Roscoe's Public Notes

Well, sort of. He is certainly no “back alley boy” himself, and there’s no overt sexual activity in this comic book; but the issue of homosexuality in the Wild West is dealt with in the pages of Jonah Hex #28, written by Justin Gray and Jimmy Palmiotti, featuring artwork by John Higgins, and carrying an April 2008 publication date from DC Comics.

The commercial blurb for this book found at the publisher’s site reads:

Jonah Hex comes across a young man looking for revenge. But when that man’s quest spills the blood of innocents, Hex is going to spill some blood himself!

The young man referred to in the paragraph above is a gay guy who wants to hire Jonah. He wants him to kill an entire town. Yep, that’s right: an entire town that recently hung and burned the body of his nineteen year old lover.

Spoilers follow.

Of course, Jonah refuses this request. He’ll have nothing to do with the slaughter of children, or of pregnant women or old men, or of folks who might not really be guilty of some serious wrong which, in his opinion, deserves killing.

As the book moves along there are conversations involving Jonah and the young man mentioned above, and with the town Sheriff, and with Maybelle, a “ten-dollar whore”, that involve the moral aspects of the death penalty, hypocrisy, passing judgment on other folks, and, as I mentioned above, homosexuality.

Over the following two graphic panels, Jonah explains his personal view of the young man’s sexual orientation.

Son, ah don’t care how ya’ sit in the saddle.

The notion that the Lord and His devoted find yer particular ridin’ habits offensive only gives me pause fer personal amusement.

Eventually the young man goes to the town where his lover was hung, and he does succeed in killing all the residents, blowing up the town Church while everyone is inside attending Sunday services.

When he returns to the town where he’d first talked to Hex, to brag that he’d taken care of the problem himself, he finds that Jonah’s already aware of what had happened. And he finds that the bounty hunter is one on whose bad side it is not good to be. While lecturing him on how wrong it was to do what he’d done, Hex cuts off the young man’s tongue.

At this point, Maybelle has had more than she can handle of Jonah’s rough ways. She slaps him, breaks a whiskey bottle over his head, and shoots at him with a shotgun. When she starts to reload her gun as Jonah rides out of town in the rain, the Sheriff stops her and tells her not to fret. His words to her appear over the book’s last full-page graphic panel.

“…Hell’s waitin’ on him.
No doubt of that.”

I’m happy to give this book a solid .90 ASB rating.