Jonah Hex: Two-Gun Mojo

Story by Joe R.Lansdale
Art by Timothy Truman& Sam Glanzman

This books compiles a five-part mini-series combining traditional gritty western narrative with (wait for it! can you hear the bandwagon charging down the highway yet?) supernatural elements. Like all the best western heroes, Jonah Hex is a scarred bounty hunter who can shoot the balls off a horsefly at a hundred paces and isn't shy about showing it. Joe Lansdale's heart isn't really in the revisionist (`Unforgiven') style recent westerns, barring a brief reference to atrocities against the tribes, and there's plenty of rooten-tooten action scenes where Hex blows away young punks in saloons. The basic plot involves Hex hacking down a voodoo using snake oil salesman who blew away his partner and having bloody revenge. Not before a showdown with the zombie of Wild Bill Hickok, of course. The scripting is tight, moving the action forward without much time wasting and the narration shows a fine sense of macabre humour. The art has an old fashioned look to it (maybe appropriate in view of the genre) which I find somewhat irritating in comparison with the more impressionistic styles favoured today. There's not a great deal of sophistication to Two Gun Mojo - the characters remain two-dimensional throughout, in spite of sketchy attempts to flesh out the hero's background in odd frames - and overall it's not much more than a decent yarn.

Eoghan

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