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Generally though, are the Hitman trades worth a shot? Or have they dated a bit, in terms of being overly sentimental, and up to a point anyway, fairly badly-drawn?
The art style grows on you, like a fungus; only about the first third of Hitman is available in trade so really, having enjoyed them, as I imagine you would (it is hugely sentimental, but there's always something appalling or violent to deflate it: truly this is the tao of teenage boys,) you'd have set yourself for either a slog through unpleasant shops with smelly bins for the rest, or you might have to do something illegal, but pretty much unactionable. Which I did.
And really, it's unimaginable that anyone other than McCrea could have drawn it (sure, there's that brilliant Hitman/Lobo one-shot where a character fully worthy of Ennis laservision ire receives it, drawn by Doug 'Frankenstein' Mahnke, and a couple other things) but he really does, in the same way Dillon does I think, come to inhabit the characters.
To some extent, the limitations of working within the DC 'Universe' really fired the thing; there's existential terrors like the Arkannone (a demon comprised of a Nazi hit squad,) reified on one hand, and conversely the shattering 'true origin' of Tommy Monaghan which, perhaps ironically, might mark the most dead-on and humdrum realist outlet the author's misanthropy has ever had. Unless you were to count Punisher MAX as a discrete entity, I'd say Hitman is probably Ennis' best single (longform; a couple of those War Stories were superb) work by miles.
Nonetheless, in JLA/Hitman, I was still pretty surprised to read the best JLA comic, certainly in dialogue terms, since George wrote his last - reining it in, as far as Garth's concerned, seems generally beneficial and the team (not that I'm against it, but it's just... it gets a little predictable, and I'd be slightly glum after paying for such a thing) are treated in reasonably salutary fashion without any appreciable loss of humour. Not much happens, but it's particularly evocative - nostalgiac alert - of a period (c.'96-'98) when there were nearly ten DC titles, with an actual DC bullet, that were thoroughly enjoyable and actually worth reading. [N.B. this wistfulness was acquired retrospectively for the most part, but I don't think the period gets enough credit; mid/late nineties was a real halcyon era, at least for DC superhero books.] |
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