Outsiders #8 "Hex"

 Outsiders #8 Aug '24

"Hex"

Jackson Lanzing and Collin Kelly, story - Robert Carey, art - Roger Cruz and Adriano, cover

Ok, I'll be honest. Reviewing books with Jonah Hex guest starring roles are tough to do.  I normally don't know what the ongoing storyline is, I'm not emotionally invested in the current crop of characters and at times I can't really tell if Jonah is actually advancing the story or just a "Hey, let's throw a cowboy in here! What do we have available?"

Well, the only western character that DC seems to have is Jonah Hex. But this issue is a two-fer because it also contains Jinny Hex. I'll give a recap of the story, my views on that, how they used Jinny and how they used Jonah. Not sure any of it will be very pretty.

Our story opens with six shell casings hitting the ground, and mysterious silhouette approaches and Jinny Hex is pointing a six shooter saying that was a warning shot. She tells the approaching woman that this place ain't for her but Batwoman says that it will take a lot more than a gun to scare her.

Splash page exposes the two women standing in the main road of Zero, Texas. Jinny says that guns aren't for scaring, they are for firing. Batwoman states the town was evacuated 50 years ago (1974) when the mine closed down and that she is only in town to find someone that is in trouble. Jinny states that she doesn't need any help but Batwoman demands to know what is going on. Jinny tells her to turn around.

As Batwoman turns a ghostly cowboy tosses her aside. She responds with a quickly thrown batarang which goes through the ghost. Jinny then shoots the ghost, causing him to vaporize and a wonderful lightning display. More ghosts appear and Jinny shoots each one. She states they have been following her halfway across Texas, they don't stop coming and that gun is the only thing that works on them. Eventually there are too many of them and the two women hotfoot it out of there.

They make their way to a garage and Batwoman kicks open the door and as the ghosts pass through the walls, Batwoman attaches a small explosive to a bag of rock salt, tosses it in the air and the salt explosion neutralizes the ghosts.

Sitting down taking a breather, Batwoman asks if Jinny is Virginia Hex. Jinny replies that only narcs use her full name. Jinny asks how she knows her name and Batwoman recounts the following:

 

Two weeks earlier Kate gets a phone call from Jenny Crisis who tells her about Century Babies. She doesn't really explain who or what Century babies are but mentions a big guy under the waves singing prayers of his dead parents, a curious boy in every city and the girl with the gun in a town called Zero. We see Jenny Crisis walking through some rubble with people running away and she tells Kate she is doing fine as she explodes a few tanks, some humvees and several soldiers.

End of story.

Back in the garage Jinny and Batwoman both say they don't really understand what is going on and then there is a knock on the door and it slowly opens to reveal.....

The ghost of Jonah Hex!!!

Jinny asks what is going on and Jonah replies "Nothing you didn't start"

We then get a wonderful three page text story of Jonah explaining how he was four days out of Tucson and he had been shot in the shoulder. Things were not looking good, the buzzards were circling and Red Elliot and his gang were closing in. Hex was out of ammo and water. He curled up in a hole to die but instead found a crevasse, a damn deep one. And the further down he crawled, the deeper it seemed. He felt like he went downward for weeks and when he hit bottom he found a pistol. 

He picked it up and he didn't feel like he was dying, now he was dealing out death. He got out and found the Elliot Gang and started in to eliminating them but as he did, the whispers of the dead men were in his ear, leading him to the rest of the gang. Jonah finally kills the entire gang, including Red. 

He continued on, killing Tomahawk Jones, the Silverclaw Brothers, Colonel Jack. By the end of the month he had erased about 200 men without ever having to reload the gun. However, every man he killed haunted him. When Jonah tried to drop the pistol, the ghosts would close in and he had to pick it up again. It was like the pistol had a will of its own. He knew that if it got one more kill, the pistol would summon...something. 

Jonah buried the pistol in a box to stop it from getting the last kill. Jonah asked why Jinny picked up the pistol. Jinny explains that she had decided to leave everything in the trunk alone but one night a burglar broke into her place and kicked her door in. Awakened from sleep she just grabbed the pistol and killed the burglar.

Now Jinny is cursed just because she killed on guy. Now she can't even sleep for too long because the ghosts will get the gun and end the world? Jonah says that he doesn't know but whatever is calling to that gun can never get it. Batwoman tells Hex to take the gun but he says that he belongs to the gun as much as any of the other ghosts. He tells Jinny that he is sorry, she can never put it down and at the end of the day the last life it takes has to be hers.

Jinny looks at the pistol and says "A good guy with a gun". Batwoman steps up and states "No, not a guy. A bat." and grabs the pistol from her. Jinny tells her not to but Batwoman says she has been cursed since before she put on the cowl. Jonah laughs and says..

and Batwoman shoots him with the gun and makes him vanish.

Batwoman jumps on her motorcycle and takes off, the ghosts following her as she shoots them; she is running across the desert, being chased; sliding down bluffs being chased. Finally she is a flat desert, surrounds by thousands upon thousands of cowboy ghosts. She looks at the pistol, puts her finger to her ear and says "Batwoman to outsiders." and continues...

So lets look at all the pieces, starting with the art. I'm not sure I have ever seen work from Robert Carey but I don't really care for it. The style looks like everything was done in a computer and while some of the art looks really good, there is no motion, no dynamics. It is a bunch of still posed figures on a flat flat surface. I especially hated the rendering of the neon signs in the town. I may be getting into sign geek territory here (photographing neon is a hobby of mine) but Carey used a neon font to make the signs, therefore there is too much glass on the signs and the construction of the signs shows an ignorance of basic signage. If you have THE ZERO spelled out on one side of your sign, other other side should have it reversed so you can read it from both directions. Look at how this sign is drawn and you will see that from Jinny's side it would read OREZ EHT.

And the Welcome sign doesn't even have it on both sides (but why would it?) but it does have the double neon effect.

Another complaint is with the auto repair garage they break into. Look at this car. It looks like a photo that got ran through a filter to make it look drawn but the scale compared to Batwoman is all wrong. It's like a damn Power Wheel up on the lift.

Also, the story starts with six shell casings hitting the dirt and Jinny says "That warning shot was a courtesy". She references one shot but six casings? Artistic mistake or lousy writing? Either way, I blame Jessica Berbey (editor) Kames Reid (assistant editor) and Katie Kubert (group editor). 

I will say that I liked the graphics used during Hex's telling of his tale. They easily put it three pages what would have taken several more that they drawn everything. And Jonah himself had some pretty nasty scarring, pitching all the way into Harvey Dent territory. And the nonvariant cover was great. Moody, blending Jinny and Jonah together and we got Batwoman without that 90's trenchcoat. Sadly the cover uses Generation Hex which was used back in the Amalgam days (1997). 

On to the story. I can't get too much into how this fits in to the but any story should have some consistency  within itself and draw a new reader in. You stick Jonah Hex in a book to get my attention, you should be able to keep my attention and make me want to buy the next book. This fails big time.

I like the concept of the ghosts haunting the person with the gun but what danger is there to the wielder? We don't know. There is an unrealized danger but we don't know the gravity. The gun removes the ghosts and salt neutralizes them as well and keeps them at bay. We finally meet Jonah Hex in ghost form. In his story it seems like the gun has a will of its own, he is cursed and followed by the men he kills. The story doesn't indicate that the gun was killing men Hex didn't want to kill, it just seemed to make tracking them down easier. And Hex says that every kill felt like it was feeding the gun, and the next death would usher in .... something.

So he buries it... along with a butt load of other goodies that we have seen Jinny use from that trunk. 

But Jinny does kill one more person and that something never materializes?!?! Jinny says that if the ghosts get her the world will end. Honestly at this point of the story, the ghosts outside could have bum rushed her and won. Also, why is Jonah there? Was he killed by the gun? Because he says to Jinny that she can never put it down and the last life it takes has to be hers, alluding to suicide? Then how did Jonah put the gun down? And why, if Jinny is cursed can Batwoman just grab the gun from her? Why does she shoot Hex?

This book tried to make a compelling story about a cursed gun, never ending ghosts, and the end of world. Ya know what? The Sixth Gun by Cullen Bunn and Brian Hurtt did it a whole lot better. I will say the final splash page with the giant city cannon was pretty compelling and reminded me of something from a Kirby book. But was it enough for me to plunk down another $4.99 and continue with this book? Nope.

I will admit the characterization of Jonah seemed pretty good, much better than most we have seen in guest starring roles. And Jinny seemed pretty well written with what I saw of her in Young Justice. Batwoman is a cipher to me, having never read anything with her in it, but I sure can't say that she holds any draw for me.

I end up looking at the book and asking "Why have Jinny join the Outsiders book and pair her up with Batwoman?" I saw the answer in an ad near the back of the book...

Pride Month.