All-Star Western, Volume 3: The Black Diamond Probability

All-Star Western (2011) #3

by Jimmy Palmiotti (Writer), Justin Gray, Moritat (Illustrator)

When the workers and patrons of Haley's Circus sample Dr. McKee's Cure All, they begin a painful transformation into psychotic killers and it is up to Jonah Hex and Dr. Arkham find the source.

Collecting: All-Star Western 0, 13-18

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels, Westerns, Dc Comics, Fantasy, Crime, Adventure

224 pages, Paperback

First published November 12, 2013

About the author

James "Jimmy" Palmiotti is an American writer and inker of comic books, who also does writing for games, television and film.

Photo by Luigi Novi.

Reviews

[Chad · Rating 3 out of 5]

Starts off with a zero issue detailing snippets from Hex's origins. Starts off strong but then gets lost midway through with a bunch of meaningless time jumps. In the main story, Jekyll and Hyde come to town along with killer clowns. Working Eclipso's black diamond into Jekyll's origin was a nice touch. Then there's a backup story focusing on Tomahawk set just after the Revolutionary War. It's general message is that white people back then were real bastards.

[Lost Planet Airman · Rating 2 out of 5]

Hmmmm...
Maybe I am overloaded on DC storylines, but this seemed pedestrian, two-dimensional and lackluster, although there were a few bright spots. Jonah Hex really seemed just a fill-in for any western hero, not really anything except bounty-hunting to recommend him, in particular, for this role. Stereotypes are enforced.
There is a follow-on story of the Indian Wars, but it delivers such a liberal message so heavy-handedly that it disappoints severely

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This collects Jonah Hex #0 plus All Star Western #13-16. Mr. Hyde is in Gotham City and the only one who can stop him is Jonah Hex!

I've softened on my previous stance on Hex in Gotham. I'm still not a fan of it but I'm making the best of the situation. Gray and Palmiotti weave Mr. Hyde into the DC Universe with a black diamond that I should have tipped to immediately. Moritat on art is aces. Tying Hex to the rest of the DC Universe isn't something I need but I guess it doesn't hurt anything. Fun stuff. 4 out of 5 stars.

[Chris Lemmerman · Rating 3 out of 5]

A solid, if unremarkable read. The Black Diamond's influence was tangential at best, but the main Hyde plot is interesting and leaves Hex and Arkham in places with lots of story potential moving forward. The back-ups starring Tomahawk are, like the main stories, solid but forgettable, a far cry from previous back-ups like The Barbury Ghost or Cinnamon and Nighthawk. The Zero issue origin story is easily the highlight of thr volume.

[Danielle The Book Huntress · Rating 4 out of 5]

This volume doesn't feel as cohesive as previous volumes (and I'm not merely speaking of the variety of stories). The Jonah Hex narrative doesn't seem to go as well together, although I do appreciate getting Hex's backstory. I can see why he's so grumpy. However, I still liked this a lot. Tons of rip-roaring action, and it has a nice Gothic twist as a certain Mr. Hyde arrives in Gotham to wreak havoc. There's even a nice shoutout to Jane Eyre that made this fan smile. I have a feeling the writer had a lot of fun with these stories, although they are really quite dark, moreso than previous volumes, in my opinion. As usual, I really enjoy the artwork in this series. It's interesting how the male faces tend towards rugged to sometimes ugly, but the females look like dolls. Not an insult. I like the way the artist draws women. They look very pretty, even Tallulah Black, with all her facial scars and eyepatch. (since my interest is drawing/painting women, that stands out for me). The historical fiction story about the Native American freedom fighter, Tomahawk made me sad. One of the darker moments of American history (along with slavery and centuries of institutionalized racism against black Americans), and one that we need to be reminded of, although it's never pleasant to consider the systematic extermination of the Native peoples. Tomahawk is an angry man, and I can see why he's angry. While it was well-written, its inclusion doesn't fit the rest of the book very well at all.

This series never fails to appeal to the western action lover in me!

[Alan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kudos to Palmiotti and Gray for continuing a fine mix of Hex's usual escapades (killing, drinking and screwing) and tossing in story elements I thought would not work. They masterfully take a page from Alan Moore's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and bring Mr. Hyde to Gotham City. A very different Hyde from Moore's, and in addition they add some DCU continuity to Hyde's potion (skipping spoiling the Easter Egg for you). Hyde remains a minor hanging plot thread and Tallulah Black leaves with The Barbary Ghost to search for the Ghost's mother.

This is a title I'm sorry to see cancelled. I know a time travelling story is coming up, but if the creative teams has surprised me with this mix of Gotham City's past and Hex's ways they might pull that one off too.

[Justin Blair · Rating 4 out of 5]

As someone who A) Could not care less about Jonah Hex pre-reboot B) Have grown increasingly disinterested in DC since the reboot, I have to grant this one of the best books they are putting out. I am down to the main Batman title, Wonder Woman and this tie that I am reading constantly and enjoying. It may not get a ton of attention because of the genera it falls into but do give it a chance because it's fun, exciting and funny and worth your money.

[Justin Partridge · Rating 2 out of 5]

“We need ta git them bullets outta him right away. Ah want him alive. He owes me money.”

You would think a comic that features both Jonah Hex and Tallulah Black fighting Mr. Hyde in the shadow of Gotham’s Haley’s Circus would be right there up there with some of the best trash available but I’m just like…I’m starting to be really shocked at how up and down this follow up series was.

On one hand, I think it looks WONDERFUL throughout. You’ve got some really fun covers by Ariel Olivetti and even a Simsonson! And the interiors too from Moritat and Phil Winslade, who gets the whole freaking job of rebooting Tomahawk in the back up stories, and it’s just…when it’s singing visually, it’s so so fun.

But then like…boy oh boyyyyyeeee is this an example of how the New 52 just overcooked a really good idea and makes it the dumbest possible version of that same really good idea. For one thing, the Breasted Boobily redesign of the Barbary Ghost is just wild wild wild. The previous volume skirted that line with its Talon and one of the August 7 who was like Sexy Knife Lady, but man it’s just really nakedly (haaaaaaaa I’m so sorry) on display here and it’s so dumb.

Further dumber is the hard right turn into open wanton violence. Like Jonah Hex, from the jump, has never been like a particularly “tame” comic by any stretch and usually that works really well when it’s parsed out across this striking one shots and open riffs on stuff in the previous volume. But when we are getting to Hyde gleefully chomping on people and bathtubs full of viscera, it’s like…what the hell are we doing here, D*n D*do? Who hurt you? Why were literally ALL your era’s editing work so needlessly cartoonishly violent?

Like don’t even get me started on the amount of events and comics that just like…always opened with someone’s arm getting hacked off ON. Panel?! It’s just bonkers.

I think I’m more just disappointed that this doesn’t really seem to have a mandate behind it aside from “longer stories” and “100% about giving the Bros something” I don’t really get it. Like the original run is so singular and so concerned with doing its own thing within the space and visual sense of a “Western” book and then you get into this and it’s just like “idk, he’s in Gotham still? And Not-Joker Virus stuff happens?”

And like…is the Black Diamond supposed to be an Eclipso Crystal? Like THAT doesn’t even make any sense because Eclipso has never really been connected to Hyde before? I should stop typing I’m bumming myself out further about it.

[Andy Hickman · Rating 2 out of 5]

All Star Western with Jonah Hex. Volume 3 – The Black Diamond Probability.
Rather hard to follow the sequential order her. Tomahawk at the back was very good. Intense.
But the Jekyll and Hyde premise was way over the top. Ghastly. **

All Star Western #0 (Jonah Hex)
A flame- heated axe-head pushed to his face, “You will bear the mark of the demon!”
..
All Star Western #13 – The Strange Case of Dr Arkham and Mr Hex
“He tried to kill us, he did. Many a time.”
..
All Star Western #14 – Hyde in America
“That’s Gotham after sunset fer ya.”
“I don’t believe I like Gotham very much.”
..
All Star Western #15 – Strange Medicine
“Damn, Doc, ya look like a barber’s cat.”
This is a ghastly story.
..
All Star Western #16 – It’s a Madhouse
When a crazy old lady thinks she is the crazy old lady in ‘Jane Eyre’.
..
.. and TOMAHAWK

[Daniel Butcher · Rating 3 out of 5]

Jonah Hexx takes on Mr Hyde.

And a Tomahawk story...which makes me ashamed of my history.

[Fizzgig76 · Rating 3 out of 5]

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.

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.

[John Shaw · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the odder characters from the old
DC Universe
Jonah Hex
is a veteran of the Civil War
fighting for the Confederacy.
He becomes marked
not just with the scar that is
half his face
but by supernatural forces.
Hex finds that a particular sort
of magical mayhem is
always drawn to him.
This series is no different.
In Gotham City of the 1880s
Hex becomes embroiled in
all kinds of lunacy that he wants no
part of.
While really quite grim and dark
this book is also exciting and uniquely fresh.
An odd notion concerning a western comic,
a genre I though played out 50 years ago.
Mystical Western Noir
is the only way to describe
this wholly original series.

[Jaime Guzman · Rating 2 out of 5]

The New 52 version of Jonah Hex is disappointing. The ties with Gotham bringing him into the Batman mythos and the horror/thriller angle doesn't work for me.
In this volume an elixir is causing people who take it to go violently mad and Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde along with Eclipso's black diamond have something to do with it.
The second story brings back Tomohawk as he fights the British and the Union that betrayed him.
If you really want to read a gritty Western comic that is the definitive version of Jonah Hex pick up "Jonah Hex Face Full of Violence" by Justin Gray and Jimmy Palmiotti and illustrated by Luke Ross.

[Jennifer Juffer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting.
Jonah Hex finally meets Dr. Amadeus Arkham's mother. I was wondering when he was going to meet the woman who was driven to insanity.
This was a pretty good issue. Not the best, not the worst.
I mean, come on... It's based on a what if a Robert Louis Stevenson's Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde had come to America?

It was pretty funny, though.

I'm a completist, so I have to have the entire collection. If I had to miss an issue... it might be this one.
We learn nothing new about the character of Jonah Hex.

[Doctor Doom · Rating 2 out of 5]

First of all this book would have gotten a much better rating if not for the Tomahawk story.

1] The Origin of the New 52 Jonah Hex would get 5 stars [though I like the original Hex better]

2] The longer story of Hex vs. Hyde [as in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. H.] would garner 3.5 [4 if they hadn't connected Eclipso's black gem to the mix]

3] Tomahawk story would garner -5 for its [1] destruction of a great DC character "Tomahawk" [2] its anti-American rhetoric and [3] its revisionist history

[Lillian Francis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thought the art was up and down in this volume.

Hyde storyline was okay. No explanation as to what happened to him though.

Vandal Savage story only lasted 2 issues. It was a strange one. If Savage bought the illness with him why did the elite at the casino not catch it.

As for the extra stories, I didn’t like the Tomahawk one. Art was too busy. I skipped most of this.

Stormwatch 19C was good, although it carries over into the next volume.

[José Ignacio · Rating 3 out of 5]

Frustrating at times, but enough fun to be engaging

My biggest problem here is that the main Jonah Hex story feels a bit rushed. The Black Diamond is made out to be this big important thing but they never really do anything with it other than vaguely hint at how it affect Jekyll's formula, but that’s it.

There’s a lot of great moments but not enough room for them to grow properly and develop, it’s still fun but I wish it was a little more fleshed out.

[Sean · Rating 3 out of 5]

Palmiotti and Gray continue to tell interesting Jonah Hex tales based in turn of the century Gotham City. Here, we get a great antagonist that is as tougher or tougher than Hex. Jonah has multiple issues to deal with and the writers tell it so well. The art by Moritat and Winslade looked rushed. I could have done without the Tomahawk backup tale. Overall, another solid collection.

[Michael Emond · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was the first Jonah Hex story from Grey and Palmiotti that I just didn't get into. We have the villain Hyde who just bashes Hex around until Hex fires his gun at him at the end. It felt a bit too super hero villain to fit in with the Hex stories.

Hey, they still did 70 issues I liked so I can excuse this one for not being my cup of whiskey.

[Art · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bringing in the classic tale of Jekyll and Hyde was very interesting. Bringing them and Jekyll's formula to 1880's era Gotham City made for an interesting mixture. Seeing how Hex, Black, and Arkham dealt with this was entertaining. And the added element of the Barbary Ghost being there as well just added to the fun.

[Jesse A · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some rehashing of Jonah Hex's origins, A story with Mr Hyde, and a non Jonah Hex story that I honestly don't give a shit about. Decent.

[Sarah · Rating 1 out of 5]

As much everything 52 the crossover level is maddening and the slides are disjointed and the story ragged

[Sean Sexton · Rating 2 out of 5]

This volume continues stories featuring 19th century anti-hero Jonah Hex. The primary story features Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, which ends up being not all that inventive.

[The Spooky Jedi · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great take on Jekyll and Hyde and the bonus backup story was awesome too

[Patrick Brown · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5/5 rounded up, much better then the previous 2 volumes, loved the Back Story Of Jonah Hex at the beginning, also loved the story about Tomahawk the Indian.

[Cale · Rating 3 out of 5]

Volume 3 isn't quite as strong as the first two volumes were, but it's still very good. It introduces Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde in as an antagonist, which works surprisingly well. Hex vs Hyde makes for a wild conflict, and it happens multiple times. The book also brings in The Barbary Ghost, although that story seems to spin off somewhere else and is left incomplete here. The main story isn't nearly as enclosed and meanders a bit, but it's still enjoyable work.
More interesting is the second story collected here, focused on Tomahawk, an Indian fighting against the Americans at the time of Tecumseh. It's a brutal piece and doesn't whitewash the American actions toward Native Americans at the time. It's not a perspective you often get from comics, so I appreciate the story, and am curious how much of it is based in truth. It's not often a comic gets you interested in history, so well done there.

[Bobby · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another fulfilling installment from Palmiotti, Gray, and Moritat. The bulk of the this volume features the Jonah Hex vs. Mr. Hyde story line. And it's a lot of fun if not a little rushed. I think the story could have been spread out a lot more because there's so many great elements put into play with the recuperating Hex and his put upon nurse, the afflicted Dr. Arkham, and a rampaging Mr. Hyde.

There is a great moment in the final showdown between Hex and Hyde where after pumping Hyde full of lead, Hex instructs the nurse to save him as he turns back into Dr. Jekyll once more because "Ah want 'im alive. He owes me money."

The sudden departure of Tallulah Black after a battle in Chinatown felt abrupt, but I imagine that Hex and Ms. Black will reunite in further volumes to do what do best together: fornicate and shoot people at will.

[Alex Sarll]

Only the fourth New 52 book where I've made it to the third volume; the first I'm not buying (and enough of those fell by the wayside after one or two books). Even here, one can sense a rot creeping in (although not The Rot this time, at least) - a promising Mr Hyde story is shunted slightly off course by the Eclipso bollocks the title implies, and for the second half, the back-ups are an attempt to flesh out the history of the unwieldy DCU take on Stormwatch. But for the most part, Jonah Hex, Arkham et al sustain the main stories (and it is on the whole a very good take on Hyde), and the art is beautiful. Especially on the back-up story about the Indian Wars, where at times it almost risks the loveliness drowning out the atrocities depicted.

[Yves · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dans cette BD, il y a trois histoires. Le première raconte les origines de Jonah Hex et de toutes les souffrances de sa jeunesse. La seconde raconte l'affrontement de Amadeus Arkham et Jonah Hex contre le Dr. Jeckyll et son alter ego Mr. Hyde. Pour une rare fois, on a droit à un Hex fragilisé qui se retrouve en chaise roulante. La troisième partie porte sur un amérindien surnommé Tomahawk qui se bat autant contre les Américains que les Britanniques pour sauvegarder son peuple est ses racines.

Comme les deux tomes précédents, cette BD est ultra violente. Les dessins sont beaux et modernes. L'histoire quant à elle est excellente. J'adore cette série.

[Roman Colombo · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's about that time. It always happens. Keeping the momentum of a series going in long-form narrative has to be difficult, and The Black Diamond Probability is where All-Star Western slacks. It's just not a very interesting story, even if there's the element of fun the other ones had. There are interesting character changes that we will hopefully see play out in the next volume, but here...just a filler story.