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Underground > Comic Books >

Garth Ennis' Hitman

  
 
Jack Denfeld
22:30 / 04.11.03
I've started reading the trades today and noticed Clowes just started reading them. So let's discuss Hitman.
 
 
The Falcon
23:59 / 04.11.03
I've read the first trade, #1,000,000 and the last ish. Quite good.
 
 
zarathustra_k
03:58 / 05.11.03
The first 8 are really good and funny, I have read 1 thru about 50 and as it goes on it slowly loses its luster but the first forty issues or so are a lot of fun and a good read.
 
 
Krug
05:14 / 05.11.03
Ah Hitman.
I've been thinking of it a bit tonight, read Who Dares Wins in the evening. Which is the last one that came out. The series isn't even half collected and I have no idea if more are coming because Who Dares Wins came out two years ago.
So I've read upto 28 with the trades and one single. #34, which was the Eisner winning story.

Having read Preacher and his Hellblazer way before this, I have to say that despite it's flaws it's the best book he's done.

It's got a very interesting and very likable central character going for it. It has a terrific HQ (a pub) which has a great father figure
character. When Ennis wants, it can pack a great emotional punch.
That's all I usually want.

But then there are problems. Ennis' sense of humour doesn't always work. Tommy's best friend is an annoying twat. Which isn't his fault just that I believe Ennis has bitten off more than he chew writing a black gangsta style character. He's a tricky character to write and even a trickier to get. Maybe I'm just judging him too early but he's been around for a while. Then there's his girlfriend who suffers some bad dialogue. I dunno, I think there's more to strong female characters than just being tought as nails, guntoting boys with tits. That's the feeling I get when I hear her talk. That she's a boy Ennis loves who has tits and needs the occasional illness of feminity to be accetpable. I'm not sure but I might be talking out of my arse.
Similarly, I felt Tulip got less interesting in Preacher after a while when Ennis tried to make her just as strong as Jesse. I'm sorry if that sounds sexist but Jesse was way too manly and it didn't work too well having that weird masculinity struggle.

I'll agree that it started out so brilliantly that I was laughing out loud at almost every joke. I was scaling walls when I read the first few issues last year. It's lost steam but I can't wait for more (though I am considering downloading the rest because it'll be three years before the rest gets collected if they start right now which seems unlikely). I'm wondering if I should buy the rest on ebay because when it starts coming out again (I'm hoping it is) I'll buy the books the week they come out. I find singles disposable anyway so with my limited expenses it seems like a stupid waste of money.

A major problem is the cussing. "bite me" or "motherloving" loses charm quite quickly. This shouldn't have even been a DC book without the code. It's annoying that they have to talk like that and a very good comic suffers because of fucked up censorship laws.

I didn't want to discuss anything plotspoiler heavy here so I'll talk more when you've read the rest of the trades.
 
 
Jack Denfeld
16:14 / 05.11.03
Why don't you like Natt? He doesn't seem like an irritating character to me at all, just a good buddy sidekick. I think Preacher was Ennis' best work and usually judge his other work by this which isn't very smart I guess. So far Hitman's ok.

I did notice a gag where they show a police dispatcher talking to another cop on his phone where he says "I don't care if Batman signed the guy's forehead, if there were no witnesses, let the guy go. You know procedure.". This irked me all day at work, thinking that every single criminal that Batman leaves tied up in a batarang for the cops to take away just gets let go. But then I had a great No_Prize idea. I figure Gotham's full of career criminals and nasty pieces of work, and that the majority of the people Batman does this to have warants for other crimes, so in my head I will pretend that the majority of these criminals are taken away for having warrants on them already.
 
 
The Falcon
01:40 / 06.11.03
Oh, is #34 the Superman one? I've read that and all. That was excellent.
 
 
Krug
04:17 / 13.06.04
Read Hitman 35-60 in two days.

And despite some unreadable storyarcs (The Dinosaurs one for example), I'm quite happy to have read it all. My favourite arc in the past thirty issues has to be "Old Dog" and it was sad to see how it ended.

Won't spoil it for the people who haven't read it, but it's pretty good albeit bumpy ride. It has it's moments for sure.

And I've been wondering...

Do you pronounce Ennis, like ENN(as in Sean Penn)-ISS, or Eee-niss (as in Penis)?
 
 
FinderWolf
14:43 / 14.06.04
This was a fun book - I have all the trades (and hopefully they'll finish it in trade collections, something I know fans are clamoring for every now and again). Ennis in his comedy-Ennis prime. Don't look for anything too serious in this book, it's mostly a silly romp, but nicely done and original.
 
 
Imaginary Mongoose Solutions
01:17 / 15.06.04
I'll always like Hitman more than Preacher. When Hitman was funny, it was just as funny if not funnier. When it was serious it moved me in ways that Preacher never managed after "Until the End of the world". And the female characters never lost their nerve like Tulip ends up doing. The feel and themes of the book were never sacrificed for the comedy nor thrown out the window to service "the cowboy ending".

It also made me cry at least twice. The end of "the Old Dog" and, of course "Closing Time".
 
 
Haus of Mystery
16:41 / 15.06.04
Zombie Night at the Gotham Aquarium - that was aces. I like Johnny McCrea's deceptively good cartoon style. Brought a healthy dose of 2000ad heads-coming apart gunplay to the DC Universe.
 
 
Our Lady Has Left the Building
16:45 / 15.06.04
We'll never have any more trades will we? Tossers. Time to start looking through the back issues bins...
 
 
Krug
02:37 / 16.06.04
I never quite wept at the material but I was quite moved by "Closing Time", "Old Dog" and "Ten thousand bullets." I came close to tears when the nun reads that passage from the book of revelations to Katie at the end of "Katie" twoparter.

The story itself in "Katie" isn't so spectacular as how Ennis rips off the good book and manages to say what he couldn't say on his own.
 
 
Krug
02:41 / 16.06.04
And Yes, with the exception of the first two trades in Preacher and the final encounter between Cassidy and Jesse, Preacher was never Hitman's equal. As a book I mean.
 
 
garyancheta
20:22 / 27.09.07
I read the JLA/Hitman story and I felt I had to dig up this old thread and talk about my favorite Hitman storyline: "For Tomorrow."

The setup is amazing. Tommy and Ringo Chen, two of the best assassins in the DCUniverse. Everyone wondered who was faster. When Ringo realized that Tommy had once dated his ex-girlfriend, crazy bullet-john-woo-by-way-of-chow-yun-fat fighting begins. My god is this arc amazing. Ennis and McCrea both mentioned how John Woo films were their inspiration for this arc (and it makes sense that Ennis is now working with John Woo in his 7 Brothers Book), but I'll be damned if I can find a "bullet opera" in comics that is cooler than these four issues (James Robinson's Rafferty Saga in Firearm comes close...especially since Rafferty's Saga ends with the two main characters in a bullet fight inside a huge cathedral with doves and Ennis's story doesn't end with that aesthetic).

Like others, I cried reading Old Dog ("There is no way in hell I'd let them put that on his tombstone") and Closing Time ("The drinks are on the house, but you gotta leave your guns at the door"), but Ennis' sendup of both A Better Tomorrow ("We are all hitmen, but we're living for a time when we can give this up...we are living for tomorrow.") and Hard Boiled ("Who's faster is question that children ask each other on the playground. Not friends") makes for an amazing story.

If you can track down these issues (I believe it did win an Wizard Award for best story arc), it is well worth reading.

- G
 
 
MattShepherd: I WEDDED KALI!
20:29 / 27.09.07
Gary, it's not a big deal, but we can see your name to the top left of the post, so you don't need to add the "-G." to the bottom of it.
 
 
The Falcon
20:30 / 27.09.07
Gah; anyone reading this might like to read most of the next few posts onward from this. If you're not already, that is.
 
 
Feverfew
19:43 / 31.10.07
A local comics seller is rumouring that they are going to complete the trades for Hitman in light of the success of the recent crossover. Has anyone else heard any rumblings about this, or is it just wishful thinking?
 
 
The Falcon
22:05 / 31.10.07
Normally, stories like that are bullshit, which leads me to believe comics retailers are either i) stupid, ii) liars or iii) woefully misinformed about the product they sell, but there are of course exceptions. None of whom I've met.

There is, iirc, a persistent rumour that the JLA/Hitman thing was kind of a tryout for releasing all of Hitman in trade; they bloody should, but Garth Ennis will never do for DC what Grant Morrison has - not because he's not as good, although he isn't most of the time, but because he's uninterested in doing so - and thereby get his equivalent of Doom Patrol/Animal Man out years after their original publication.
 
 
Imaginary Mongoose Solutions
04:49 / 01.11.07
Ennis has said that that's the idea behind releasing JLA/Hitman like they did in a few recent Newsarama interviews. Whether it works is anyone's guess, though.
 
 
FinderWolf
06:33 / 01.11.07
I enjoyed the JLA/Hitman two-parter quite a lot; it whetted my appetite for the final trades to be released so I can complete my collection. Do it, DC!!! It's been long enough already!
 
 
This Sunday
06:12 / 16.04.08
There's very little in comics that can touch this one for real heroic bloodshed bastard boys party raise a glass in their memory and whose got the next round is there? And it's a supertights book, t'boot! I know it's often said that the superheroes were treated as parodies or jokes in it, but I don't think they were, really. The humor found in them was already there, the awkwardness and assholishness as well. And the honor and dignity.

Yes, I've been rereading it. And yes it's brought out the thorough thorough sentimentalist in me. And the zombie-cute-thing lover in me.
 
  
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