YMMV / Jonah Hex

• Complete Monster: See here.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: A character with C-tier name recognition even at his best, Hex retains a fan following strong enough that even his abysmal solo movie couldn't dispel it, due to both being one of the last Western characters left in American comics and his uncompromising grittiness, and DC Fans inevitably rejoice whenever a new adaptation of him is announced. His incarnation in Legends of Tomorrow is particularly popular, and even brought in a new wave of fans who were otherwise unfamiliar with the character.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: One issue has worried Hex checking out a cave for bears, and when he sighs in relief for finding none, he is immediately jumped by a cougar. It comes off like something out of a typical session of Red Dead Redemption.
• Jerkass Woobie: Hex is not a nice guy, but given the sheer amount of horrible things that happen to him throughout his life through no fault of his own, it's not surprising his disposition's so sour.
• Magnificent Bastard:
  • Jonah Hex himself is a man who walks a solitary path with violence and death alongside his companions. Throughout the decades, Hex has proven a Bounty Hunter who rarely fails to get his mark and constantly traps those after him. In several such instances, Hex lures a man into helping him while planning to kill him, kills an opponent with a thrown sheriff star when he is out of bullets, helps a widow to find peace when she blames him for her misery by letting her sell him to bounty hunters thinking he will be hanged because it is revealed Hex hired them himself. Not above displays of compassion and humanity, Hex will occasionally refuse payment should his sense of justice demand it, and at his destined time to die, lets a two-bit impersonator perish in his stead. Fixing his face, Hex goes into the sunset with his rival and lover Tallulah Black to find peace at last.
  • Victor Sono, the Star Man, was an immigrant boy whose beloved father was murdered for sport by crooked cops. As fate would have it, the bystander whose gun he stole for justice was Jonah Hex, who saved him. Growing into a capable killer, Victor hunts down and murders corrupt and evil lawmen. Managing to give Hex the slip, Victor promises Hex can walk him into jail should Hex save him from other hunters before asking Hex to take him to one town so Victor can murder the corrupt sheriff. Slipping his ropes, he has Hex locked in a cell while hanging the sheriff for murdering innocents and proceeds to arrange Hex's freedom and to pay him Victor's bounty money as to make them even.
  • Molokai is a mormon leader who wishes to save his people by any means necessary. Persecuted by the vicious Mr. Dice, Molokai rescues Jonah Hex in the snow and appeals to his human sympathy to have Hex takes a message to Dice. Aware that Dice will force Hex to lead his bounty killers to Molokai's people, Molokai lies in wait with his men to slaughter the hunters, surprising even Hex himself. Revealing he helped perpetrate a massacre on innocent pioneers to aid his people, whereupon he adopted the innocent children, Molokai ends by squaring things with Hex by offering him a deed to Dice's property as soon as Dice is dead.
  • Hex, by Michael Fleisher: Batman, here a man named Cohen, survived the nuclear apocalypse only to witness his parents gunned down by a mob. Developing a hatred of all firearms, Cohen utilized his knowledge of Bruce Wayne's tenure as Batman to take up the cowl himself, declaring a one-man war on every gun in New York. Though he targets anyone with a firearm without caring why they have it, Batman singlehandedly restores order to New York, monitoring the Combine and street thugs alike with ruthless efficiency. After being manipulated into attacking Jonah Hex, Batman soon pieces together who sent him and stops the Combine's Terminator invasion, managing to destroy two of them without weapons of his own at the potential cost of his own life.
• My Real Daddy: Michael Fleisher took over writing duties for the character from creator John Albano in 1974 and continued to write the character until 1987, when the character's series was canceled. Over this 13 year period he wrote at least 125 Hex stories over three series (Weird Western Tales, Jonah Hex and Hex), more than any other Hex writer. The Justin Gray/Jimmy Palmiotti writing team almost certainly count too, writing over 100 Hex issues from 2005 to '14.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: With The New 52 the fan-favorite Jonah Hex (2005) series was cancelled and replaced by All-Star Western. The name change came with a drastically new format and status quo: Instead of being a series of unconnected short stories featuring different artists it became ongoing story with a single artist and backup stories featuring other characters. The bigger change was the fact that Hex is now in Gotham, working with Amadeus Arkham. The fanbase was appropriately split over this. On the one hand, the series was no longer really a Western, and the move to Gotham was criticised as an attempt to shackle the character to the massively selling Batman franchise. Proponents claim that after a six year run a change was welcome and that while it may have been a cash-in it worked, with All-Star selling much better than Jonah Hex did. In the end, the fact that Gray and Palmiotti remained on the book was met with widespread relief, and after a brief period of constant Batman tie-ins Jonah moved back West and the title regained some of its independence.
• The Woobie: Emmylou Hartley's family was killed by Native Americans and she spent four years as a Sex Slave. She narrowly survives being stabbed by one of Jonah's enemies and has some harrowing experiences with a ruthless outlaw who tricks her into joining his gang. And that's not counting plenty of emotional angst that comes with having a relationship with Jonah.

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