Who's This? A scarred Mad Max.
The facts: DC's western comics were on the wane in the mid-80s, so Michael Fleisher used the Crisis (tangentially, not directly) to give Jonah Hex a new direction and a new #1 (September 1985) as, simply, Hex. The 18-issue series pushed Jonah into a postapocalyptic future reminiscent of the Mad Max movie series'. It ended with Hex finding his own stuffed body in a museum, a promise that he would one day return to his time.
How you could have heard of him: This version of Jonah is mostly remembered for its bizarre change of tack, but it wasn't successful and has mostly been ignored since. He was sometimes glimpsed in time travel stories (for example, Legion of Super-Heroes v3 #23, but that's still during the run of Hex).
Example story: Hex #8 (April 1985) "The Shooting Gallery" by Michael Fleisher, Ron Wagner and Carlos Garzón
I would tell you where we are in the story, but Hex hates recaps:
Part of this is that the "female kin" make him "salty". Not a great look, Hex, and is it me or is his western-speak even more old-fashioned than usual? Maybe it's just a function of the contrast between him and his adopted era whether perceived or written in. He walks into a fortified town to buy fuel, but apparently it'll take a while, so off to the tavern we go. On his way there, he gets mugged. I guess the future hasn't heard of the legend of Jonah Hex yet.
Guys, it's the 80s. We can afford to show a little more violence. The second hairy gets away with Hex's cash, and he's out of bullets. I guess he could trade for more, but he's using an antique and they don't make ammo for it anymore (I'm more surprised that he had enough for 8 issues' worth!). The lady at the gun shop offers him a trade for an identical-looking gun that's made by modern manufacturers and he tests it out at the gun range.
It goes on for another page and the gun lady is impressed. Enough to spot him in a target-shooting competition so they can both make some money off his prowess. He DOES need to pay for that fuel. And so, the Shooting Gallery, which is Laser Tag with betting, Westworld robots and live ammo. Not that Hex has been told this last part in advance. Nor the fact that no one's ever beat the game - indeed, the patrons refuse to put money on him, which makes me wonder how this place makes any money (on which round the gladiator dies, I guess).
But Hex keeps dodging and blowing dummies away, and people start putting bets on his winning, and the bookies get real nervous because at those odds, they stand to lose a lot of money. The guy who runs the joint presses a hidden button and the screens go dark while real-live assassins head down into the arena to kill our boy with automatic weapons. Can Hex compete with his six-shooter mentality?
Of course. That guy gets one of those six shots in the face. But then a sniper gets Hex in the back, but he saw it coming and it's just a glancing blow. Hex plays dead for a second, then drops the guy up in the rafters while he's celebrating his kill. The third assassin is killed when he doesn't notice Hex is wearing one of his pals' costumes. And so the legend begins anew...
That lady also gets that bag of money in the face, and while she's down, he takes all the guns and ammo he wants. He earned 'em. Buys a crazy bike (with five wheels, I don't know if that's the right term for it) and he's off to meet Stiletta.
But that's a story for another day. So... Hex as Mad Max? Feels a lot like a western comic with a sci-fi re-skin, so it works. Obviously, you couldn't have done a "robotic gunmen" storyline, and it's easier to buy food for horses than gas for cars, but the tone is much the same. It's the Wild West whether civilization hasn't yet come to town or if civilization has deteriorated. Is it BETTER than Hex's western stories? No, of course not. But they didn't change it TOO much. Oh wait--
Who's Next? An electrifying private eye.
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