of-water comedy; after all, Jonah Hex isn’t funny. He is a very dangerous man… and other than Batman and one or two other guys and girls, there are very few truly dangerous people in Gotham City.

You know… other than Jonah Hex.

After regrettably hooking up with Booster Gold in recent issues, Jonah Hex finds himself incarcerated at Arkham Asylum, under the care of Dr. Jeremiah Arkham – the great-great grandson of Dr. Amadeus Arkham, who Hex ran around with in early issues of this series. Hex does not take kindly to being told that the cigarettes that were kindly provided to him are fatal – not a long-term thinker, our Jonah – and in the process of being (barely) subdued by about four orderlies, Hex lets it slip that he had a prior relationship with Alan Wayne, which causes Dr. Arkham to seek out Alan’s great-great-great grandson Bruce regarding Jonah’s claims. While Batman researched Hex (and begins to suspect he might be who he says he is), Dr. Arkham learns that one asks an 1890s gunfighter whether he breastfed at one’s peril. Hex grabs Arkham and makes a break for it, finding a car and making it to the bridge out of town, only to run into a gang of Mutants in a shootout with some severely outgunned GCPD patrol cops. Hex avails himself of a couple of fallen officers’ sidearms, and some Mutants start to learn that a few guys with pistols and shotguns don’t look like much to a man who fought at Gettysberg.

So let me again stipulate that this issue contains a metric buttload of exactly the kind of crap you would see in, say, some shiteating Adam Sandler movie where he plays some stableboy who gets dropped into modern-day Manhattan because of either magic, or because Rob Schnieder needs something to do for a couple of weeks (hey Sandler: if I see this story starring David Spade next year, I want a check! And don’t try to pass off some percentage of the gross, because we both know those movies don’t make a Goddamned dime!). But the difference is that very few of those moments are played for laughs. Sure, there’s a giggle when Hex is told that cigarettes cause cancer (and he goes right on smoking them), and Arkham’s reaction to Hex’s bafflement at AM radio is good for a smile, but for the most part, Palmiotti and Gray play things pretty seriously.

The writers have Hex behave, consistently, like not just a man out of time, but a dangerous man out of time, from a very dangerous and lawless place. So yes, everything out of Hex’s mouth when it comes to guns sounds like it came directly from some InfoWars knockoff podcast, but is feels like it is deadly fucking serious coming from Hex’s mouth.

Further, the overall characterization of Hex in this situation is not one that you normally see in this kind of story. Palmiotti and Gray portray Hex as being in no way intimidated or frightened by being in this completely unknown situation. He finds out cigarettes are fatal, and he still smokes them. Send in riot-armored guards to subdue him? You better just make sure you send enough guys. Put him in a car? You just Goddamned make sure it’s going west like he told you. And you show him a gang of Mutants who are shooting up the place? Well, they ain’t no Union army, are they? And besides, they might have paper on them at the post office. The combined effect of Hex’s plain, normal, western speech, and his complete lack of intimidation by anything he sees, creates a situation that is far from a standard man out of his element story. Instead, it gives us a character who is never out of his element. In fact, it makes him possibly the only person we see in this book other than Batman who is really prepared to be in Gotham City.

And let’s not forget that, as with the last issue, the primary antagonist we see Hex take on and defeat are members of the Mutant Gang (first and still best seen in Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns). And it occurred to me while reading this issue that using that gang sends a powerful subliminal message, because after all: in The Dark Knight Returns, the Mutant Gang defeated Batman. The Mutant Gang, in fact, sent Batman cowering and broken back into hiding. To take on the Mutant Gang en masse, Batman needed to use a fucking tank… meanwhile, Jonah Hex has not only taken them down twice singlehandedly… but he did it as a distraction, while he was on his way to do something else entirely. And all of these elements make Hex seem very, very cool.

Moritat’s art remains a high point of All-Star Western; even with the modern setting, everything Moritat does just kinda looks like an illustration from an old, pulpy western story magazine. Even his closeups look like colorized woodcut prints (look at the bottom panel of story page five and tell me I’m way off base). And there is a visceral quality to the violence depicted in the story, even while some of it takes place in the gutters; the hits that Hex puts on the orderlies, usually taking place just off the edge of the panel, look like they hurt, and the already-hit orderlies literally screaming in the background help sell the level of violence. Plus, a lot of this stuff is simply beautiful; there is a big panel of a wide shot of Gotham’s Red Light district where Moritat has lettered every neon sign, little window sign and even the notices on the taxis, all with simulated motion of every vehicle, that is just awesome to look at and to fall into (and the neon coloring job by Mike Atiyeh brings the whole image home). The layout is simple to follow, and the pacing makes sense (the car chase uses a lot of small panels, and the gunfight opens with larger panels as Hex just walks into battle, as if on a deserted Main Street at high noon, with smaller panels to speed things up when the shots start firing). All in all, I really liked the art in this book (and I want the original art for page five, man).

The overall effect of what Palmiotti and Gray have done in this issue is to take everything you know from cruddy fish-out-of-water comedies, and used it to make modern, “civilized” Gotham look like the one that’s completely unprepared for this culture clash. In a single issue, poor, backwards, in-over-his-head Jonah Hex has escaped Arkham Asylum, defeated one of Batman’s most dangerous enemies, and in theory, made a legally binding claim to about three dimes out of every dollar in Bruce Wayne’s pocket (“That’s mah Hex-mobile. Now hitch a hoss to it.”). It is fun, and it is cool, and it all is far more entertaining and unpredictable than the tagline, “Jonah Hex in Gotham City” would lead you to believe.

Now, make no mistake: I still would very much like to see Jonah Hex return to the actual old west at some point, and soon… and if Palmiotti, Gray and Moritat send Hex back into the future, I’m not sure I could really bear it. But this particular story and its execution were entertaining as all hell. If you missed this one last Wednesday, give it a shot this week.