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Saturday, April 27, 2013 

Jonah Hex is being catapulted into the future again

Something that didn't work when they originally did it in the mid-80s is being pointlessly done again, in a time-travel story with Booster Gold. They even say in this interview with Justin Gray and Jimmy Palmiotti:
The appearance of Booster Gold in the series ties All-Star Western to the upcoming "Trinity War" event that will cross through Justice League Dark, Justice League and Justice League of America. Readers haven't seen Booster Gold since he disappeared last August, after a version of him from the future came back to warn of disaster related to the relationship between Superman and Wonder Woman.
Oh, is it ever. It's certainly an all-too-easy cliche.
Now that Booster has shown up in Jonah Hex's past, the writers are saying we'll next see Jonah Hex sent to the future.
Whatever for? When Michael Fleisher did it last in 1985, it failed to hold the audience, and was cancelled 2 years later. Taking the hero and dumping him in a fish-out-of-water situation did nothing to help sales and even left a few loose ends incomplete when the 1977-85 series ended (I don't think they ever told what became of Emmylou Hartley).
Newsarama: How did All-Star Western end up being the spot where Booster Gold would return to DC Comics?

Justin Gray: We needed to shake things up. Booster is the only time traveler operating currently in the New 52, and his story is that of a man hurtling through time for reasons unknown. He’s not fully aware of the reasons behind this and so it felt like a great opportunity to pair him with Jonah Hex in a way that would get people talking about All-Star Western.
The chances of that are sparse, after all the misuse of the DCU in this century, because so much of their audience has been lost. The last sales charts show that it's sold little more than 16,800 copies. And they probably don't know the reasons why they should write a story like this either, which is not bound to be character-drama related. "Shaking things up" has also been run into the ground.

Hence, this is just another desperate attempt to boost sales on as many of their books as possible without giving the readers a reason to stick around for long afterwards.

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Didn't they learn from the last time that putting Jonah Hex into the future doesn't work? They sure are bankrupt of ideas today, to the point where they're even rehashing ideas that failed to catch on in the first place.

In the early 1980's, the editor of Warlord, answering a published letter, mentioned that DC published a war comic, a Western, and a horror/fantasy anthology, in addition to the superhero titles. "We don't expect every reader to buy everything we publish." Less then 3 years later, though, they had adopted Marvel's policy: every comic had to exist in the same "universe," and every series had to tie in with everything else. That seems to be what the hard core fanboys want, but it is one reason the medium is dying. There is no diversity. With TV, if you don't like science fiction, you can switch the channel and watch a Western or a detective show. With comics, if you don't like super heroes, you will have to find your entertainment in another medium. Mixing Jonah Hex or Sgt. Rock with the Justice League just doesn't work. Fans of costumed super heroes don't like the realistic genres, and vice versa.

Avi!

http://www.theouthousers.com/index.php/news/121832-editorial-mandate-what-to-do-when-a-publisher-blacklists-you-3.html

Topic on subject now posted above.

I'm not sure I understand the point of this article. Would you rather that they just cancelled the title instead of trying to do something that might possibly be interesting with it? Because those are really the 2 only options. Cancel it or try something different. Why is option B worse than option A?

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  • From Jerusalem, Israel
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