All Star Western #22

All Star Western Featuring Jonah Hex #22 – I admit to not really being a fan of this story line.  Having Booster Gold show up in the past could have continued for another issue or two before wearing out the storyline.  But having Jonah Hex in the future and no one believing that he is a time traveler even after checking out his gun and clothes were authentic.  Not to mention if this is an unaltered timeline for the DC Universe time travel happens all the time so someone should be able to check his time particles or something to prove he was out of time and not just another Gotham nut job.  Why the JLA or Justice League or Superman was not called is just not believable.  I realize the writers were trying to contain the story but not having other heroes called just breaks my suspension of disbelief needed to read this comic.  What is worse is the fishy way Batman was finally contacted to see if Hex was telling the truth or not.  The escape from Arkham Asylum and eventual fight with the bank robbers was much appreciated as it got us the readers to some action.

All Star Western Featuring Jonah Hex #21

All Star Western Featuring Jonah Hex #21 started out strong with Booster Gold getting himself and Hex sent through time.  I really wish Hex had the time to actually kill Booster since he has been nothing but an unfunny pain the entire time he has been in the comic.  But instead Hex gets dropped into the future at some point and ends up fighting Batwing.  Even though this is the “future” and people (especially) the heroes should know of Hex no one does.  Hex ends up in Arkham Asylum despite his skills and abilities, basically he was railroaded by the story and in typical lame comic book creators desire to not work hard while getting paid end up with this lame cliffhanger of Hex being helpless.  But I’m sure in the first pane of next month’s comic he will again be in control of the situation.  Lame.  The Stormwatch backup story was entertaining, but as I predicted (I think) suffers from being a story cut in two that was too short to fill the space.  This story would have been much more entertaining if shown in full and not broken up.  Anyway, Doctor 13 had a little too much garlic in his system and that killed the vampire queen.  Despite my complaints this was an entertaining story – good stuff.

All Star Western #20

All Star Western #20 Featuring Jonah Hex and Booster Gold – The first story in today’s adventure is the Jonah Hex and Booster Gold story.  Unfortunately or fortunately depending on your point of view the evil gang that Hex and Booster were hunting are found dead.  Everyone is dead but the gun crazy guy who fits in the cage where they find him.  Booster in an effort to limit the body count for one day sneaks into a small town.  This is the town with the people who killed the evil outlaw gang.  The townsfolk are not good people and we first meet them when they are killing survivors of some sort.  Booster manages to get away even after being shot many many times.  The leader of the bad guys is not happy and swears he will shoot Booster himself.  This story was entertaining and had lots of clever dialog between Booster and Hex.  Booster it seems while not having all his memory is still more than a bit of a whiner.   The Stormwatch story was much better than in the previous issue but needs more space to fully develop.  They are hunting a vampire queen on the verge of taking over the world using magic (what again?).

All Star Western Featuring Jonah Hex #19!!

All Star Western Featuring Jonah Hex #19 – where Jonah meats Booster Gold in the old west.  The story starts with a lot of posturing until Hex establishes his dominance over Booster Gold (was there ever any doubt?).  Hex is after an evil outlaw gang and Booster is the sheriff of a local small town – unsurprisingly the gang Hex was tracking arrives at the town and robs the bank burning down most of the town and killing many of the townsfolk.  Needing a rest before heading out after the bad guys we learn the story of how Booster Gold became sheriff of this small town which somehow includes information from before Booster arrived in the time period of the current story.  The backup story is another Stormwatch story of the Master Gunfighter.  He comes upon a wagon train attacked by bandits and the blood on the ground from the fight attracts what appear to be werewolves that can be killed by regular bullets.  Apparently the Master Gunfighter is good at fighting the supernatural.  The survivors are sent off to a nearby town and the Gunfighter is met by Stormwatch.  I was not really impressed by the backup story and the main story needed more time to develop.  I fear that this Booster Gold has not retained any of his character development from previous storylines.

All Star Western #18 Feature Jonah Hex!!

All Star Western #18 Featuring Jonah Hex – the Hex story was good but with the one problem that the story could have easily been included in the previous issue.  The entire story was actually just a page or two stretched out over 20 or so pages.  The bad guy could deflect bullets with a sword; he caused a plague to descend upon Gotham City to get his way.  He fathered many children.  The bad guy left his mark on Empires throughout history but he could not avoid a shotgun blast.  The end.  Jonah Hex is next seen on a train heading west and with luck the writers will stop trying to make him into Batman.  The backup story about Stormwatch was interesting, but Mr. Thirteen is even more annoying than Dr. Arkham from the Jonah Hex stories.  The tale is very short and unsatisfying as there was no follow up at all with the town that hired Mr. Thirteen to solve a murder mystery.

All Star Western #17

All Star Western Featuring Jonah Hex #17 was horrible, it was badly written and the story was lame.  After some improvement at the end of the last story I was really looking forward to seeing what would happen next.  Instead we get an impractical and impossibly stupid plague that hits Gotham followed by what appears to actually be the results of plotting of the bad guy.  I also have to mention that the 19^th Century Stormwatch story was a bad rip off of the Girl Genius comic, the rip off is bad enough and cheesy enough and close enough to Girl Genius that I would not be surprised if lawyers would not be involved soon.  If not the Girl Genius people are dumb.  All in all I just have to say this issue was bad do not bother reading or spending your money on this comic if you have not already done so.

All Star Western!

All Star Western #16 Featuring Jonah Hex – The art has improved!  I like the slightly more realistic (for a comic book) look.   The story itself was great, I like the nurse was well written talented and ready to stand up to Hex.  Also actually getting to see Arkham’s mother and some of background was very interesting.  I was glad to see the end of the Hyde storyline.