Superman/Batman #16 "Absolute Power"

Superman/Batman #16 Feb 2005
"Absolute Power. Chapter 3: When Time Goes Asunder..."
Jeph Loeb, story - Carlos Pacheo & Jesus Merino, art & cover

I know this is not chronological but I like it and wanted to have something short and sweet, so let's take a peek at a guest appearance of the scar-faced bounty hunter.

A little background on this 'guest appearance'. Batman & Superman (of course) have ended up being catapulted through various earths after a conflict with Darkseid. They end up on a modern day earth of Kamandi (not a future earth, but modern day Metropolis) and they phase into modern day Gotham City. On the steps of Gotham Central Precinct 13, Batman is seriously wounded and Superman is holding off the local law enforcement which consists of.. El Diablo, Bat Lash, Tomahawk, someone in a red shirt, and Madame .44 (who they call Cinnamon. It's a parallel earth, they can do what they want.)

Rather than trying to explain what happens, I'll just show ya and make some comments after each page:



Superman gets hacked off and decides to just light everyone up (as he has been doing through this arc)Nice to see the striped hatband on Jonah. Jonah ends up pumping 8 bullets into Supes has the intended effect. Of course, you don't take Superman and forget about...
The knife through the hand would make me say a whole lot more than GAH. But I'm not the goddamned Batman, now, am I? I also enjoy the how Jonah is trying to snap the goddamned neck of Batman.The scene ends with Batman getting sliced and Supes taking a final fatal bullet to the head. Of course, in this story, when either one of them dies, they phase to another earth.

All told, a good story arc that I think is in trade and a very nice appearance of Jonah Hex. I would have preferred that he was written a little more along the lines of how Fleisher wrote him in regards to how they spelled his text. But that's a minor quibble. I would like to see these artists do an issue of the current series.

Anyway, have a nice Fourth and next week we'll take a look at the landmark 50th issue of Jonah Hex. It's the pivot point where we can finally start dating almost every Hex book.

Correction: S&B fight Darkseid ina prior story arc. Absolute Power is about what happens when the past is changed and Kal-El and Bruce Wayne are raised by super-villains.