All-Star Western 3: The Black Diamond Probability

Comic Info

All-Star Western (3) #13

Reprints All-Star Western (3) #0 and #13-16 (November 2012-March 2013). Darkness has come to Gotham in the form of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. With Jekyll’s formula loose, Hex, Tallulah, and Arkham must find a way to stop the madness, but Hyde’s is mixing his formula with a magic even darker. Plus, Tomahawk finds his people in the battle of their life as American expansionism is forcing them out of the land. When a long-time ally betrays him, Tomahawk discovers it could cost him everything.

Written by Justin Gray and Jimmy Palmiotti, All-Star Western Volume 3: The Black Diamond Probability is part of the New 52 relaunch of DC Comics. Following All-Star Western Volume 2: The War of Lords and Owls (the series is also often not hyphenated as All Star Western), the collection features art by Moritat and Phil Winslade.

After a fun crossover with Batman’s Night of the Owls storyline, I was interested in which direction All-Star Western and Jonah Hex would travel. Here, we are given a rather lackluster return to average storytelling…and it really seems to take the steam out of the story.

Since The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is in the public domain, it is already up for grabs. Marvel adopted the storyline years ago with their Hyde character here and Alan Moore did a definitive Hyde story in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. The Hex version of Hyde seems like a cross between the two and they decided to mix the mythos of Eclipso with it. The result is kind of messy and convoluted.

All-Star Western (3) #16

The story is combined with a completely underdeveloped story of Yanmei Tsen which just doesn’t seem to go anywhere. It feels like it is just shoved in this volume as filler. The character seemed halfway appealing and could have been a fun mix to the Hex mythos.

While I did find the Tomahawk story interesting, I also felt it didn’t fit in the volume. The story was presented in a much more real style than the Hex storyline (or the other backup stories in All-Star Western) and it didn’t feel like a modern take on the character as much as telling of a story of Native Americans…but then it also felt like it should have been a real historical figure or a new character.

All-Star Western is a real mixed-bag comic. At this point it is a bit anthology and a bit continuing story. It feels like it is at the edge of being really good, but it feels more like an independent title than a main line DC Comics. Something like this would sell better at Image and be more free to be even crazier…and I think Hex would like that. All-Star Western 3: The Black Diamond Probability is followed by All-Star Western 4: Gold Standard.

Related Links:

All-Star Western 1: Guns and Gotham

All-Star Western 2: War of Lords and Owls

All-Star Western 4:  Gold Standard

All-Star Western 5:  Man Out of Time

All-Star Western 6:  End of the Trail

Jonah Hex (2010)