Jonah Hex is one of DC’s oldest heroes and his spot on the CW’s Legends of Tomorrow proves he’s also one of its greatest.
Every so often in media, there exists a breakout character who has so much appeal that they keep turning up in the most unexpected places. So it is with one Jonah Hex, ostensibly a character meant to cash in on the dying embers of the Western Comics and Clint Eastwood movies.
Hex has been a Wild West bounty hunter, a grizzled road warrior in a post-apocalyptic hellscape in the future, and a Legend of Tomorrow. Now, we’re taking a closer look at how this cowboy became a time-traveler.
Created by writer John Albano and artist Tony DeZuniga, Jonah Hex made his debut in the pages of All-Star Western #10 in 1972. A grim and mysterious scarred bounty hunter with a rough code of honor, Hex would become a regular and popular recurring character in DC Comics, eventually starring in his own solo spin-off series which lasted an impressive 92 issues with writer Michael Fleischer and DeZuniga providing the art. The series was canceled shortly before DC’s “Crisis On Infinite Earths” event. But where cancelation might’ve been the end for other characters, the saga of Jonah Hex would continue in one of DC’s more outlandish titles.
Debuting in September of 1985, Hex was written by Michael Fleischer with art from Mark Texeira. Pulled from an 1875 saloon in a flash of blinding light, Jonah Hex finds himself trapped in a post-apocalyptic Seattle sometime in the 21st century. Abducted from his home time by a villain named Reinhold Borsten, Hex is meant to serve as yet another of Borsten’s temporally displaced foot soldiers. Hex disagreed violently with that idea and blasted his way to freedom. Crossing paths with a biker gang called the Road Reapers, Hex would trade in his Old West attire for motorcycle leathers and his trusty six-shooters for high-tech hand cannons. Joining forces with a future mercenary named Stiletta, Hex would wander the broken landscape, all the while searching for a way back to his time. Only lasting 18 issues before being canceled, Hex did garner a great deal of popularity and critical acclaim in countries like Great Britain, Italy, Spain, and Japan.
Hex would eventually return to his own solo series years later and would make a smattering of appearances on television in various cartoons like Batman: The Animated Series, Justice League, and Batman: The Brave & The Bold. He made his live-action television debut in a blink-and-you-miss-it cameo in Season 2, Episode 13 of The Flash “Welcome To Earth-2”, seen briefly in a montage of images as Barry and Cisco break the dimensional barriers between parallel Earths. Portrayed by actor Johnathon Schaech, Jonah Hex would go on to become a recurring character in the Arrowverse series DC’s Legends of Tomorrow as an old friend of Rip Hunter’s. The time-traveling heroes arrive in the Old West and run afoul of a gang of criminals, and Jonah comes to their aid in Season Two, Episode 11’s “The Magnificent Eight.” The character would later return in a number of Legends episodes, and his Earth-18 counterpart would be found guarding a Lazarus Pit during the “Crisis on Infinite Earths” Arrowverse event, where he would obtain his trademark scars in a battle with Sara Lance.