All-Star Western #15 – Review

By: Justin Gray & Jimmy Palmiotti (story), Moritat (art), Mike Atiyeh (colors)

The Story: For once, Arkham tops Hex in the senseless violence department.

The Review: I don’t know how to say this without sounding a bit mean, but I always felt this title had an inevitable expiration date.  In the last year, All-Star Western hasn’t exactly made any breakthroughs with Gray-Palmiotti’s in-your-face style of writing.  Instead, it’s gotten by on sheer novelty alone for most of its run.  At some point, however, their plot would lose that veneer of originality, exposing the inherent flaws of the series.

I think we’ve reached that point in this issue.  The introduction of Hyde and the use of the Black Diamond initially promised interesting things for this arc, but here we realize that, as written, Hyde is just a well-spoken bruiser, and while the Black Diamond may be a necessary in the context of the story, it adds nothing special or new to the plot Gray-Palmiotti have chosen.

All-Star Western #14 – Review

By: Jimmy Palmiotti & Justin Gray (story), Moritat (art), Mike Atiyeh (colors)

The Story: Not even Asian exceptionalism stands a chance in Gotham.

The Review: One of the more unfortunate side-effects of growing up is having all your favorite historical myths stripped away.  I would’ve been happy to spend the rest of my life believing that the proto-Americans and Indians spent at least the early parts of their relationship in some kind of harmony.  The truth, of course, involved a great deal more violence and a whole lot less comfort food.

Although the Indians proved to be hospitable at the beginning, one of them made the covetous mistake of stealing a small silver cup from Richard Grenville’s first group of British settlers.  Grenville, perhaps feeling he ought to set boundaries straight from the beginning, responded by sacking and burning the whole Indian village.  And as any history book will tell you, life between the red and white people plunged sharply downhill from there.

All-Star Western #13 – Review

By: Justin Gray & Jimmy Palmiotti (story), Moritat (art), Mike Atiyeh (colors)

The Story: Can we all just agree that it’s all clowns that creep you out, not just the one?

The Review: Pre-relaunch, Gray-Palmiotti wrote Jonah Hex solo for a long—surprisingly long—time, and they seemed to find plenty of success that way.  For Hex in the Wild West, cooperation wouldn’t seem natural or necessary anyway.  But in his urban environment, Hex could use the help.  Without Arkham’s intercession, he’d probably just get arrested and executed in a few months; without Tallulah’s randiness, he’d probably go crazy from the city life.

All this is to say I’m glad Arkham and Tallulah are officially part of Hex’s trio for the foreseeable future.  Although none of them would probably call it as such, they’ve developed a very functional teamwork.  Probably no one can cover Hex in a scrap as well as Talulah, and when it comes to tending to the innocent harmed, or offering some intellectual insight into the happenings, or fending off law enforcement (“I’ll explain to the authorities as best I can,” he sighs resignedly over a bloody mess at a circus), Arkham’s the man.