Comments on: Comics You Should Own - Hitman

By: Greg Burgas

Greg Burgas — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 20:09:31 +0000

Yeah, Sean, I haven't read it. Even if it's not as good as the regular series, I still have to track it down!

By: Sean

Sean — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 19:56:21 +0000

"They only reappear in issues #51-52, when a demon is about to take over the world." Somebody didn't read 'Hitman/Lobo', of which the best thing that can be said is that they bring in Section 8.

By: Ciaran

Ciaran — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 21:41:41 +0000

An excellent write-up on one of my favourite comic runs, so thanks very much for that, Greg. I've tended to shy away from Ennis because too often he's acted the one trick pony and brought on his gross-out game too readily. Even Preacher, which started well enough to convince me that this was a different Garth Ennis, suffers from having far too many of these cop-outs. Hitman is much better than that and deserves to be fully traded so more people can enjoy the book without having spend a silly amount of time or money tracking down the single issues. All credit to John McCrea for bringing a quality consistent look to the book for practically its entire run. And though he didn't draw it, the Hitman/Lobo special should definitely be part of any collection. Tommy gives Lobo exactly what he deserves. Bueno!

By: Joe

Joe — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 20:33:25 +0000

The end of this book made me cry more than any other film, novel, comic or piece of music I can think of. I really hope they finish off reprinting the trades.

By: Gromyko

Gromyko — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 12:23:03 +0000

Nice essay Greg, but I wish Ennis had explained why Bret Hart has a new costume instead of the old purple tights. I wouldn't have recognized him without the shades. IMO, a better ending would have been Tommy and Anvil (or Natt as they call him here for some reason) winning the tag team title only to go down in a hail of bullets. As wrestling comics go, I still prefer The Sandman. Favorite line of the essay: "Preacher is immature". I would add "most overrated series ever" to that.

By: catullus

catullus — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 17:46:40 +0000

"I am Baytor!"

By: Zack Smith

Zack Smith — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 08:17:12 +0000

Greg, a superior essay about a superior series. One of the greatest moments of my...well, life was getting to do a retrospective on this for Newsarama a few years back with Ennis and McCrea. The only sour note from that was that part of the reason they did the revival was so DC would reprint the rest of the series...and our prayers remain unanswered.

I hold out hope that one day the splash page of the zombie sea life will be mine.

Heh, heh, heh...BEUNO.

By: Is anti-cute the new cute? | Digg PhotoBlog

Is anti-cute the new cute? | Digg PhotoBlog — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 08:13:20 +0000

[...] Comics You Should Own - Hitman Comic Book Resources ,February 05, 2009 a Batman parody who gets what’s coming to him, and Johnny Navarone, the fastest gun in the world, who Tommy luckily kills but whose death has consequences … [...]

By: Bryan Long

Bryan Long — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 16:51:09 +0000

Hitman is easily Ennis' finest work, and I suspect the reason is that Ennis was under the constraints of a non-Vertigo title. Ennis "unleashed' just obscures any points he may have with sheer overwhelming ... ickiness. Or how did you put it, Greg? Violence and creepy sex? Editorial constraints make Ennis work harder and tell better stories (which is true for a number of comic writers, actually). I didn't read Hitman initially, and only tracked down the back issues after reading the first trade. In contrast, I read the first two Preacher trades and couldn't be bothered to finish the easily available series -- I liked Hitman so much more that I went to considerable effort and expense to acquire it. I caution those folks that embark on the quest that it's not easy or cheap. The book didn't have large print runs, apparently, and the back issues are scarce. You'll pay a small fortune for any issue with Joker or Batman in it. And yes, it's a crime that DC hasn't finished the run in trades.

By: Greg Burgas

Greg Burgas — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 02:33:43 +0000

T.: I do try for a happy medium, but in this case, where the fate of the characters is so closely tied to the major theme of the book, I thought it was appropriate. Sometimes I have more spoilers, sometimes fewer. I can say that the next comic on the list (I know what it is, but not when I'll write about it) will have fewer spoilers. Again, I apologize for possibly ruining anyone's enjoyment of the comic.

By: John Seavey

John Seavey — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 02:01:18 +0000

I swore to myself when issue #50 came out that If I ever become fabulously wealthy, I'm buying the original art of that double-page spread you posted. I loved that piece in the comic, and I would love it even more on my wall.

By: T.

T. — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 00:24:19 +0000

I have to say, there needs to be a happy medium between just enough spoilers to give a good review and get you to buy the book, and so much explicit spoiling that every last surprise and plot twist and development is given away, taking away a lot of the punch for people who eventually do buy the book. I had to stop reading 1/4 of the way through because I felt like I was getting too much revealed. I scrolled down to read the comments and saw some scans scroll by that also seemed to reveal MAJOR plot points from later in the book.

By: Rob

Rob — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 22:42:11 +0000

Janna,

Yeah, that seemed to be the thing that kept my wife from reading it out of my boxes. But she ended up reading the entire series eventually and I'm not sure I've ever seen her cry as much at the end of any movie,tv show, book, etc.

By: janna

janna — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 20:43:09 +0000

Hitman is so good! I read the entire run in about a week and a half after I borrowed it from a friend. The funny thing is that the Safeway by my house used to sell comic books back in the 90’s and I never bought Hitman because the covers made it look like an icky boy’s book. Live and learn, I guess.

By: dhole

dhole — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 20:34:23 +0000

I finally bought one of the trades for this (Ace of Killers) and loved it. And I didn't expect to. I generally like Ennis's serious stuff like Punisher and his war stories more than his comedy stuff. But this was downright charming. I agree with previous posts that there was a refreshing restraint here, it wasn't all about the gross-out violence which turns me off some of his other work. I also agree with those who like it more than Preacher. Heck, it's probably my favorite Ennis stuff now.

Looking forward to picking up more of the series.

By: Omar Karindu, back from an Internet Thogal ritual

Omar Karindu, back from an Internet Thogal ritual — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 20:04:07 +0000

As a completely random side note, Kathryn in Hitman turns up in Punisher, something made basically explicit by her line about "poor Tommy" in the Heart of Stone arc.

By: Matt

Matt — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 19:55:09 +0000

Greg, thanks for the writeup--you made me head out this afternoon to buy the first trade collection that I'd seen sitting at a local used book store for a few weeks. Sucks that I won't be able to pick the entire series, but I'll take what I can get.

By: Brendan H.

Brendan H. — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 19:51:32 +0000

Hands down Ennis's best series and easily one of my top five favorite comics ever. This was a great essay. Now I really have to dig out my issues and re-read the entire series.

One thing: I'd add the Hitman/Lobo special to the "essential" reads, just for the way Tommy finally one-ups Lobo thanks to an assist from Bueno Excellente.

By: Greg Burgas

Greg Burgas — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 15:37:26 +0000

Stickler: I'm sorry you feel that way! My point with these is to look at what I believe are true classics, ones that you can read over and over. Whenever I read something like Hitman, I know exactly how it's going to end, but it never fails to affect me emotionally. It's kind of hard to discuss something a bit more critically, like what Ennis is trying to say with this, without spoilers. I like to think these aren't just reviews, because if they were, I would definitely not spoil things. Even if you haven't read this and I spoil the ending, it's so good that you should still read it. If I spoil, say, Heart of Darkness (Kurtz dies, by the way), does that make it less of a classic? Maybe. I really do believe that these comics stand up even if you know going in what happens. When I was reading Hitman for the first time, I could anticipate what was going to happen, yet I still loved it. Thanks for your comment. I do try, after really screwing up when writing about Enigma, to keep some spoilers out of these, but with something like Hitman, it's kind of impossible.

By: Neal K

Neal K — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 15:30:08 +0000

This is one of those books I somehow missed out on that I really should go back and read. Something just tells me that if I go digging around for the back issues, or find all the trades, the next week they will announce the release of a nice collected edition. Nonetheless, I'll probably bite the bullet and do it anyway, especially after reading this.