Hex

Hex is going to have the most spellbinding and gut-wrenching Adventures

By Michael L. Fleisher

From DC Spotlight #1 (1985)

It was some years ago while I was a sophomore in high school that Mr Moody taught us about the primordial soup. When the Earth was young, you see, the seas were filled with a rich mixture of the molecules needed for the beginnings of life. All they needed was that bolt from the blue to set them fermenting and crackling and combining to form the first amino acids, those basic building blocks of life. When I reflect on how Hex began, I recall Mr Moody and his primordial soup. because, you see,   Hex arose from my own, personal primordial soup, a volatile brew of concepts and half-formed ideas that were just waiting to be energized by a bolt from the blue.  

The first element in my soup was my lifelong love of westerns, whether they'd be blessed and westerns like Shane and The Wild Bunch, or non-western westerns like Outland and The Empire Strikes Back. And for a long time I'd been wanting to write about about a bleak, war-torn world with civilized moral values are dead; where government has collapsed and anarchy prevails; where death can rain from the sky or slither forced from the bowels of the Earth; and where, when the going gets hairy there are no hordes of costume flying men-or women either for that matter-to haul your keester out of the fire.  

Oh, yes, And there is one more thing. An awful lot of modern comics have become too much like soap operas for my taste. Between you and me, it's gotten to the point where I find myself itching for some good old fashioned fights.   

So there it was, the primordial broth, just waiting to be struck by that lightning bolt. And when it came, it came in the form of, of all things, a logo design!   

Now, wait a minute! you're thinking. This guy can't fool us, logo design is commissioned aftera new series is conceived, not before!   

And you're right to think that-at least you'd be right to think it most of the time. In the case of Hex, however, it was the logo that came first and the series that came afterwards. Because one afternoon, in a time when the primordial soup was little more than a half-conceived recipe percolating silently in my subconscious Ed Hannigan-who is easily one of the most brilliant designers ever to work in comics-ambled into DC with a dazzling logo design he had just created in hand-painted in was violet and hot pink. Ed whose services are in continual and constant demand at DC, had not been asked to design any such logo and had no expectation  whatever of ever being paid for it. It was certainly electrifying, but it was suitable for no DC magazine then being published, least of all DC's soul surviving Western, Jonah Hex.   

"Ed, it's gorgeous" I said admiringly. "but what is it for?"   

"I don't know" said Ed with a kind of half-apologetic shrug. " but I really like the name and I thought maybe,well,  I just thought you might be able to use it for something."   

And that's when-Ka-ZAAAAT-the lightning hit!   

"hey!" I explained "Wait a minute! What if a Western gunslinger called Hex were somehow catapulted into a future post-holocaust world where-"   

"Uh, wait a minute." stammered Hannigan, hastily lowering himself into a chair and looking, between you and me, just a trifle pale. "I think I may need a few seconds to think this over."   

Well ok, so he needed a few seconds to think it over. But by that time he was hooked! And the next time I saw Ed Hannigan, he handed me a sheet of drawings of fabulous futuristic landscapes, vehicles, and proposed supporting characters for the new Hex series. We who write and draw Hex will forever and always be grateful to Ed.   

But if it was Ed Hannigan who provided the initial inspiration for Hex and took those crucial first steps towards giving the project it's wholly singular look, it is a young awesomely talented newcomer named Mark Texeira who has given unstintingly of his labour and boundless enthusiasm to make Hex a stunning visual feast for the eye and the mind. By the time you read these words only Hex #1 will have appeared on the stands, but nearly a half-dozen additional issues will have been fully written and drawn. You may take my solemn word for it that each one of these succeeding issues will surpass, in sheer artistry and technical brilliance, the one that preceded it. Hex represents Mark Texeira's first stint on a regular monthly series, and I fully believe this series is destined to make him a star.   

As Hex #1 opens, our gunfighter protagonist has been suddenly and mysteriously abducted through the time barrier by a power-mad villain whoose hobby is "collecting" soldiers and fighting men from the various bygone eras of history and pitting them against one another in deadly massed battles and man-to-man combats. The nuclear war that took place only a few short years ago reduced most of modern civilization to rubble, transforming the North American continent into a series of sun-parched wastelands, regions of runaway mutation, and islands of decadent civilization where only the strong and ruthless survive. Everywhere there are weird subcultures and bizarrely mutated creatures spawn by the fallout that accompanied the holocaust. Nihilistic motor-gangs in cannibalized vehicles prowl vast spaces between civilized outposts, pillaging, looting, and trafficking and that rarest and most sought-after commodity of all: water uncontaminated by nuclear waste.   

Escaping from this 21st century captor shortly after his abduction, Hex becomes a fugitive and Wanderer in this apocalyptic new world. In the process, he's going to have some of the most spellbinding and gut-wrenching Adventures ever to appear between the covers of a comic magazine. All of us who've have poured our souls into Hex hope that you'll be there to make the journey with us.