All Star Western #13

A white faced clown with green hair has killed a priest in Gotham City leaving him with a smile on his dead face, now this may sound kind of familiar but you would be wrong because this is the Gotham of the old west, and the killer clown is Jingles who apparently has alter boy issues.

Hex, Arkham and Tallulah are called in to help solve the murder where Arkham quickly establishes that the killer is connected to a drug recreated from Dr Jekyll's formula, the seeds of the Jekyll story line were set up in issue 12. Tallulah points out that the priest has been left with a clown like face which leads Hex to suggest the killer could be a clown, Tallulah then adds that Haly's circus is in town that would be a good place to start looking for a clown, its almost like reading an episode of Murder She Wrote.

 Switch to Haly's circus and Yanmei Tsen is in town and looking for the golden Dragons a Triad type gang who frequent Gotham's underworld, Yanmei origin was told in the backup story's of this books early run. Yanmei is quickly butting heads with the Dragons and holding her own until she becomes outnumbered, just when all looks lost Hex and his gang turn up to help her out and save her life. Not that she hangs around to thank them for it as she  quickly disappears into the night when the fight is over, I suspect that this is a set up meeting and we will be seeing more of Miss Tsen in issues to come.

Hex finds the circus owner Mr Haley (who would have thought) who tells them that several of the circus crew have gone missing of late including Jingles, who is one of the nicest kindhearted people you could ever meet (its always the quite ones).

All hell then breaks loose as Jingles enters the circus waving his chopper and firing a gun, throw on top of that the animal trainer who decides to let the tigers loose and Hex and his friends have their hands full. Now I don't know how many tigers Hex or Tallulah have seen in their lives, but they seem fairly calm as they rampage through the circus crowds. Tallilah even has time to utter ''Ah ain't getting eaten by no tiger'' as she is pounced on by one. and after introducing her shot gun to it looks fairly unscathed. As someone who has had cats (not tigers admittedly) I know the cuts a small a Tabby can give you if they are in the mood too, so been pounced on by a Tiger and coming up without a scratch is a bit of a stretch for me. 

Que the gripping finally as the gang are surrounded by people high on Jekyll juice (dose that sound wrong?), the final pages show Dr Jekyll's assistant going into a ships hold to find the good Doctor only to come face to face with Mr Hyde.

This is a fun book which may seem a strange thing to say about a book that has so much killing and violence in it, but any book that's set in Gotham and has a parody of the joker in it called Jingles isn't taking itself too seriously. The appearance of Yanmei Tsen seemed a little forced but didn't detract from the main story line, and I suspect her appearance will have more relevance in future issues.

If I have one complaint about the book its the backup story Tomahawk, it just wasn't a story I could get into which is a shame as the artwork looked fantastic. However, I don't buy the book for the back up story's, I buy it for good Jonah Hex story's and so far this book has delivered those in spades.