Monday, April 16, 2018

Time for another episode of Jonah Hex, Frontier Detective!


It's not quite a locked-room mystery, but it's close. From 2011, Jonah Hex #68, "Murder in Cottonwood" Written by Justin Gray and Jimmy Palmiotti, art by Rafa Garres.

When a murdered body is found in the town of Cottonwood, the townfolk decide if they don't want the town to get a bad reputation, maybe they oughta hang somebody for it. Even if no one saw the killing...maybe a stranger might foot the bill. Unluckily for them, the stranger in question is, of course, Jonah Hex. Who is remarkably nonchalant about being awakened by armed yokels.

Hex calmly asks if they had a sheriff that maybe should be taking care of that sort of thing; and is told they had never needed one before. Hex asks if they would pay for the killer, and when he's offered five hundred dollars, promptly shoots one of the yokels...hey, five hundred bucks is five hundred bucks. The answer may be a bit of a cheat, but makes sense. And five hundred bucks in 1841 would be worth about fourteen grand today: as sometimes happens, I wonder how the hell Hex blew through all that cash!

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