Jonah Hex Rides Into Supernatural Horror in New DC Series

Jonah Hex and the Shadow of Death reimagines DC’s scarred cowboy as the centre of a six-issue supernatural horror story, combining frontier guilt with strange creatures, unsettling colours and a growing mythology.

Jonah Hex has long been defined as a cowboy, bounty hunter, killer and survivor. Writer Michael Walsh now uses that violent history as the foundation for a more introspective story, sending Hex into a nightmare where literal ghosts and old regrets are impossible to separate.

A haunted town and a chance at redemption

The series begins in Ashecott, a small town threatened by an evil older than the community itself. The danger comes from beyond the known world and is more menacing than any ordinary outlaw. Hex becomes involved after noticing both the supernatural entities surrounding his home and a child with mysterious abilities whom they are pursuing.

Hex may be facing an otherworldly enemy, but the story also asks whether he can confront the people he has killed and find a form of redemption.

Walsh has described the project as a highly graphic DC comic without relying on gore. Its tone may appeal to readers of Something Is Killing the Children and Walsh’s earlier collaboration with James Tynion IV, Exquisite Corpses. The opening pages reportedly establish a close, personal horror experience built from writing, colour and jagged line work.

Colour turns the western uncanny

The visual identity of Shadow of Death starts with the expected language of a western: dusty browns, warm oranges, rough timber, rock and earth. Walsh’s drawing style emphasises the frontier’s craggy surfaces, while Ben Day-style halftones add tone and dimensionality between black and white.

Colourist Toni-Marie Griffin deliberately disrupts that familiar palette. Purples, pinks and unusual greens appear as supernatural forces enter the story, making the landscape feel wrong rather than simply unfamiliar. A single cool colour placed against warm tones can shift an otherwise recognisable page into something alien.

Griffin also created watercolor textures for the series. Those textures can remain natural while Hex moves through town, then become splattered and unstable when the supernatural breaks through. The visual surface changes alongside the danger, with colour spreading as dramatically as blood.

A creative partnership shaped at home

Walsh and Griffin are married collaborators raising their young son. Working in the same home gives the pair an immediate feedback loop: Walsh can ask about a page in person, while Griffin can test a palette and receive a response without writing a lengthy explanation.

That closeness is especially important because the horror is not limited to monsters in a western setting. Parenting, reflection and guilt helped inform the story’s emotional concerns. The comic moves between the physical world of the Old West and a stranger supernatural realm, with the art carrying much of that transition.

The project also benefits from the artists’ different interests. Walsh draws on body horror and gore, naming David Cronenberg, John Carpenter, Stephen King, Ari Aster, Titane and Raw among his influences. Griffin is more focused on thrillers, atmosphere and the visual grammar of horror. When they watch films together, Walsh may be studying creature design while Griffin examines the background colours.

Horror without relying on gore

DC’s PG-13 boundaries prevent Walsh from using the same level of graphic violence found in some of his R-rated work, including Exquisite Corpses and The Silver Coin. Instead, the limits encourage him to focus on pacing, creature design and supernatural imagery, allowing anticipation to do more of the work.

At the story’s centre is a familiar revisionist-western question: what happens when a man who believed he was righteous begins to doubt that judgement? Hex has survived his past, but survival is not the same as escaping its consequences.

A six-issue beginning for a larger mythology

Jonah Hex and the Shadow of Death has six issues to tell this initial story, but Walsh already imagines a wider world. He has discussed the possibility of a three-act structure spread across multiple arcs and new parts of the Wild West, with more stories to come if the series continues.

Griffin has also teased a darker direction ahead, suggesting that the book is set to become considerably creepier. For readers who enjoy carefully controlled horror visuals, the series’ shifting palettes may be as important as its monsters.

Jonah Hex and the Shadow of Death #1 hits stores on 7 October 2026.

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