The Hollywood Hex

The word is that DC Comics has a deal in place to bring Jonah Hex, everyone’s favorite disfigured Old West bounty hunter, to the big screen. That’s great news for anyone (like me) who grew up loving this rattlesnake of a character. Hex was cynical, cantankerous and just plain ugly. He was the scarred outlaw Josey Wales of the spinner rack.

Hex was created back in 1972 (if you’re shopping at Comic-Con this weekend, it was “All-Star Western” No. 10) by writer John Albano, who had a gift for terse and tense dialogue, and artist Tony DeZuniga, who came up with a great “melted look” for the side of Hex’s face. That was due to a nasty injury from a hot tomahawk -- the clumsy branding was Hex’s punishment from the Apache tribe that raised him. It was Hex’s rummy father who had sold him to that tribe as a child slave. Later, the disfigured Jonah did a stint in the Confederate army and got pretty adept at killing.

The 19th century character has logged a lot of miles in the DC universe (in the 1980s he was even dropped into a post-apocalyptic future as a sort of comics riff on themes from “Mad Max” and Stephen King’s “The Dark Tower”). But a movie would be a whole new level, of course.

Whom would you cast as the rangy killer? Clint Eastwood certainly would have been the prime choice a few decades ago. Michael Madsen has a certain whiff of menace about him that might work, but if they kept him a blond, then square-jawed Viggo Mortensen (who was adept at playing the comics-to-film killer in “History of Violence”) might be the best choice. If they want to save money on makeup, there’s also Nick Nolte -- he’s looking pretty Hexed in the photos here.

-- Geoff Boucher