Column -- "Devils And Machines: On Jonah Hex And All Star Western"

My complaint here is that Hex’s idiosyncratic qualities, including the series’ ambiguous, Western-style protagonist, and its focus on the ethics of torture, have been paved over by All Star Western’s pandering to the market. An unexpectedly lively comic book—and the only contemporary Big Two comic that dove into some deep currents of the Western genre—is gone, replaced by a sleek and soulless New 52 machine. And to repeat what the preacher in Peckinpah’s Ballad of Cable Hogue says: “The Devil seeks to destroy you with machines.”