Allies of the Superwomen of EVA #12: Jinny Hex
"Virginia 'Jinny' Hex was born to one Stella Hex and Jack Duckett in the town of Dripping Springs, Texas, in the United States. Jinny is also the great-great-granddaughter of the legendary scar-faced Jonah Hex, a renowned bounty hunter during the days of the American Old West. Raised on stories of her great-great-grandfather (in spite of his service in the Confederacy during the Civil War), Jinny was inspired to become a U.S. Marshall when she grew up, though she wound up taking over her family's auto repair business (with the help of her friends Ladybird and Alex) after her mother passed away from ovarian cancer. (It was in this manner where Jinny discovered her mechanical aptitude.) Jinny still managed to prove her mettle when she thwarted a robbery at a local bowling alley, disarming the robbers and preventing them from escaping. Before Stella died, she bequeathed to Jinny a trunk full of Jonah Hex's possessions, which included exotic weaponry (from a brief period where he was thrust into a possible far-off, post-apocalyptic future) and an artifact called the Godseye.
The reveal of the Godseye also inadvertently revealed the truth behind her father, Jack: that he was a centuries-old former associate of Jonah Hex who was given eternal life by the relic, but at the cost of having an insatiable 'hunger' for life. He'd originally began a relationship with Stella in order to find the relic's location, only to abandon her after thinking she seemingly didn't have it; he'd been unaware that she was pregnant with Jinny. When Stella passed away, Duckett reappeared on the pretense of wanting to make up for lost time with Jinny, and after bonding with her for a week, he convinced her to show him the trunk of Jonah Hex. When Jinny stepped out with Ladybird for a moment, Duckett used the chance to knock out one of her employees and steal the trunk, along with the Godseye, using its power to transform the whole town and its residents into a twisted take on the wild west era he lived in. In seeking to retain his vitality, Duckett sought to use their blood connection to fully and permanently possess Jinny, but her rejection of his soul forced him to try with Ladybird instead; the strain of the attempted transfer left him weak enough for Ladybird to reject him as well, causing him to seemingly fade away to parts unknown. Concerned that he might still be out there, Jinny and Ladybird left the auto shop in Alex's hands while they headed out on the road, the Hex family trunk in tow.
During the road trip, Jinny wound up helping found a modern-day version of a team of Old West vigilantes called the Rough Bunch (of whom Jonah Hex was a member), along with the descendants of the other gunfighters, trackers and lawmen who made it up. These included debutante Alice Dawson (descendant of rancher Chuck Dawson, whose ranch sometimes acted as a meeting place for the team); farmer Caroline White (great-great-granddaughter of the gunslinger pair known as Nighthawk and Cinnamon); country singer Helen Willman (descendant of the fast-talking card shark of an outlaw known as 'Bat' Lash); physician Janet Miller (great-great-grandniece of the masked Madame .44); and bounty hunter/skip tracer Laura Fellmondo (a descendant of the Native American sheriff Ohiyesa "Pow-Wow" Smith).
Jinny would first encounter the superwomen of Tokyo-3, Japan a year following their defeat of both the otherworldly creatures codenamed 'Angels' and the conspiracies of SEELE and Gendo Ikari. A few months after they had banded together as the Justice League, the team was sent to different corners of the world in search of the mystical objects known as the Green Bell of Uthool, the Silver Wheel of Nyorlath, and the Red Jar of Calythos, before their demonic owners (Abnegazar, Ghast and Rath, also known as the Demons Three) could retrieve them. The Wheel had ended up somewhere in the American southwest, and the League members who headed there consisted of Green Lantern (former NERV tactical ops director Misato Katsuragi), Green Arrow (American former Evangelion pilot Maria Vincennes), and the Flash (former Evangelion pilot Mari "Illustrious" Makinami). The three 'hard-traveling' heroes bumped into Jinny and Ladybird by chance when the two were acting upon a tip regarding strange 'goings-on' at the estate of industrialist Joshua Turnbull, the great-great-grandson of Jonah Hex's longtime enemy Quentin Turnbull. The Wheel (in a disguised form) turned out to be in Turnbull's possession as part of an art collection passed down through the family. It was then that one of the items from Jonah's trunk, given to him by a Native American shaman, detected the presence of spiritual activity-revealed to be the spirit of Jack Duckett trying to access the power of the Wheel. Made corporeal once more and powered up by the object, Duckett sought to enact his vengeance upon Jinny, who fought him off with the help of Ladybird and the three Justice Leaguers (who'd been provided a talisman or two crafted by their fellow member Zatanna (former NERV tech Maya Ibuki)). Weakening Duckett, but not enough to fully beat him, the Leaguers pulled out their trump card when they summoned their rather uneasy ally: the Spectre (Naoko Akagi, founding member of NERV's predecessor GEHIRN and mother of Ritsuko Akagi, the League member known as Blue Beetle). The heavenly Spirit of Vengeance took things from there and carried off Duckett's spirit to receive his proper punishment, a fate that Jinny, in spite of their relationship, was fine with. In the aftermath of the incident, impressed with her courage and skills, the three League members offered Jinny honorary membership in the team, which she accepted. A few years later, Jinny followed her dream and became a highly successful U.S. Marshall, though she still worked with the new Rough Bunch from time-to-time."
*Author's Note(s)*
Starting off the allies side of my tribute series for the year, the theme of this 'wave' is 'legacy', with both characters following in the footsteps of a famous predecessor. For the Mike313/DC Comics-based side of the Superwomen of EVA fence, I went with a more recent DC creation in Jinny Hex, the great-great granddaughter of Jonah Hex who joined the title team during Brian Michael Bendis's writing stint on Young Justice. Her story is pretty much the same, with the additions of winks and nods to the Wild West-themed corner of the DC universe (Chuck Dawson is probably the most obscure and oldest of the characters referenced, appearing all the way back in 1938's Action Comics #1 alongside Superman's debut), from Jonah Hex's foray into a Mad Max-esque future (seen in the short-lived 1986 series Hex) to the modern-day take on the Rough Bunch, while throwing a bone to the Hex-Turnbull rivalry in Joshua (from the Blackest Night tie-in one-shot revival of Weird Western Tales). I also paid homage to a couple of other bits of DC lore with the quest for the objects of the Demons Three as well as the 'Hard-Traveling Heroes' period of Green Lantern and Green Arrow (though with the addition of Mari/the Flash, considering in Mike's take Mari also lived in the States before being deployed to Tokyo-3).
As for the anime character to serve as the visual basis (seen in the Deviation) for this take on Jinny, my inspiration came from an obscure 2003 OVA called Early Reins, based on (from what I recall reading) a wild west-themed dating sim. (Long story short, the OVA's a short cliché-ridden affair with ugly CGI moments.) One of the main characters, Margaret Hart, proved to be the perfect base for Jinny, while the other ladies of the game were prime to be worked in as descendants of a small grouping of DC's western heroes. One Photoshop job was all it took to bring this vision of Jinny Hex to the tribute series.