Jonah Hex and the Shadow of Death #1: The Dark, the Gritty, and the Savage

Michael Walsh is a master of horror comics, both writing and drawing some of the best titles in recent years, such as The Silver Coin and Exquisite Corpse. Walsh is known for bringing a sharp and cinematic sensibility to his line art. Fortunately for Jonah Hex fans, the same can be said of Walsh’s writing.

The majority of issue one is a sort of lumbering prologue to the next five issues, one that never fully settles into its boots and spurs. The story spends most of its page time introducing new side characters and establishing Jonah Hex’s current circumstances as well as his infamous reputation. Those characters remark on Hex’s infamy as they come across him and quickly react to his disfigurement.

The story sets up each of its principal side characters quickly, with a 1-2 page introduction that’s more about showcasing their colorful personalities than it is any generic information you might get in another comic. Those personalities contrast against Hex’s gruff, lone gunman persona, which the story uses as fuel for the dialogue.

The issue’s overall tone is somber, which might lend itself more to a slow-burn character study. Seemingly in spite of that, the story’s pace is gunslinging fast, with Jonah rapidly moving from point A to point B with little to no fanfare. The brief action we get in issue one is quick, with bullets finding their targets instantly and with dramatic “BLAM” and “BANG” effects cutting across the panel.

The artwork in Jonah Hex and the Shadow of Death #1 is drenched in the themes and tropes of the western genre. Everything from the way characters look and act on the page seems more like Walsh is playing into cliche archetypes rather than trying to create any sense of realism. However, this ends up adding more to the issue’s immersion than it takes away. The predictable nature of who the characters are and how they act creates a kind of friction with the unpredictability of Jonah Hex himself.

Michael Walsh deliberately breaks some of the illustrations into multiple panels to vary the reader’s pace or flip the perspective of the camera angle. This technique brings the character’s experience closer to the reader, keeping both guessing who the next victim is and of what. By doing this on pages with several thin panels stacked together, it adds to the overall tension that the western genre thrives on.

Toni-Marie Griffin uses stark, contrasting colors to create the illusion of volume and temperature on the page. While this is a popular technique that has been around for a long time, its use in this issue is masterfully deployed. For example, in a few scenes we see the orange glow of daylight. In another, that same glow is visible through window panes, and indoors it casts a dark and drab room in hues of pink and black.

Overall the colors are deliberate on Griffin’s part and adds to the immersive nature of the western genre. The ability to control color and tone is one of the comic book format’s greatest strengths, and it’s a great thing to see being taken into account even for a miniseries not featuring one of DC’s titans like Batman or Superman.