Connection
Jonah Hex
- Infos
- Photos
- Best films
If you like this character, let us know!
Real name Jonah Woodson Hex, The Mark of the Demon, Hex, The Scar
Jonah Woodson Hex is a fictional character, a western comic book antihero that appears in comic books published by DC Comics. The character was created by writer John Albano and artist Tony DeZuniga. Hex is a surly and cynical bounty hunter whose face is horribly scarred on the right side. Despite his poor reputation and personality, Hex is bound by a personal code of honor to protect and avenge the innocent. The character is portrayed by Josh Brolin in the 2010 film adaptation of the same name. Thomas Jane provided his voice in a DC Animated short film.
Biography
OriginsRaised by his alcoholic father Woodson Hex, Jonah was a regular victim of physical abuse as a child. His father eventually stopped supporting him and sold him into slavery with an Apache tribe at the age of 13, in 1851. They worked him constantly until one day when he saved their chieftain from a puma, and he was welcomed as a full-fledged member of the tribe. The chief took Jonah in as his own son, but his adopted brother Noh-Tante grew jealous. Noh-Tante shared Jonah's affections for a young girl named White Fawn, so he betrayed his brother during their manhood rite at the age of 16 and left Jonah for dead with their enemies the Kiowa. He was rescued by a Cavalry patrol, although they shot him in the gut when he tried to stop their slaughter. Left for dead a second time, he was nursed back to health by an old trapper in the woods. Returning to his tribe's camp, he found them long since gone.
American Civil War
As Jonah grew into adulthood, he joined the United States Army as a cavalry scout. By 1861, the country was radically divided on issues of slavery and states rights. When war erupted between the Northern states and the South, Jonah shifted his loyalties to the newly formed Confederate army and enlisted as a lieutenant in the 4th cavalry. During this time, Jonah met a fellow soldier named Jeb Turnbull and the two became close friends.
However, as time went on, Hex found himself increasingly torn between his loyalties to the South and his feelings towards the treatment of slaves. In September 1862, President Abraham Lincoln announced his Emancipation Proclamation – a proposed bill that would outlaw slavery in most slave-holding states. Jonah realized that he could no longer support a system that elected to hold his fellow man in bondage; however he had no intention of betraying his comrades by cooperating with the Union. Therefore, he felt that the best option available to him was to surrender and wait out the war. He abandoned his post and went to the Union camp at Fort Charlotte, sneaking into the Camp captain`s quarters to surrender directly. The camp's captain pressured Hex to reveal the location of his Confederate unit, but Jonah refused to yield the information. However, an orderly examined samples of clay from the iron shoes on Hex's horse, and successfully determined where the Rebels were stationed.
The Union soldiers tracked the enemy back to their camp, and took them by surprise. As the Rebels were arrested, the Union captain, smarting from the fact that Hex was able to penetrate the fort's security, publicly thanked Jonah for his assistance, marking him as a traitor in the eyes of his former unit. Hex responded by brutally punching him and was sentenced to solitary confinement.
Jonah found a shaft beneath his cell and used it to access the compound where Jeb Turnbull and the other prisoners were being held and aided them in trying to escape, but the fort's soldiers were prepared for them. Unbeknownst to Hex, the Captain had deliberately had the "escape tunnel" dug. The fort didn't have enough food to support its soldiers, let alone prisoners, so he had manipulated Hex into staging a breakout so that he could legitimately claim that the prisoners were shot trying to escape.
In an event that history would know as the "Fort Charlotte Massacre", the Union soldiers shot down nearly every escapee in cold blood, including Jeb Turnbull. Jonah found himself a victim of a Union bullet as well, but managed to survive long enough to kill the camp's captain. The handful of survivors, unaware of the captain's treachery, blamed Jonah and spread the word of his apparent betrayal.
Following the Fort Charlotte Massacre, Jonah patched himself up and moved out towards the Western territories.
Mark of the Demon
Eventually returning to his village in 1866, Jonah found that Noh-Tante had since married White Fawn. He declared Noh-Tante's betrayal to the chieftain, but the accusations were denied and it was decided that they would deliberate through trial by combat. Noh-Tante sabotaged Jonah's tomahawk, forcing him to cheat and end the fight with his knife. For breaking the rules of combat and killing his son, the chieftain declared that Jonah would be branded with the mark of the demon and exiled under penalty of death. Years later when he returned again to rescue a kidnapped white woman, he was captured and White Fawn was shot dead by the chieftain for trying to help him escape. Jonah killed his adopted father in return, and gunned down half the tribe who went after him with the help of Henri d'Aubergnon.
Bounty Hunter
Jonah Hex was inspired to become a bounty hunter after murdering his first criminal, the outlaw Lucas "Mad Dog" McGill. He gunned down Mad Dog while the man was beating his wife outside of a saloon; in his inebriated stupor, Hex believed him to be his own father, Woodson Hex, abusing his mother, Virginia Hex. The local deputy insisted that even drunk it was the fastest draw he'd ever seen, and gave him the massive bounty on McGill's head. Hex accepted the money and scattered it on the streets as he left town by horseback. His first bounty poster was in 1866 on an old army buddy named Eddie Cantwell. The manhunter Arbee Stoneham stole Hex's reward by murdering Cantwell and then humiliated him by taking his guns. Eight years later they met again while Hex was bringing down the Jason Crowley gang, and he intended to take revenge on Stoneham but found him wheelchair-ridden; the two men went for a drink instead.
The town of Paradise Corners hired him to take down a criminal named Big Jim, but when he thought of settling down there they shunned him and treated him like a monster. His next target was a robber named Terry White who betrayed him after Hex found him in the desert and nursed him back to health.
Weird Western Tales
Jonah received a wolf named Iron Jaws when he tried to rescue a peaceful Pawnee tribe from their local town, and failed to save the girl who owned him. His former mentor Windy Taylor called Jonah to help find his son Tod Taylor, who had turned outlaw; Tod gunned down his father and Hex avenged the man who taught him. Iron Jaws died after venturing deep into the desert to rescue Hex from dying of exposure where two outlaws had tied him up. He next took down a corrupt sheriff who was scamming his town, and then a corrupt hanging judge at the next. Briefly he became the bodyguard to a sideshow attraction whose owner he murdered after the man tried to frame him for a heinous crime. Finding an escaped psychopath on the run, his next bounty was the Gentleman Killer. Fort Lang was seemingly attacked by Indians, and Hex uncovered a railroad conspiracy to drive them off their land. When some bandits he'd hunted down injured an old lady who had shown him kindness, he funded a children's hospital to make sure she got the medicine she needed before chasing them down and slaughtering them.
While tracking down Blackjack Jorgis for revenge, Hex was ambushed by ex-Confederates sent by Quentin Turnbull. His mentor Hank Brewster died in the gunfight, and his first horse, the General, was killed by stray bullets. Briefly hired by the U.S. Secret Service, he toppled an assassination conspiracy against Ulysses S. Grant. Temporarily blinded from his injuries, he took down an entire gang without his sight. He fought corrupt army officials when he took down a greedy landowner who was robbing pioneers and letting them die.
Five Warriors from Forever
The Lord of Time assembled a team known as the Five Warriors from Forever when he believed that his time machine the Eternity Brain would end all existence. This team included Jonah Hex alongside Black Pirate, Enemy Ace, Miss Liberty and the Viking Prince; to make them powerful enough to become a threat, they were each energized with a special force. Their purpose was to fight the Justice League and Justice Society to strengthen their resolve through defeat, which they succeeded in doing. Eventually the Five Warriors rebelled against their master and assaulted the Palace of Eternity. Hex got into a gun-fight with a T-Rex, but they were defeated and eventually returned to their own times using the Cosmic Treadmill.
He later encountered the Justice League separately, with several other Western heroes including Bat Lash, Cinnamon and Scalphunter. The Lord of Time sent members of the League back to the 19th Century in an absurd plot to rule the world. Jonah met an amnesiac Hal Jordan in the desert and nursed him back to health. They teamed up with Elongated Man, Flash and Zatanna to take down some robotic gunfighters while the League dealt with an anti-matter asteroid that threatened to destroy the Earth. In the present, Superman defeated the Time Lord and restored things to normal.
Crisis on Infinite Earths
He became involved in the first Crisis when he was summoned along with several other heroes to fight for the Monitor. Jonah Hex fought against the Shadow Demons alongside Bat Lash, Cyborg, Firebrand, John Stewart, Johnny Thunder, Nighthawk, Psimon and Scalphunter. Alex Luthor and Harbinger gathered the heroes of several Earths to discuss strategy, and Hex was present in the crowd to witness Pariah's warnings.
Hex
Jonah Hex disappeared in a flash of light one night at a saloon in 1875. He was abducted from his own era by the villainous Reinhold Borsten (and with maybe a little unintentional help from Access), who transported him into a post-apocalyptic Seattle, Washington in the 21st century. His intention was to use the time-traveling gunfighter as a warrior, but instead Jonah escaped and met a motorcycle gang named the Road Reapers. They immediately took him in after he rescued their warrior Stiletta, and he obtained a zonesuit to protect himself from radiation by killing their cowardly leader Falcon in self-defense. His next companions were a group of soldiers from the Vietnam War, although they were betrayed by a robotic duplicate of Stiletta and none survived except for a Cpt. Stanley Harris. Briefly, he became shotgun man for a drug dealer named Barnaby Blossom; when he discovered that Barnaby was getting kids hooked, he killed the man. The real Stiletta tracked him down, and they became stranded in the desert together without water after a roadside ambush. They survived by walking twelve miles to an oasis and fighting off killer mutant worms. Having attracted negative attention from the underworld Conglomerate by knocking over their drug shipment, Hex and Stiletta were hunted down by their mercenary Chain, but defeated him in a junkyard. The Conglomerate enlisted Hex to help them take down Borsten, and he was captured by Borsten in a fight so that he could destroy the villain's time travel device after using it. Together Hex and Stiletta infiltrated the complex, and Harris was sent home, but Jonah didn't make it to the time machine before it was destroyed. They escaped as the building exploded, and Borsten apparently died in the blast.
Hex got newer and improved guns after he won at a dangerous live shooting gallery, but Stiletta was kidnapped while he was fighting. He was then captured by a scientist named Dr. Adamant, but escaped and destroyed his society before Jonah could be turned into a robot. His next challenge was an anti-sin cult called the Sin Killers, whom he demolished while rescuing the daughter of a local man. Borsten was revealed to have survived the explosion. Briefly, Jonah met the Legion of Super-Heroes while they were traveling in their Time Bubble.
New York City's leading crime syndicate, the Combine, sent Hex after their greatest enemy, the Batman, by framing him for Stiletta's murder; the two men fought and nearly killed each other. Realizing that they're on the same side, Hex helped Batman stop the Combine from unleashing giant killer robots on the populace. Stiletta was discovered to have been brainwashed and trained as a professional wrestler, calling herself Blonde Spitfire. Briefly, Jonah was captured by two cannibals and forced to escape through the sewers. Enraged, he began hunting down members of the Combine. The Road Reapers were captured by a group of warriors called the Dogs of War, who pressed them into slave labor for an alien named S'ven Tarah. Jonah was forced to fight the deadly brainwashed Stiletta, but he brought her back to normal after knocking her out.
Tarah revealed that he's a time-traveler and his slave camps were building a machine to thwart an alien invasion from the Xxggs. Hex was attacked by a rogue Chain again in revenge for their last battle, but defeated him a second time. Having been captured into the slave camp by Manta, Hex organized a breakout to escape and fought Starkad on his way out. Stanley Harris revealed himself to be one of the Dogs of War, and enlisted Jonah's service. They fought against the Xxggs for the future of humanity and succeeded, but Tarah explained that he was unable to send Hex back to his own time. On Thanksgiving Day, he gathered with Stiletta and remembered his family. Finding his own stuffed corpse in an amusement park, he took comfort in the knowledge that someday he would get to go home. DC Comics has never explained how Jonah returned to his own time but there have been fan-fiction stories regarding how he returned.
Two-Gun Mojo
Jonah began to take up with another bounty hunter named Slow Go Smith who became his friend. Smith was killed by gun-toting zombies in a barn, and Hex was framed for his murder. Following their trail, Hex discovered that it was the work of a Snake Oil merchant named Doc "Cross" Williams. It was revealed that Williams studied voodoo in Haiti, and reanimated the corpse of Wild Bill Hickok as his personal bodyguard. They tried to zombify Hex as well, but he escaped and tracked them down again. Jonah put Hickok down again by beating him on the draw, then avenged his friend by leaving the Doc to die a slow brutal death at the hands of Apache raiders.
Riders of the Worm and Such
Following the slaying of Stove Belly Jack's gang, Hex met a giant worm in the desert. He teamed up with a local ranch who'd been under attack by the creatures. It is explained that the monsters were half-bred rape children of an underground race and a human woman, calling themselves the Autumn Brothers. Hex rallied the ranchers to take the offensive. They launched an assault on the underground tunnel system where the rest of the worms lived, slaughtering them as they went and blowing up their queen with dynamite.
Shadows West
Jonah became a member of Buffalo Will's traveling Wild West Show after a trick-shooting midget named Long Tom saved his life. He reconnected with an old friend named Spotted Balls, and met a local squaw prostitute who gave birth to a Bear Boy. She claimed to have given birth after mating with a bear spirit. Hex decided to leave the camp with Spotted Balls and the squaw because he didn't like the way things were run. This infuriated Buffalo Will, who sent an armed posse led by Long Tom to murder them. Jonah killed most of his pursuers using traps, but Spotted Balls died in the final shoot-out. He was able to return the squaw and her cub to its father, and Jonah finally met the mythical spirit people. Returning to camp with Long Tom's corpse, he swore to Buffalo Will that if he ever saw him again he'll kill him.
Face Full of Violence
When a rich family hired him to track down their kidnapped son, he found the boy had become part of an underground dog-fighting ring and was forced to put him down when he contracted rabies. In a conflict involving a stolen gold crucifix, he burned an entire mining town to the ground. Bat Lash helped him take revenge against a corrupt sheriff who framed him. The Mayor of a small town tried to execute him to cover up the incestuous rape of his mute daughter, but the townspeople lynched the politician instead. On Christmas he got into a gunfight, killing a dozen men to protect one of his bounties from their revenge attempts. In the small town of Salvation, he met a local gang who posed as nuns and tried to murder him before he could reveal their secret.
Death
Jonah Hex continued to act as a bounty hunter until the age of 66 in 1904, when he was married to a Native American woman named Tall Bird. His life story was documented by Michael Wheeler. The entertainer L.B. Farnham approached him to become part of a Wild West Revue show in his old age, but Hex angrily refused to let them turn him into a sideshow. Hex's last bounty was a gang run by bank robber George Barrow; he succeeded in wiping them out, but Barrow returned for revenge several days later. Playing cards in a Cheyenne saloon, Hex was murdered with Barrow's double-barreled shotgun while fumbling to put on his spectacles. His death was immediately avenged by the lawman Hank Crawford who gunned down the unarmed Barrow in cold blood. In his dying moments, Hex hallucinated and reflected on the life that he'd lived.
Tall Bird and Wheeler attempted to give Jonah a proper Native American burial, but they were robbed at gunpoint by Farnham and an accomplice. Farnham had Wheeler shot and the widow left unconscious to die in a house fire while he stole Hex' corpse for his Wild West Revue. Jonah Hex was taxidermized to be put on display permanently in a gaudy outfit, and the two evil men meet their ends, but his body was transported from location to location. His final resting place was as a dummy at a Westworld theme park. Eventually he was discovered by historians, but Tall Bird was revealed to have survived the fire and she claimed his body. She did an interview with a young scholar to fill in the missing details in her husband's life, but they were assaulted by a Western memorabilia collector who demanded to have the corpse at any cost. The evil collector was shot in the back before he could murder them, and it is implied that Jonah Hex' vengeful spirit returned to protect his wife from beyond the grave.
Post-Mortem
Many years later, a supermodel and actress named Hex seemed to become possessed when her right eye was cut out by members of the Agenda. She assisted Superboy and displayed psionic powers when she repeatedly fired an unloaded energy weapon, but this change in consciousness seems to have been temporary. Eventually she decided to become a bounty hunter like her predecessor, riding Grokk the Living Gargoyle as her trusty steed.
Jonah Hex was reanimated during Blackest Night as a zombie member of the Black Lantern Corps, wielding a power ring. He returned to plague Quentin Turnbull's descendant, Joshua Turnbull. Joshua attacked Hex with a rocket launcher but failed to destroy him. The young man pled for his life to zombie versions of Jonah Hex and Quentin Turnbull, but his ancestor gunned him down in cold blood. Every zombie was restored to normal when Hal Jordan defeated Nekron.
Guns and Gotham
Following a change to the Timestream as a result of the events of Flashpoint, history was changed. During the 1880s, Amadeus Arkham was recruited by Detective Lofton of the Gotham City Police Department to help solve the case of the Gotham Butcher. Police Chief John Cromwell didn't take kindly to Arkham's theories, nor to the eventual recruitment of bounty hunter Jonah Hex, who had recently caused a stir by coming to town.
Even so, recognizing Hex' street smarts, Arkham suggested that the two of them join forces in performing a separate investigation into the case. Together, they uncovered Gotham City's sect of the Religion of Crime, and its relation to the Butcher case.
Significant dates in Jonah's life
The majority of Jonah's adventures were never given actual dates, however, some significant events were given year references. The ones listed here are actually mentioned or calculated using dialogue or other references.
November 1, 1838: Jonah Hex is born. (Jonah Hex vol. 1, #50 & reference in #57)
June 1848: Jonah's mother runs away with a traveling salesman. (Jonah Hex vol. 1, #57)
July 1851: Jonah's father, a physically abusive alcoholic, sells him into slavery to an Apache tribe in exchange for either a pile of pelts (Jonah Hex vol. 1, #7) or safe passage through Indian land (Jonah Hex vol. 2, #14). The two Jonah Hex series have different explanations, and it is unclear which is the canonical version of the story, if either.
1853: At age fifteen, Jonah saves the tribe's chief from a puma. The chief expresses his gratitude by adopting Jonah as his second son. Jonah eventually exceeds the chief's son, Noh-Tante, in the chief's eyes. (Jonah Hex vol. 1, #7)
1854: Jonah and rival Noh-Tante, in a tribal ritual of manhood, raid a nearby Kiowa village to steal ponies. Noh-Tante ambushes Jonah and leaves him to the Kiowas and tells the chief that Jonah is dead. Jonah is either 'rescued' by scalphunters who slaughter the Kiowas and shoot Jonah, leaving him for dead before a trapper finds him and nurses him back to health (Jonah Hex vol. 1, #7), or Jonah manages to defeat the Kiowas but does not return to the Apache village. (Jonah Hex vol. 2, #14) Once again, the story is conflicting.
1859: Jonah is engaged to Cassie Wainwright but she is killed by Indians the day before their wedding. (Jonah Hex vol. 1, #65)
December 25, 1861: Jonah and Turnbull's son Jeb give Quentin Turnbull an eagle-topped cane. (Jonah Hex vol. 1, #55; WWT #29)
January 1863: Jonah surrenders to the Union forces at Fort Charlotte. Jonah's platoon is subsequently captured and then slaughtered during an attempted escape known as the Fort Charlotte Massacre. Jonah is accused by the survivors of being a turncoat. (WWT #29, Jonah Hex vol. 1, #35)
May 2, 1863: Jonah accidentally shoots Stonewall Jackson as the General returns from a reconnaissance, inflicting the wound which cost him his arm & precipitated his death shortly after due to sepsis. (Jonah Hex vol. 1, #37)
April 23, 1865: Jonah surrenders (once again) to Union forces at the federal stockade in Lynchburg, Virginia, two weeks after Lee surrendered to Grant. (Jonah Hex vol. 1, #30) It is assumed, but not yet chronicled, that Jonah returned to the Confederacy after the Fort Charlotte massacre.
1866: Jonah locates his old tribe and tells the chief how Noh-Tante betrayed him years before. The chief decrees that this must be settled by a tomahawk battle. Noh-Tante secretly sabotages Jonah's tomahawk so that the handle will break. In an act of desperation during the fight, Jonah pulls a knife and kills Noh-Tante. As punishment for breaking the rules, Jonah is bound and the chief presses a heated tomahawk to the right side of Jonah's face giving him "The Mark of the Demon." The tribe then banishes Jonah. (Jonah Hex vol. 1, #8)
Winter, 1866: Jonah takes his first job bounty hunting by tracking down an old Confederate buddy, Eddie Cantwell (Jonah Hex vol. 1, #30–31)
1874: While tracking down the kidnapper of Laura Vanden, Jonah once again comes in contact with the Apache chief and is captured. The chief admits to taking Laura and announces that he will kill Hex at sunrise. Jonah is rescued by White Fawn, his former girlfriend and widow of Noh-Tante. The chief kills White Fawn and Jonah kills the chief before he rescues Laura Vanden. (Jonah Hex vol. 1, #8)
1875: Jonah marries Mei Ling and promises to give up bounty hunting and gunfighting. (Jonah Hex vol. 1, #45)
Spring, 1876: Jonah's son, Jason, is born. A month later, Mei Ling takes Jason and leaves Jonah. (Jonah Hex vol. 1, #51–53)
August 1878: Jonah is transported to the year 2050 by Reinhold Borsten. Several documents reference the date of the time travel to be 1875, but a careful examination of events, dates, and corresponding timespans, place this event closer to 1878. (Jonah Hex vol. 1, #92)
1880: Jonah's mother dies and he learns that he has a half brother, Joshua Dazzleby, who is the sheriff and preacher in the town of Heaven's Gate, Colorado. (Jonah Hex: No Way Back)
1899: Jonah meets his grown son, Jason, in Mexico. Jonah learns that Mei Ling has died, but leaves before finding out that he now has a grandson, Woodson Hex II. (Jonah Hex vol. 2, #25)
1904: Jonah is gunned down and killed by George Barrow. Despite some reports to the contrary, Jonah was not killed during a gunfight, nor was he shot in the back. Jonah was sitting playing cards in a local establishment. As he took off his glasses to clean them, George Barrow stormed into the establishment and shot Jonah in the chest with both barrels of a shotgun. Barrow was then confronted by the local law. Barrow dropped his weapon and surrendered but the local sheriff killed Barrow in cold blood. (Jonah Hex Spectacular)
1987: Jonah's stuffed corpse is located in the Frontier City Amusement Park in Laramie, WY. Prof. Lawrence, along with an aged Tall Bird, recover Jonah's corpse from an evil western memorabilia collector. (Secret Origins #21)
2010: During the Blackest Night Jonah is found by a Black Lantern ring and was revived as a member of the Black Lantern Corps.
Played by the actors
Filmography of Jonah Hex (2 films)
Add to a movie list
Jonah Hex (2010)
, 1h21Directed by Jimmy Hayward
Origin USA
Genres Drama, Science fiction, Thriller, Fantastic, Fantasy, Action, Adventure, Western
Themes Superhero films, Super-héros inspiré de comics
Actors Josh Brolin, John Malkovich, Megan Fox, Michael Fassbender, Will Arnett, Michael Shannon
Rating47%
During the American Civil War, Jonah Hex (Josh Brolin) served as a Confederate cavalryman until his commanding officer, Quentin Turnbull (John Malkovich), a general for the Confederates who is obsessed with the fall of the Union, ordered him to burn down a hospital. Hex refused, and was forced to kill his best friend, Turnbull's son Jeb. After the war, a vengeful Turnbull and his right-hand man, Burke (Michael Fassbender), a psychopathic sadist, tie up Hex and force him to watch as his house is burned down with his wife and son inside. Turnbull then brands Hex's face with his initials, "QT", and leaves him to die of thirst or exposure. Days later, American Indians find Jonah and revive him with their mystical powers. While they did manage to bring Jonah back from the dead, it is stated that they couldn't bring "all of him back". As a result, Jonah acquired the ability to, as long as he maintains physical contact with the corpse, temporarily resurrect and communicate with the dead; the corpse physically and mentally brought back to physical condition prior to death (apparently, only Jonah sees them restored like that. To everyone else, they continue to seem decayed and lifeless). It is also explained that the fresher the dead, the quicker that body begins to burn up as they are being touched. Once contact is broken, the corpse instantaneously reverts to its former, lifeless condition. When Turnbull apparently dies in a hotel fire, Hex satisfies his hunger for vengeance by turning to bounty hunting.
DC Showcase: Jonah Hex (2010)
, 12minutesGenres Action, Animation, Western
Themes Superhero films
Actors Thomas Jane, Linda Hamilton, Jason Marsden, Michael Rooker, Michelle Trachtenberg
Rating72%
Red Doc, an outlaw that claims he can take on anyone and anything, arrives in town looking for more booze and more action. Madame Lorraine spots him, and after inviting him upstairs, kills him, takes his money and has two of her henchmen dispose of the body.