Review: All Star Western Vol. 5- Man Out of Time

Quick Summary

Pros: The change in setting is immediately interesting and provides a unique story arc for the volume to start with. Jonah Hex’s adventures in the present are fun and have plenty of action and charm.

Cons: The narrative here has a few errors and pushes the limits of suspense of disbelief. The artwork doesn’t look quite as good as it did for the last few volumes.

Overall: This collection provides an entertaining change of pace for the series while still maintaining the positives that made previous volumes enjoyable. It details how a gruff vigilante like Jonah Hex adapts to the modern world and the consequences that come with such a change. The adventures contained here are full of tension, action, and charm, even if they do push the limits on believability. This book will appeal to readers who already enjoy this series or new readers interested in seeing what happens when Jonah Hex is placed in the modern world.

Story

All Star Western Vol. 5: Man Out of Time, by Justin Gray and Jimmy Palmiotti, takes Jonah Hex and everything fun about his character and moves it from the past to the present. This change in location allows entertaining adventures, similar to those seen in the past four volumes, to take place in a new and different way. In addition, the shift from one time period to the other is an adventure in and of itself, which adds to the overall narrative of this collection. The only significant problem here is that the book heavily relies on coincidence and absurd chance to instigate action, in a way that starts to feel a bit ridiculous after a while. However, this is still a solid book that fans of this series are likely to enjoy.

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The central narrative in Man out of Time starts out interesting and remains this way to the very end. It changes up the status quo of the past four volumes by placing Jonah Hex in the present, where he has no idea what is going on and no one appears to believe his story. At first, the story here simply involves him trying to reach some semblance of normality in the modern age. This journey is a whirlwind adventure that brings in the descendants of characters seen over the past four volumes. Watching this journey is exciting and seeing these connections across time is a unique addition to this story.

From here, the volume mostly just follows Jonah as he moves from one situation to the next. His adventures at this point feel like classic takes on a western-style vigilante but have the added caveat of taking place in the modern age. I particularly enjoyed his visions while under the spell of the Black Mercy and his touching visit to a museum about his own life. The individualized nature of these story arcs also works out well, as it keeps things fresh the entire time while still allowing a larger narrative to develop in regards to his attempt to return to the past.

The only hurdle necessary in the enjoyment of Man Out of Time is the way in which the story pushed on the limits of suspension of disbelief. Over the course of a few chapters, Jonah Hex goes from a man unable to understand the present to riding a motorcycle on a cross-country trip with his new girlfriend. Along the way, he also randomly stumbles across an absurd number of illegal or supernatural occurrences. He runs into a terrorist roadblock in Gotham before stopping a murderer the next day, is forced to survive a horde of demons at Burning Man right before immediately being attacked by a Black Mercy, and then, finally, stops a bank robbery the second he gets to Metropolis. Each one of these incidents is presented as a coincidence, which starts to feel pretty ridiculous before the book is even halfway through.

There are also a few random errors in the narrative. Jonah Hex kills someone with a stolen gun but a report later on says he did it with his old-fashioned weapons. Then, he goes from searching for the House of Secrets to the House of Mystery. These errors aren’t major but are a bit annoying to see in a mainstream book like this.

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Art

Unfortunately, the artwork in Man Out of Time is a bit of a downgrade from previous All Star Western entries. Moritat’s work is still uniquely stylized in a way that is always at least somewhat pleasing. There are also a few pages that really stand out as something memorable, specifically a gorgeous splash page from issue #25. However, the shift in time periods proves to be an impediment on the creative expression of this series. Instead of strangely beautiful and wonderfully imaginative depictions of Gotham from the past, this collection contains somewhat generic views of the present. These fail to capture attention in the same way as before and simply end up being average. In addition, women end up being highly oversexualized throughout the book, in a way that feels more gratuitous and out of place than it did before. Man Out of Time still looks alright but is an unfortunate downswing in the visual quality of this series.

Continuity

All Star Western Vol. 5: Man Out of Time continues the story from All Star Western Vol. 4: Gold Standard (Review).

The story here continues in All Star Western Vol. 6: End of the Trail (Review).

This volume also references stories from other comic books, detailed below:

• The Mutant gangs seen in Gotham are an homage to Batman: The Dark Knight Returns.
• At one point, Jeremiah Arkham references the mental instability of Amadeus Arkham. It is likely that this is a reference to Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth, which details Amadeus’s descent into madness.