All-Star Western 4: Gold Standard

Comic Info

All-Star Western (3) #18

Reprints All-Star Western (3) #17-21 (April 2013-August 2013). After an encounter with Vandal Savage, Jonah Hex has had about enough of Jeramiah Arkham and Gotham City. Heading to the country, Hex finds himself teamed with a traveler from the future in Booster Gold…and Hex is about to make a voyage of his own!

Written by Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray, All-Star Western Volume 4: Gold Standard is part of the New 52 DC relaunch. Following All-Star Western Volume 3:  The Black Diamond Probability, the title (also sometimes not hyphenated as All Star) features art by Moritat and Staz Johnson.

Western heroes are really tricky, and DC and Palmiotti and Gray are trying to make them more inclusive in the bigger DC universe through things like Stormwatch and time travel. This volume of All-Star Western sets to shuttle Hex directly into the rest of DC’s New 52 world.

The first story in the volume involves Vandal Savage. Savage seems to the go-to character for DC if they need a time travel story, and he is generally solid…but he does get a bit old since he doesn’t really have a hook (other than being immortal). More important to me is that the story finally gets Hex out of Gotham. While I’ve enjoyed the “Old Gotham” adventures, it feels like there is more to explore with Hex and the world around him…especially since the New 52 changed everything.

All-Star Western (3) #19

Being a Booster Gold fan, I was excited to see him guest-starring in this volume. The only complaint I have is that it seemed not only rushed, but oddly disjointed. The issues don’t seem to necessarily tie together as nicely as other comics, and it almost felt like you had missed a page or two. I wish that Hex and Booster’s adventure had been slightly longer (maybe one more issue) and I also wish there had been more involving Batwing when he arrived in Gotham (just because of culture differences/problems with Hex being in the future as seen with his relation to the African-American police officer).

The story also features a back-up storyline involving the Stormwatch of Hex’s time led by Adam One. It doesn’t feel developed enough and seems like filler. With the Hex/Booster story seeming truncated, it would have been nice to have those pages to more of a story for Jonah Hex instead of an underdeveloped Stormwatch team.

While I do have criticisms of All-Star Western, I kind of like All-Star Western and the variety it provides to a rather bland comic market. I like that you can essentially have a science-fiction story set in the past and that All-Star Western could be used to explore ideas and differences between now and then which boils down to the true concept of sci-fi which is the exploration of concepts and different trains of thought. All-Star Western 4: Gold Standard is followed by All-Star Western 5: Man Out of Time.

Related Links:

All-Star Western 1:  Guns and Gotham

All-Star Western 2:  War of Lords and Owls

All-Star Western 3:  Gold Standard

All-Star Western 5:  Man Out of Time

All-Star Western 6:  End of the Trail

Jonah Hex (2010)