EPILOGUE (HAL)
The sky was clear over Seattle, a bright summer sun looking down on the ships passing through Puget Sound. The tourists visiting the Space Needle that day had a perfect view of the city, and if they were lucky enough to be facing the southeast not long before noon, they would have caught sight of a streak of green zipping across the skyline. It was gone rather quickly, disappearing somewhere over the downtown area. A few minutes afterward, a man dressed in jeans and a battered leather flight jacket walked out of an alleyway and fell right into step with the sidewalk traffic.
The last few weeks had been busy ones for Hal Jordan: reconstruction of Coast City had been announced a couple days after he'd returned from the future, and as soon as the government began taking applications to fill the empty buildings, Hal signed up. At first he thought it would feel strange, living in a ready-made city almost void of residents, but after a day or two, it seemed right. He was starting from scratch, and so was Coast City. They both bore scars, but together, they would find their place in the world again. In a way, the newborn city lent him a hand with his place-finding: his proximity to Edwards Air Force Base made him think of his old flying buddy Shane Sellers, and after a long debate with himself, he finally picked up the phone and called him. Shane was shocked to hear Hal's voice, but soon the conversation fell into old familiar rhythms. It didn't take much coaxing to talk Shane into meeting him at the base for a turn in the skies, and maybe...just maybe...a chance at doing it full-time once again. But that meeting was tomorrow. Today, Hal had an appointment with another old friend, and a promise to keep.
He could have picked any city to search for the book, but Seattle seemed the most appropriate choice. After a quick consultation with a payphone directory, he headed to a place called Tony's Used Books and Magazines, not too far from where he'd landed. It was a tiny store with stacks of paperbacks filling up the front window. An elderly Filipino man with graying hair was sorting through a box of fantasy novels sitting on the counter, and he looked up when the bell on the shop's door tinkled. "Good morning...I mean afternoon," he said after checking his watch. "Help you with something?"
"I hope so. I'm trying to find a book." Hal scratched the back of his head. "Unfortunately, I don't know the title...it was printed around the late sixties, I think. Maybe early seventies."
"What's it about?"
"Jonah Hex. He was a bounty..."
The man held up a hand. "You want the Lawrence. There's others, of course, but if you want a Hex book, buy the Lawrence." He came around from behind the counter and started down one of the aisles of bookshelves, Jordan following behind. "I don't have the original from '72...they're close to impossible to find...but there was a revised edition around '93. Should be one back here." The man stopped before one of the tall cases and pulled down a thick hardback book, HEX prominent on the dust jacket. "These are out of print, too, though I read in one of the publishing trades that they might crank out a new run this year. It seems like they don't think about printing things like this unless Westerns are 'hot', like nobody gives a damn about history until they make a cable show out of it." He stopped, realizing what he'd said, then asked, "That's not why you're looking for it, is it?"
Laughing, Hal shook his head. "No, a friend of mine wanted me to pick it up. You could say he lives for Westerns."
"Well, you can tell your friend that I said he has great taste." The man handed the book over, and Hal opened the cover. Penciled lightly on the corner of the title page was the price: $125. Noticing his customer's wince, the storeowner told him, "Believe it or not, that's cheap. I heard of one going for five hundred a few years back."
"I understand, it's just that my cash flow is a bit of a trickle right now." He'd lost track of how much money Ollie had loaned him since he'd come back. Whatever job Hal ended up getting, the first dozen or so paychecks would probably head straight to Star City.
"Look, I can tell this really means something to you. How about we make it an even hundred, would that take some of the sting off?" Hal agreed, and they walked back up to the counter. As the man rang up the sale, he said, "If your friend's interested, I know somebody that might be willing to part with a first-edition Hawk, Son of Tomahawk at a decent price."
"I'll let him know next time I see him." He paid the man and left, slipping his purchase inside his jacket and making his way to a small park not far from the bookstore. Hal found a bench under a large shade tree and settled in. Nearby, some kids played Frisbee with a dog, the early-afternoon sun shining down on them. "Well, Jonah, I got it," he said under his breath as he pulled out the book. "Time to see how everything turned out."
He opened the book, unsure of whether he should just skip to the end. Instead, he flipped to pages at random, taking in snippets of Jonah's life. There were so many things about him Hal didn't know, but now they were right here before him, good and bad. He read about Jonah's abusive father, who sold the boy to a tribe of Apaches. He came across a photo of Hex, years before his face became scarred, posing with some of his fellow scouts during his days with the Union cavalry. He had an arm around a young woman, his fiancée according to the caption, which then went on to say that she died not long after the picture was taken. Another photo only a few pages after that showed him with another cavalry, proudly flying the Stars and Bars of the Confederacy behind him. His years as a bounty hunter after the Civil War were laid out in bloody detail, intermixed with moments where the man shone through the killer. There was a brief marriage, a child, then those were swept away from his life. There was even mention of his disappearance from the town of Red Dog, along with a reproduction of the local newssheet detailing how Jonah "vanished in a burst of Hell-Fire", only to reappear minutes later "with the stink of Brimstone still clinging to the renowned Bounty-Killer". The editor of the paper was of the opinion that Hex was so mean, even the Devil didn't want to claim him.
The later years of Hex's life didn't read very different from the earlier ones. He still had his fair share of troubles (Hal laughed aloud when he came across a criminal record for the gunfighter, complete with a mug shot, that offered only the phrase "Damn Big Scar!" for distinguishing features), and his choice of company still fell on the interesting side (a photo labeled "The Graves Ranch c. 1876" showed Jonah alongside a young man that bore striking resemblance to Billy the Kid), but the man continued to do what he was best at: running down just about every variety of scum the Old West had to offer. The closer Hal got to the final pages, the more he was sure that all would end well for his old friend.
Then he came across a color photograph, the only one he'd seen so far. It showed a middle-aged man standing in front of a statue of a cowboy...one decked out in a white, spangled outfit like Gene Autry or Roy Rogers might wear. In its hand was an ivory-handled Colt .44 Dragoon, the mate holstered in the same gunbelts Hal had seen Jonah wearing in 2050. The caption beneath the photo read simply, "The author and his subject, 1987".
Hal almost dropped the book onto the grass. It still happened? he thought. Jonah had seen what might become of him and it still happened? Turning back a few pages, he read the account of the final days of Jonah Hex.
Apparently, the gunfighter had spent his twilight years in semi-retirement near Cheyenne, Wyoming. In 1904, at the ripe old age of sixty-six, he was approached by the owner of a Wild West revue with an offer to join the troupe. Jonah refused, but the owner wouldn't be denied: after a bank robber named George Barrow killed Jonah in cold blood, the body was stolen by the revue owner and his cronies, murdering a professor writing Hex's memoirs in the process. They stuffed the body, dressed it in the garish outfit they had tailor-made for the gunfighter, and began displaying it in their sideshow. Not long after, the owner himself was murdered, and the body of Jonah Hex stolen once again, passing from one person to the next for over eighty years, all of them unaware that the cowboy statue they possessed was really a well-preserved corpse. It wasn't until the body was accidentally knocked over and the skeletal armature revealed that the truth was known.
Even then, Hex still couldn't be put to rest: a legal battle ensued between the body's current owners and Jonah's widow, a Comanche woman named Tall Bird. She was well over a century old, and wished to have her late husband cremated. When it was finally settled and custody awarded to Tall Bird, it was discovered that the warehouse storing the corpse until the verdict was decided had misplaced the body. By the time the revised edition of the book was published, Jonah Hex's remains were still missing, the victim of a paperwork snafu.
Hal felt sick. The man deserved better than that. He was no hero, but he at least deserved a funeral, not some strange wandering afterlife like something out of a Twilight Zone episode. Maybe they've found him by now, Hal thought, it's been over a decade since this was published. His gut told him different, though: it seemed Jonah's fate to be lost, through all the various incarnations of reality. It was a sad, horrible way to end a life...
He then remembered what he'd said when Jonah's spirit was being crushed by those same thoughts: Everything counts. Hex's final fate did nothing to diminish his life, it only added to the legend. To judge his entire career by his last moment was wrong, and Hal knew that, despite what he'd learned, he would never think of him that way. He'd remember Jonah Hex as a haunted man, to be sure, but one that was also fiercely loyal to those he cared about, and willing to do whatever it took to get the job done. He'd also remember him as a friend...and who was to say that he wouldn't meet his friend again? The flow of time is very strange, he'd told Jonah. They'd already run into each other twice now. Perhaps someday there would be a third time, free of paradoxes and desperate situations, when the two of them could sit down, share a drink, and swap stories about all the adventures they'd had since their last meeting.
Jordan looked down at the book in his lap. From the cover, a grainy photograph of Hex looked back. He was seated and dressed in Confederate gray, his Dragoons drawn and held before him. The gunfighter's eyes, though half-hidden by shadow, seemed to be daring the photographer to take the picture.
"Goodbye, Jonah," he said. "Hope to see you again sometime."
EPILOGUE (JONAH)
The first chance he had, he burned the clothes. Jonah wanted no reminders of his life in 2050, no evidence that he'd ever been anywhere else but his own time. The only things he kept were the Dragoons, of course, and the gunbelts he'd taken off his own corpse. While the leather was cracking from centuries of neglect, they seemed to be in serviceable condition for now. He found a man, a former son of the Confederacy like himself, that was willing to part with an old uniform for a reasonable sum. It wasn't the same as his original cavalry coat, but it was close enough.
He soon discovered that it would take more than a change of clothes to restore any sense of normalcy to his life. After Emmylou had been cleared of the criminal charges against her, and Jonah had rounded up the rest of Brett's gang (collecting a tidy fee for his services in the process), the two of them left Red Dog behind. The spark of love was still there between them, but that wasn't why they stayed together: they clung to each other emotionally like lost children, both desiring the comfort that familiarity brought, neither wanting to be alone with the memories of their personal traumas. Sometimes Emmy would talk about what Brett had done to her, about the fear that still dwelled in her heart, and Jonah would hold her and kiss her and do his best to show that she was safe now, the man was dead and would never touch her again. It helped her over time, but for Jonah, there was no consolation. He refused to speak about what occurred during his brief disappearance, even when he woke up in the middle of the night, crying out in confusion because he couldn't remember where he was. There were moments when he'd just stop what he was doing and stare around him, sure that what he saw was a dream or hallucination, that he was still trapped in a world where it wasn't even safe to walk out in the rain or drink from an open stream.
After a few months, his odd behavior began to put a strain on their relationship. One night as they lay in bed, Emmy pressed him about what really happened that day in Red Dog. "I hear you talking in your sleep," she said, "but it doesn't make any sense. There's something you're holding back from me, and I want to know why."
Stubborn as always, he replied, "Ah told yuh, Ah don't remember nothin'."
Emmy wasn't about to let him off that easy. "Jonah...who's Stiletta?"
He tried his best to not let the shock show on his face. Hex knew that he had a tendency to mumble things when he was having bad dreams, but he didn't know he'd let that much slip out. "Ah cain't tell yuh," he said, the words sounding weak and pathetic as he spoke them.
"If you loved me, you'd tell me."
"Ah do love yuh, darlin'...an' thet's why Ah won't." He left her in the morning, checking out of the hotel they'd been staying at and never looking back. It was an easier choice for him than trying to live with that lie hanging between them. Unfortunately, being out on the trail alone did nothing to help stop the nightly visitations from ghosts of people that hadn't even been born yet...or may never be born, if he understood what Hal told him right.
By the beginning of the Centennial Year, Jonah had wandered down the Texas/New Mexico way. The man had become uncomfortable in his own skin, unsure of how to go on with his life in the past now that he'd seen the future. He started drinking again, not as heavily, but enough to blur his memory of what may or may not happen. It was hard to look at the world around him and think that, in less than two centuries, it could all be gone, wiped away by both progress and foolishness. Slowly, Hex began to fall away from his old path, and he soon found himself on the wrong side of the cell door more often than not, living the life of an outlaw instead of a bounty hunter. That in turn led him to places that, in his previous life, he never would have thought existed. They had always been there, of course, but after the things he'd experienced in 2050, the strangeness of his own time became more evident: worm creatures, talking bears...not to mention a little troll of a man that could raise the dead.
Though he didn't know it, Doc "Cross" Williams did Jonah a favor. What the ugly skunk did to unsuspecting folks in general was nothing short of blasphemous, but when he resurrected the corpse of Wild Bill Hickok just for a bit of revenge, he inadvertently hit an area a bit too close to home for Jonah, especially with the silly fringed and embroidered outfit Doc made the dead man wear. It was Jonah's worst nightmare come to life...or un-life, rather. To make matters worse, the Doc tried to do the same to Hex, and that just didn't sit well with him. Once he'd laid old Hickok to rest with a pair of bullets to the braincase (and another pair for the Doc's knees), Jonah found himself sleeping a lot better at night. He knew that the Hickok corpse wasn't his own, but facing the thing head-on in a gunfight the way he did put something in his soul at ease.
Not long after that, Jonah began his journey back to the "civilized" world, doing his level best to rebuild his reputation as a hunter of men. He even managed to find a more suitable replacement for his old cavalry uniform along the way. Despite the time he'd spent out on the fringe of society, he soon found that little had changed in his absence. There would always be a need for men like him, ones that weren't afraid to get their hands bloody in the name of justice...and for now, that knowledge would have to be enough to get him by. It had taken a couple years, but Hex had finally made peace with the thought that, try as he might, he'd never be the same man he was before he'd walked into the Red Dog Saloon. The months he'd spent in that hellish future had left a scar on him as deep and permanent as the one on his face, and if he could go on living with that twisted memento staring back at him from the shaving mirror every day, then he could live with the secret one in his mind and heart.
Time passed, as it is wont to do, and one evening Jonah rode into a town called Morrow deep in the Arizona Territory, dog-tired and in dire need of a bath. He wasn't normally inclined to such things, but after getting caught in a sudden downpour and subsequent mudslide two days previous, he figured soaking his old bones for a few minutes wouldn't kill him...providing he got out quick enough. The local hotel fulfilled his needs nicely, and he even sprung for a shave and haircut at the barber down the way the next morning. When he walked to the sheriff's office afterward to check for wanted posters, he looked almost respectable. Almost.
As he perused the papers tacked to the wall outside, the sheriff stepped out. He recognized Hex immediately and said, "You lookin' for work, bounty hunter?"
"Just 'til muh inheritance comes through," Jonah deadpanned. "Figure Ah must have a rich uncle somewheres thet'll kick the bucket soon."
"You and me both." He leaned against the doorframe, saying, "Got a job that's right up your alley, but it ain't on that there wall."
"Ah'm listenin'."
"Blond-haired fella named McAllister, he done shot up some folks 'bout a week ago, includin' one of my deputies. He lit out right after, headed north into the desert. We ain't been able to turn up hide nor hair of 'im since. I sent a wire to this little town just north of here, tellin' 'em to keep an eye out, but he ain't showed so far. Figure maybe he's tryin' to wait us out."
"Stupid move. This time of year, desert's hot enough tuh fry the Devil's tail off." He hitched his thumbs in his new gunbelt. The old pair he'd brought back with him from the future had finally given up the ghost a couple months ago, and he was back down to only one holster, the left-hand gun tucked beneath his belt like before. "How much yuh offerin?"
"I can give you two hundred myself, and if I pass around the kitty, I might be able to get you a bit more."
Hex thought about it for a moment, then said, "Thet'll do fine." He headed back to the hotel to gather his gear and horse, then hit the trail. The rain the other day hadn't reached that far north, luckily, and there were still a few signs of McAllister's passing to be found. For hours, Jonah scanned his eyes over the country about him, searching for anything that would point him in the direction of his quarry. The heat of the day tore at him, threatening to boil him right out of his skin, but he didn't let it deter him in the least. As the sun moved closer to the west, the gunfighter began to think about making camp for the night, preferably in a shady spot. Those thoughts went right out of his head, however, when he saw movement off to the west: vultures...and they were circling.
Could be a stray cow, or maybe even a hobbled mustang, he thought, turning his mount in the direction of the birds. An' on the other hand, might be a man. Standing in the saddle, he drove the horse to a full gallop. There was the possibility that whomever or whatever lay out there was already dead, but if they weren't, then time was of the essence. Ain't many things worse than dyin' alone an' thirsty. Ah'm not a sociable man by nature, an' Ah'd just as soon cuss a man as look at 'im, but this is dif'rent. An' besides, could be Ah've found the man Ah've been lookin' fer!
The vultures appeared to be focused over a dry riverbed. Jonah rode alongside, and they fled at his approach, which was fine by him. Saved him the trouble of having to shoot them. He spurred his horse down the bank, but soon found himself almost thrown from the saddle as the animal reared up, veering away from an emerald shaft of light shooting up from out of the riverbed. He cursed and did his best to control the horse, then moved with caution towards the bank again, unsure of just what was going on. As he peered over the side, he saw a man with brown hair sprawled out below, dressed in clothes that had no Earthly reason for existing in 1878. The uniform was slightly different from the last time Hex had seen it, but not so different that he couldn't recognize an old friend.
Well, would yuh look at thet? Jonah thought. Hal Jordan, as Ah live an' breathe. A grin began to spread over his face, and he was about to call out a greeting, but then the Green Lantern raised his right hand. Another beam of light bolted past the gunfighter's head, missing it by inches and spooking the horse again. All thoughts of being friendly left his mind as he cursed once more and yelled, "Ease up, boy! Yuh tryin' tuh get a man killed?"
"Move one inch closer, cowboy, and dead is just what you'll be!" The black-and-green clad man propped himself up with his left hand, the ring on his right still trained on Hex. Sweat was pouring down the Hal's face, and it looked like he was on his way to a decent sunburn, as well. The mask he wore hid a good portion of his face, but Jonah could read his expression well enough to see that Hal meant every word he said.
Jonah was stunned, he couldn't believe what he was hearing. Why was Jordan acting like this? Hex was about to ask if the man had lost his mind from the heat, then he suddenly realized what year it was, and where he was...and he knew right then, even though the sheriff hadn't told him such, that the little town to the north he'd mentioned was called Desecration. A cold chill ran down his spine. While Jonah knew who the man was, Hal Jordan...this Hal Jordan...had never met him before. Their positions had been reversed from the last time, and unless Jonah wanted to tempt fate, he'd have to keep his trap shut about all he knew, or else risk screwing up the entire timestream.
Hal tried to stand, but he just didn't have the strength to pick himself up off the ground. He looked wasted, and Jonah wondered just how long the man had been out here in the middle of nowhere. One of the birds, seeing him struggle, dipped a little lower as it circled overhead with its brethren. The motion caught Hal's attention, and he asked in a raspy voice, "Those vultures up there...what are they doing?"
The bounty hunter didn't respond right away. When he finally did, he took account of every word he said before he spoke it, afraid of letting the wrong ones slip out. "They're waitin' on y'all tuh die, stranger." It was odd to call him that, after spending almost a week in his company all those years ago, but until Hal said his name outright, Hex would have to play dumb. "Looks tuh me like they might not have long tuh wait, either."
His right arm began to sag, as did the rest of him. "I don't know what you're talking about..." he managed to get out before collapsing, falling back onto the riverbed.
The irony of what Hal had said struck Jonah as funny, and he couldn't help but smile. "Ah'll bet yuh don't," he muttered, and swung out of the saddle. He didn't know how the Green Lantern had come to be in such a mess, but it was obvious to him that it wasn't a planned excursion. He grabbed a canteen and headed down the side of the bank, saying under his breath, "Comin' out in the desert without a horse...without proper clothes...why, son, it's a miracle Ah found yuh breathin'!" He soon found that his lecturing fell on deaf ears: Hal had passed right out, finally giving in to the oppressive heat. Figured he would, Jonah thought as he knelt down, didn't seem like he had much push left in him. He pulled out an old bandana, soaked it with water from the canteen, and laid it across Jordan's forehead. He then sloshed some more down the man's throat. Judgin' by his burn, he's been out in the sun eight, ten hours, bareheaded. Only a durn fool would try a stunt like thet.
But he knew Hal Jordan was no fool. A bit uppity maybe, as most Yankees were, but he had a good heart, and a willingness to go out of his way to help folks, whether they liked it or not. Whatever reason Jordan had for being out there, so far from his proper time and place, it was a good one. And Hex also knew that he'd soon find himself entangled in that reason as well, at least for a day. Jonah wished that the Green Lantern had told him more during their last time together, so he'd know what to expect, but things never worked that way for him. He'd just have to get through it like he always did, relying on his quick wits and quicker guns. At least this time, he'd have a friend by his side to get through it with.
Jonah looked up at the sky. The vultures had gotten the hint that the Green Lantern had been taken off the menu and moved on. A lucky break, since it meant that he wouldn't have to worry about wrestling Hal's unconscious form onto the horse. They would make camp there for now, and as soon as Jordan recovered, the two of them could get down to whatever business awaited them in the town of Desecration.
"Reckon Ah don't know whut'll happen when we get there, Hal," he said, "but Ah know it's gonna be a Hell of a day."
...THE END OF THE BEGINNING...
Well, kids, we made it. Some days it looked like we'd never get here, but we did. All told, this story took eight months to write, from the first "Holy shit, that's the solution!" thought, through all the research and material-gathering, to the final words I'm typing right now. Believe it or not, that's a fast turnaround for me, at least for something this long and involved. Along the way, I've made quite a few new friends myself out there in Internet-Land, in addition to acquiring a rep as the biggest, craziest Hex-nut that ever logged onto a message board. Hey, everybody needs a hobby, right?
If you'll indulge me a moment, I want to thank some jaspers that helped out with the madness I tossed up here. Firstly, thanks to the scads of people on the DC Message Boards who supported me and listened to my rants as I pounded this out, especially Dragonbat AKA Esther-Channah (my very own mentor), Silverager (for spreading the word about this fic like wildfire...even when he was in the dang hospital!), and all the regulars at the Roundyard Saloon (you skunks know who you are!). Thanks also to Kevin for playing guinea pig during the Great Hex-periment, Bill for the technical assist (and keeping it short), and Justin Gray (yes, THAT Justin Gray) for allowing me to post a link to this on his Paperfilms forum -- a classy man, I hope to meet him for real some day. Last but never least, thanks to my husband Jamin, who put up with me staring at the monitor for all these months and accidentally ignoring him when I should have been snuggling on the couch. Matter of fact, everybody else thank him too -- if it hadn't been for his willingness to let me do what I'm good at, you wouldn't have ever read this. He is the last true Southern gentleman.
One more thing before we move on to the notes. A couple folks have expressed dismay that "The Long Road Home" was wrapping up -- reckon you thought I'd drag it out forever, eh? Well, for those of you that don't want the party to end, I've got news: it won't be. A couple weeks back, I ran across a thread on the DCMB asking for fanfic writers. I checked into it, and it turned out the guy had been reading this fic on the side...and he wanted it for a new fanfiction site he's starting. It's called DC2, and basically it's monthly fanfic stories, all bound together by its own internal continuity -- we all answer to editors and have to check with other writers before borrowing characters, etc. While it's up in the air whether "The Long Road Home" will be part of DC2 continuity or just an Elseworlds, it's gotten me a job writing (wait for it!) Weird Western Quarterly. Yup, I'm gonna play with the whole dang DC Western stable now. The series won't start until early 2006, but in the meantime, check out the link to their site under my profile and poke around. Better yet, sign up for a writing gig, and be part of the DC2 experience!
NOTES FROM "THE ROAD"
First, a clarification: More than one person has mentioned the events featured in Justice League Europe Annual #2 as a possible, in-continuity way that Jonah got home (for those that don't know, the whole issue was a big time-travel brouhaha, and at one point, Metamorpho popped over to 2050 and ran into Hex). There's one problem with that solution: it didn't happen. The gag in that issue was that the time-travel snafu wouldn't happen for another 10 years, so all those scenes featured weren't even occurring in current time -- the Metamorpho that met Hex wasn't the present-time Metamorpho. And then to make matters really confusing, the incident that would have caused all those guys to get bounced around time in 10 years was stopped before it even happened, negating every single scene in the damn book! To quote Waverider, "Let us simply say that I closed off an unproductive loop of history, and spared you all some difficulty." Long story short: Waverider hates Jonah and considers him "unproductive", so Metamorpho never met him (at least in this reality!). I blame Keith Giffen.
Second, an acknowledgement: Markmark261 sent me a link to an old, unused proposal by Alan Moore called "Twilight of the Superheroes", circa 1987. The project fell through because he left DC, but it appears that it would have been at least as large as "Crisis on Infinite Earths" in scope -- I never finished reading the whole proposal, it's HUGE -- and dear Mr. Moore was just as concerned with Jonah's fate as I am, mentioning that "This might even be an opportunity to return Jonah Hex to his original western continuity...It would also be convenient to explain the so far unassigned radioactive hellworld that Hex's adventures have been set in as one of the maybe-Earths that exist..." Sound familiar? I'd never heard of the thing beforehand, but I'm mentioning it here because I don't want anybody thinking that I dared to steal from Alan Moore. It's a shame this never came to be, it would have saved me so much trouble. Okay, now that we've gotten that out of the way, on to chapter notes...
PROLOGUE
- With the exception of two lines, the exchange between Emmylou, Brett, and the "old" Jonah is verbatim from Jonah Hex #92. Obviously, the dream stuff with "future" Hex watching from the sidelines, the "corpse" Jonah, and the bar going kablooey is my doing.
1: HOW SOON IS NOW?
- The opening phrase of "He was a hero to some, a villain to others..." is actually from the old tagline for the Jonah Hex series. I loved the irony that it applied to Hal now as well.
- Since this takes place between Green Lantern: Rebirth #6 and Green Lantern (vol. 4) #1, I had to make some suppositions about what Hal was doing before he got his Coast City digs and new job. Staying with Ollie made sense, as did Kyle inviting him back to Oa.
- The brief exchange between Bruce and Hal comes from GL: Rebirth #6. And since I knew we'd get a partly-rebuilt Coast City by GL #1, I mentioned that the government was talking about it so it wouldn't look like an out-of-the-blue thing.
- It's mentioned in an old Who's Who entry that John Stewart did stop wearing his mask "for he had nothing to hide". That stuck in my head, so I tossed it in.
- Again, according to Who's Who, there are a dozen STAR Labs across the globe, including one in San Diego. The earthquake mentioned occurred in Aquaman (vol. 4) #15, and I figured it would be unfair to not acknowledge it.
- The stuff about quantum vacuums and the Casimir engine is based on real physics theories -- I did B.S. the idea about using it to travel through spacetime, however.
2: IT'S A BEAUTIFUL DAY IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD
- It's open to debate whether or not a Green Lantern retains his uniform when his ring totally runs out of juice -- Geoff Johns says no (as evidenced by GL #3) but for the purposes of my fic, I decided yes. All the functions I described for the ring are ones I discovered while trying to answer that damn question one way or another, so I wanted to make sure the reader understood that those options were null and void.
- Flyboy and Baldy, as well as the entire Slabberz gang, are my own invention, though skunks just like them are scattered throughout the HEX series. And for the record, I discovered after I started this story that "fug" was first used as a substitute for "fuck" by Norman Mailer. Reckon I ain't as clever as I thought.
- Maple International Shipping & Storage was named in honor of T.M. (The Mad) Maple, old-school fanboy and frequent contributor to virtually every DC lettercolumn, including Jonah's. The complex was invented almost whole-hog by myself, which I'll go into later.
- Yes, Jonah really does call people "skunks" and "owlhoots" on a regular basis. It's his thing.
- For you Hex-nuts wondering why Jonah's wearing a long blue trenchcoat instead of his "Road Reapers" jacket, it got shredded around Hex #15, and replaced by the longer coat in #17...which was fine by me, I hated that Reaper jacket!
- Jonah's future guns are .357 Magnum Ruger Blackhawks, as specified in Hex #8 -- while not exactly "Dirty Harry" guns, they're close enough for the reference.
- I'll admit, I stole the gag about tearing off cigarette filters from another gunslinger: Roland of Gilead from Stephen King's Dark Tower series. It seemed like something Jonah would do as well...and he really did always seem to have wooden matches throughout the Hex book, I never saw him use a lighter.
3: DON'T KNOW MUCH ABOUT HISTORY
- Let me clarify some things about the warehouse complex: almost all of it, including many of the characters, was created by me. In Hex #18, it starts with Jonah and Stiletta going to visit Mookie and "her old man", and ends in a warehouse that was converted into living space by Vance and Marya, who had decorated the place with old carnival junk (hence the reason Jonah's stuffed corpse is there). That was all I had to work with -- I didn't even know if that warehouse was where Jonah and Stiletta were heading to, if they were still in the Seattle area, or what Mookie, her unnamed paramour, and Marya looked like -- Vance got maybe four panels, one holding a medical bag. Throw in Giffen's muddled artwork, and you can see the battle I had to wage. So 99 of Maple, right down to the name (and including Cutter and Lewis), was pure invention and the other 1 was what little I could glean from that last issue.
- The motorized wheelchair was seen in Hex #18 as well -- figured I should mention it even though I wasn't going to use it. Cutter's yarn about what happened to Jonah during Thanksgiving is a super-short version of that issue.
- The bit about radioactive snow is an extrapolation: throughout the series, they say all the water is poison, and in the first issue, they do show a guy literally melting in a rainstorm. No mention is made of whether or not the snow is harmful (we never even see snow until that final issue) but I figured it would be to a lesser degree. Also because of that, I added a transparent bodysuit under Stiletta's skimpy costume to go with the "zone suits" that were sometimes mentioned -- it never made sense to me that, if the weather's so lethal now, why is she running around half-naked?
- The Batman of New York was seen in Hex #11-12 -- no relation to Bruce or any of the Bat-family (nope, not even Terry McGinnis!) but he did find the original Batcave.
- Stiletta's story about her father, Reinhold Bornsten, and how he pulled Jonah into the future is a combination of info scattered throughout the Hex series. The bit about the government hounding Stiletta and her mom after Bornsten's disappearance, however, is extrapolation on my part -- she was shown to be on her grandparents' farm when the bombs dropped. Her age is a guess based on her appearance currently and in that flashback, though Jonah really is "pushing forty": he was born in 1838, so he would have been thirty-seven in 1875.
- Hal's recollection of how he met Jonah in 1878 is a condensed version of Justice League of America #198-199...and yes, it really was stated as 1878 in the comic, just as the Hex series mentions numerous times that Jonah got pulled out of 1875. Paradoxes abound!
- The story about how Jonah found his own corpse is right from the final pages of Hex #18. The description of the corpse is compiled from its various appearances over the years: the rhinestones on the back of the costume are mentioned but never seen during its original appearance in 1978's Jonah Hex Spectacular ("Your own name emblazoned across the back in genuine simulated rhinestone diamonds!" the revue owner boasts to Jonah) and the Dragoons sitting in the twin holsters are identified by Jonah himself when he finds the corpse -- his line of "Them's (gasp) my Dragoons!" indicates to me that they weren't later-made replicas, but the same ones he'd gotten rid of centuries before. The supposition about using the skeleton as an armature comes from Secret Origins #21: when the corpse gets busted open, you can plainly see a spinal cord sticking out of the neck! As for Jonah's not-so-good reaction to this bit of news...the series ends with Jonah sitting in front of the thing, just staring at it, so I had to decide whether the long-term effect would be good or bad on him. Considering how much shit he'd been through for the past 18 issues, as well as the personal problems he'd been having before he got dragged into the future (along with the heavy drinking that he is honestly prone to) I decided the man falling apart wasn't out of the question -- seriously, how would you take news like that?
4: COFFIN VARNISH AND COWBOY KILLERS
- For those wondering what exactly the title means, "coffin varnish" is slang for rotgut whiskey, and a "cowboy killer" is an unfiltered cigarette. So the title really reads "Whiskey and Cigarettes"...not nearly as violent as it sounds, eh?
- Jonah's name being spraypainted on the door to his quarters is an in-joke -- the logo for the Hex series was just his last name done up in this sloppy graffiti style, usually in red.
- The bit about Jonah being left-handed is true -- it's mentioned in the lettercolumn for Jonah Hex: Two-Gun Mojo #2, referring to a note in the preview copy for issue #1. Being a lefty myself, I think that's cool, and I ain't gonna argue.
- The scene where Jonah blows up at Stiletta is pretty tense, but I still managed to slip in another in-joke: his line of "Ah ain't got no friends" once again goes back to the tag from Jonah's old book, which includes the phrase "He had no friends, this Jonah Hex..." And you have no idea how good it felt to vent through Jonah when I had him pounding on the wall of his quarters -- I did my best to not let it show, but damn, I enjoyed screaming at DC by proxy!
- Soder is the fictional name of a cola used in the Superman books -- the Batman books also have a unique soda brand called Zesti.
5: LATE-NIGHT JAWJACKIN'
- All of the folks in the Red Dog Saloon during the second dream sequence (with the exception of Lewis and the talking corpse, of course) are characters that have appeared in various Jonah Hex stories over his long career...you wouldn't think that a guy that ugly could get so many women!
- When I started this, the question of whether or not Jonah and Stiletta had a relationship was unclear -- considering his track record, I thought for sure they had a thing going. Then I found a scene in Hex #17 that laid it out cold for me: the two of them are in a bit of a hairy situation, and after Stiletta makes some pessimistic comment, Jonah says, "You tryin' to say you love me, sugar?" To which she replies, "Love you?" So I figured from there that Jonah probably had feelings for her, but never really voiced it.
- The diagonal scars on Jonah's back pertain to a specific incident: in a flashback in Jonah Hex #7, a young Jonah tangles with a puma in order to save an Indian chief, and a caption states that "its claws dug long, bloody furrows up and down his back".
- For the record, there were a few "masked men" back in DC's Old West, most notably Nighthawk and El Diablo. I figured, coming from an era of outlaws, Jonah would probably eye folks like that with suspicion.
- It's never really stated, aside from the year, just when Jonah arrived in the future -- though the series ends around Thanksgiving, the starting point is unclear, so I left it unsaid.
- There are two lines in here that were said by Hal in Justice League of America #199: "Hex, you're a menace" and (original phrasing) "I'm glad I don't have to count you an enemy". The latter I made sure I slipped in, because in the comic, after Hal says that to Jonah, the next panel is simply Jonah looking over at the Green Lantern with this funny look in his eye, no word balloons or anything. It seemed strange until I starting doing this fic, when I thought, "Well, maybe he's looking at Hal funny because Hal told him that in 2050 as well."
- The bit about Hal being an alcoholic comes from 1989's Emerald Dawn miniseries, though I'm not sure if the entire story is still in-continuity.
6: THE COWBOY AND THE HERO GO TO TOWN
- Yup, Jonah got stuck at a temperance farm once, back in Jonah Hex #83. That's also the issue where he did indeed toss his Dragoons into a lake while on a bender -- getting dumped by Mei Ling and Emmylou Hartley at the same time didn't sit well with him. The next issue, he went to a gunsmith to pick up new irons (a Colt Peacemaker and Smith & Wesson Schofield, to be exact), and when the man couldn't believe what Hex had done with his old guns, Jonah snapped, "Ah just kinda had one nip too many, thet's all! An' first thing Ah knowed, they'd kinda dropped in!"
- The names of the settlements mentioned by Jonah are my own invention, with the exception of Crystal Palace. That was from a throwaway line by Stiletta in Hex #5.
- The Lotus drug first appeared in Hex #3, and Soames have been around since the first issue, with a full explanation of what they were in #4.
7: A MOMENT OF CLARITY
- Comic-book time is tricky: nobody seems to agree on how fast or slow DC time moves relative to real time, and I personally don't believe in that sliding "10 years ago" theory. The rule of thumb I used for the dates in this is the "1:4" theory -- 1 year DC time equals 4 years in real time -- therefore, Coast City's destruction was 12 years ago for us, but only 3 years ago for Hal.
- Newstime is a fictional magazine in the DCU. The monument described on the cover -- a slender tower with a memorial flame -- is based on the one erected by the heroes near the remains of Coast City. The statues were added by myself for this alternate version.
- Hal's account of his fight with Mongul is taken from GL (vol. 3) #46 -- there is a moment when Hal collapses and, if he hadn't rolled at the last second, he would have been killed...Hell, he was even thinking about dying.
- Jonah really had seen Superman before...or rather, he'd seen the pre-Crisis Superboy. In Hex #10 (and repeated in Legion of Super-Heroes #23), a Legion time-bubble pops out in 2050, right above Jonah. It lingers long enough for him to get a good look at Superboy, Dawnstar, Shadow Lass, and Element Lad before disappearing. A tad shaken, Jonah holds his head and thinks, Ah shoulda knowed better'n to let thet jasper buy me all them drinks!
- The info regarding the cyborg Superman, his deception of the JLA, and the destruction of Coast City was culled from 1993's "Reign of the Supermen" arc.
- The Fort Charlotte Massacre goes all the way back to Weird Western Tales #29, and has come back to haunt Jonah many times over his career.
- Though I'm unsure of when it occurred comics-wise, the disbanding of the JSA is summarized in the DC Comics Encyclopedia by DK Publishing.
- If I have to explain Parallax, Emerald Twilight, and Zero Hour to you, then I freaking quit.
- As far as I know, there was never an "emergency frequency" set up by the Corps, but considering the vast amount of space they had to patrol, it seemed logical that they would have some system like that in place.
- The Conglomerate (along with their East Coast variant the Combine) was a Mafia-type group that appeared throughout the Hex series.
- Harris and his buddies from Vietnam were introduced in Hex #2, more victims of Bornsten's muddling with time. The military installation and the machine-hounds also made their first appearance then.
- The Yankees and other soldiers under glass Jonah saw were in Hex #1: "Bluebellies! Cain't think of a more deservin' place fer them tuh end up!"
8: UPON A MIDNIGHT CLEAR
- Jonah's Civil War recollection is based on an actual event: a relative of my husband's was a medic during World War II, and he went through a similar night during the Normandy invasion. War is Hell, no matter what century it takes place.
- Yup, Hal's boldly gone where no man's gone before with at least one alien gal, a fellow GL named Arisia. I've heard that he may have bagged a couple others too, but that's Hal's business.
- There are certain things you have to try and work into every Jonah Hex story: drinking, cursing, some crack regarding Jonah's looks (either from himself or someone else), at least one innocent death, a roll in the hay with a pretty girl (or at least a kiss), and the words "skunk", "owlhoot", and "Holy Hannah". I think I managed to hit all these points!
9: TIME HAS COME TODAY
- The three Lanterns are not representative of any DCU alien races -- I didn't want to use a known species and screw up some detail.
- The green horse, believe it or not, goes back to that Justice league story again: when Hal and Jonah are heading to Desecration, Hal is riding a horse created by his ring. Guess he didn't remember that he could fly yet!
- One of the Vietnam-era soldiers did have a book on Old West gunfighters, which included a section on Jonah, and it even mentioned his disappearance from Red Dog. No title or author is mentioned, however.
- Though it isn't stated in the fic, John Stewart also met Jonah: they ran into each other in 1879, a year after Hal's visit, during Crisis on Infinite Earths. Jonah even mentioned that he'd already met a Green Lantern, "only he wasn't no colored man."
- Emmylou's ordeal after leaving Jonah is detailed in scenes from Jonah Hex #80-92...and everything that occurs after Emmy's line of "Oh my God! What's happening to him?" is brand-new, the final outcome of a twenty-year-old cliffhanger. You're welcome.
EPILOGUE (HAL)
- I did my best to make this final scene with Hal dovetail right into the new Green Lantern series, which was already up to issue #4 when I wrote it. This takes place the day before GL #1's opening shot of Hal and Shane at Edwards.
- The owner of Tony's Used Books and Magazines is based on Tony DeZuniga, one of the creators of Jonah Hex and the artist for most of the gunfighter's career.
- Secret Origins #21 is the first appearance of Professor Lawrence, historian and author of the "definitive book" on Jonah Hex (no title is ever given, but Deadshot #4 shows a partly-obscured cover with the word HEX in large print above Lawrence's name). The publishing history is taken from various Hex milestones over the years: 1972 was his first appearance in All-Star Western #10, and in 1993 Vertigo's Jonah Hex: Two-Gun Mojo came out...and of course, 2005 marks the second volume of his self-titled comic.
- Hawk, Son of Tomahawk was the autobiography of one of Jonah's contemporaries, the son of a Revolutionary War hero who gained fame of his own right.
- With the exception of the photo of Lawrence with the stuffed Jonah, all the pictures in the book are ones that have been shown in various Hex stories over the years: the shot of Jonah during his days as a scout first appeared in Jonah Hex #65, the Civil War photo comes from Weird Western Tales #22, the cover shot is in Jonah Hex: Riders of the Worm and Such #1, and both the mug shot (complete with "description") and the dated one of him posing with "The Kid" are from #3 of that same miniseries.
- The tale of Jonah's death and strange fate starts in the Jonah Hex Spectacular and continues into Secret Origins #21 -- the latter book ends with Lawrence promising Jonah's corpse that they'd get him out of the amusement park it was found in. I'd always had this poignant little scene in mind for after that, with the body finally being cremated, but as I was pulling together materials for this I discovered that the body was still around, having been spotted in The Kingdom #2 a couple years back. Sadly, I had to bend to continuity's will, so I let Jonah get lost once again. Someday, old friend, we'll put you to rest...
EPILOGUE (JONAH)
- There wasn't much work involved with this part, since all I was doing was filling in the blanks starting from the old Jonah Hex series, through the Vertigo years, and into the Justice League story. I liked using his time in the future as an explanation for why Tim Truman's version of Hex looks so different from the traditional -- his hair's longer, he's got two gunbelts now, and of course a completely different uniform -- and since there are things during the Vertigo period that point to it taking place around 1876 or after, it fits time-wise as well. I then had to slowly shift his looks back to the traditional version to fit with both his appearance in the Justice League story from 1982 and the new 2005 series. And it wasn't until I was checking stuff for this fic that I realized how similar the Hickok zombie looked to the stuffed Jonah, so I had to call attention to that.
- The town of Morrow is named for the late Gray Morrow, an artist with a unique, soft style that graced the pages of Jonah Hex #90-92 and Secret Origins #21, as well as a cover or two for Jonah back in the day.
- The details of what Jonah was doing before he ran into Hal in 1878 are vague: all that was said was he'd been heading north, following the week-old trail of an unnamed man since sunrise, so I crafted a scene accordingly.
- With the exception of two lines where Jonah refers to Hal by name, all of the dialogue after Hex spots the vultures is from Justice league of America #198 -- it's funny to read that story now after writing this fic, because now some lines come off with double meanings (like Jonah blurting out after Hal says he doesn't remember his own name, "Whut? Y'mean yuh don't know? Heck, boy, if you don't, how should I?" -- honest statement, or covering his tracks?) If you can find the issues, pick them up and see for yourself how it all turns out.
Wow, did you really read all those notes? You're crazier than me -- hope I didn't bore you. If you've still got any questions, or just want to say "Good story!", click on the "Submit Review" button below -- if you include your e-mail, I will respond. And if you really want to show how much you appreciate this fic, go out and buy the new Jonah Hex series if you're not already, or at least dig into some back-issue bins and give some old Hex books a good home. Thanks for taking this trip with me, and I'll see y'all out on the trail!