What is a Bell Bottom Pick? At Comic Pants, we love the new, but sometimes we get nostalgic to talk up an older book or series and remember some greatness from “back in the day.” That “day” could be the extreme ’90s, the socially relevant ’70s, or the guys-wore-hats ’50s. Who knows? All we can tell you is that a Bell Bottom Pick is worth rifling though back issue bins for or even braving the wilds of Ebay. Our latest “Bell Bottom Pick” is Hitman #1-60 (1996-2001).

Writer: Garth Ennis
Artist: John McCrea, Garry Leach, Carlos Ezquerra, Steve Pugh & Doug Mahnke
Company: Vertigo

Settle in, folks. This is gonna be a long one.

Garth Ennis has a pretty amazing rep in the comics industry, with successes like Vertigo’s Preacher and a well-liked run on Hellblazer, a long run on The Punisher, his new Dynamite book The Boys and plenty more. Much of that work is collected into trades, available to fans who weren’t around the industry when Ennis began wowing American comic book fans back in 1991. However, it is one of the black eyes of DC’s generally impressive trade paperback list that his best work, unmatched to this day, after 15+ years of working in comics, has never been entirely collected. Indeed, most of it is currently out of print. My friends, I’m talking about Hitman.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Ennis’s Vertigo work, but in my opinion, Hitman just edges out Preacher as Ennis’s best work. Forced to work without cursing, nudity, truly extreme violence and all the other tricks he’s brought to The Boys, Preacher and the rest, Ennis had to focus on his strengths in writing characters and edgy humor, and the result is (ironically) a book that often feels more mature and considered than his mature readers work. Some of the most heart-felt and heart-breaking character moments in Ennis’s career can be found in the love affair of Tommy and Tiegel, the friendship of Tommy and Natt the Hat and the father/son dynamic of Tommy and Sean Noonan. All of these are found in the pages of Hitman.

Also found in the pages of Hitman? Ninjas, drug-dealing vigilantes, government conspiracies, zombie sealife, demonic assassins, dinosaurs, mobsters, a radioactive Santa, vampires, monsters from the far East and a man who fights crime with the powers of perversion. So if you like Ennis for the extreme strangeness and the humor, Hitman’s still got you covered.

Unless otherwise noted, writing is by Ennis, art is by McCrea. Garry Leach joined McCrea as of issue #23 and remained as inker from then on. Carla Feeny was the colorist, with a dark yet colorful palette that was a perfect match, reminiscent of the work of colorists like Lee Loughridge. It’s worth noting that although I’ve selected one cover to represent each story arc, the covers on this series are without exception top-notch. If I had the time, I’d scan each and every one of them and put them up to showcase how they stand up as a body of work.

It’s also worth noting that it was guided editorially by Dan Raspler (also responsible for other uncollected gems like Suicide Squad and The Spectre) and then Peter Tomasi (who has shepherded more than his fair share of greats through DC as well.) Here are a few of the highlights, as I break it down for you by story arc.

The Demon Annual #2: It all starts here, as Hitman is launched out of Ennis and McCrea’s run on The Demon, as part of the Bloodlines Annual event. The event featured hideously ugly alien parasites drinking spinal fluid and in the process accidentally infecting some of their victims with superpowers. It was, for the most part, awful, and resulted in some truly awful characters, including Anima, Gunfire and Loose Cannon. I know what you’re saying: Who the hell are they? That’s exactly right. A full list can be found here, for the truly curious. To sum up, they were entirely forgettable characters at best. Except for Tommy Monaghan, likable hitman from Gotham City, who gained the very useful abilities of X-ray vision and telepathy. The actual story where this happens is mostly forgettable, and mostly a Demon story, so I don’t particularly recommend it if you’re buying in back issues, but it is the first part of the original Hitman trade, and it does feature his origin, so it’s worth mentioning. At any rate: Tommy Monaghan, hitman in Gotham, now has X-ray vision and telepathy. Also wears a “costume” of sorts in his eponymous green trenchoat and sunglasses that hide his weird new X-ray eyes.

Hitman #1-3: Here’s where it really begins. Ennis and McCrea reintroduce Monaghan, whose status quo has been ever so slightly tweaked. He’s on the wrong side of a mob boss (a running theme in Tommy’s life is that he pisses off powerful people), he kills supernatural and superhuman foes, and he only kills the bad guys. And he hangs around with a bunch of other hired killers at a bar called Noonan’s in “The Cauldron,” a shoddy neighborhood in Gotham City. He meets a nice girl named Wendy. He’s being targeted for recruitment by the demonic “Lords of the Gun” and their agent, the six-armed demon gunman Mawzir. Oh, and somebody hires him to kill the Joker, which winds up in a roundabout way with Batman punching him in the gut, and Tommy puking on Batman’s boots.

By the end of it all, Tommy’s gained a new powerful enemy in the Mawzir and his bosses, met up with feisty, hot female detective Deborah Tiegel (who will be very important later) and shot his way through Arkham Asylum. In fact, one of the most memorable elements of this arc is when word gets out that Tommy’s going into Arkham, and he gets a half-dozen extra bonus hits to complete while he’s there, which he completes in casual fashion as he walks through on his way to the Joker. It’s a sequence that is memorable, dark, twisted and funny… which can be applied to Hitman as a whole.

Hitman #4-7: While the first arc is good, “Ten Thousand Bullets” is really the arc where Hitman found its groove. Ennis brings back Moe Dubelz, the first in a long line of memorable mobsters, a siamese twin with one dead half, shot in the head by Tommy in The Demon Annual. Frustrated with the lack of success regular hitmen are having taking out Tommy, Moe hires the supernaturally fast Johnny Navarone to kill him. Meanwhile, Tommy is hired to take out smack-dealing vigilante Nightfist. All three of those characters are indicators of where Ennis will go in the future, with goofy puns (Dubelz = Doubles, get it?), pop culture references (Guns of the Navarone) and sexual innuendo (Nightfist = yeah, I don’t want to explain any further). Part of what made me love Hitman, as compared to The Boys, which plays around in the same area, is that in The Boys, Ennis is riffing on thinly-veiled analogues of established characters, whereas in Hitman, he was creating interesting new ones.

This arc is also important in that it introduces Natt the Hat, the overweight hitman from Detroit who was Tommy’s marine buddy in Desert Storm (they shared an unfortunate friendly fire incident together) and who is basically his backup, his sounding board and his best friend. Which is good, because by the end of this arc, Tommy is down one best friend and one girlfriend, but he’s also down one enemy as a result of the first of many blood-soaked vengeance rampages. In addition to introducing a key character, this arc introduces a few of the series’ major themes and recurring elements. The themes are importance of friendship and loyalty and the self-awareness of the immorality of being a hired killer. The elements are that it’s an unsafe lifestyle, and none of these guys expects to die in their bed, and none of them are safe just because they’re a regular character, and that when one of them is killed, taking away one of the few good things in a harsh life, these guys unleash vengeance like nobody else, regardless of how powerful the foe that took something from them.

Hitman #8: Hitman stood alone for the most part, but it was definitely a part of the DC Universe. It guest-starred, at various times, Green Lantern, Catwoman, The Demon, even Batman and Superman. And it took part, during its run, in five major crossovers, including the annual events Bloodlines and Pulp Heroes and the DC crossover events Final Night, DC One Million and No Man’s Land. In every case, it was a win-win… the Hitman issue was one of the highlights of the crossover, and the story constraints of the crossover often forced the Hitman story in an interesting direction. Such was the case with this one-off Final Night crossover, where the sun was out, everybody thought “this might be it” and the regular cast sat around Noonan’s Bar telling stories, and so Ennis and McCrea offer up four tales, each one informative about a character and entertaining in its own right. Structurally, Hitman featured arcs ranging from two to six issues (until the last, which was eight), but it also featured these occasional one shots that were often amongst the strongest issues in the run.

Hitman #9-12: “Local Hero” featured Tommy up against a shadowy government agency that wanted him to kill superhumans, which put him on the same side as recently fired Detective Tiegel and Kyle Rayner, Green Lantern. The result was another case of battling long odds and corruption, with one memorable scene finding Tommy arrested while the neighborhood cheers him, after holding off a SWAT team by holding their Captain hostage. In one of those beautifully incisive bits of dialogue that Ennis often offered up, Tommy tells the befuddled Captain “The only time you boys come into the Cauldron is to kick the locals around or pick up protection money. You keep on treatin’ people like scum — don’t be too surprised who they make into heroes.” There’s also a terrific scene that builds on the surrogate father-son relationship between Tommy and retired hitman/bar owner Sean Noonan, some over-the-top mockery of Green Lantern Kyle Rayner and a deepening of the Monaghan-Tiegel relationship.

Hitman #13-14: Ah, “Zombie Night at the Gotham Aquarium.” Quite possibly my favorite story from the series run, this two-part arc introduces mad scientist research center Injun Peak, and finds Tommy and Natt hired to clean up a rogue scientist with a zombie-creating gas. One thing leads to another, and they find that this scientist has unleashed his gas at the aquarium, leading to zombie seals, penguins, octopi and sharks, in one of McCrea’s most memorable splash pages ever. It’s also a chance to build on some of the supporting cast hitmen, like Chow Yun-Fat homage Ringo Chen and dumb-as-a-post Hacken, who actually cuts his own hand off because he thinks he might turn into a zombie if he doesn’t. “Zombie Night” is Hitman a bit lighter than usual, with the dire downsides of being a hitman turned down a bit and the hilariousness of extreme violence and cute killer seals turned all the way up.

Hitman #15-20: The longest arc of Hitman (except for the final arc), this one also features the return of several characters from early in the run, including The Demon and (from the first arc) the Mawzir. It’s the blowback from Tommy turning down the Lords of the Gun, which means he’s up against an unkillable demon assassin that hates him, and that means he needs some mystical help to beat it. Cue Jason Blood and The Demon, who know both Tommy and mystical stuff, and a guest spot from Catwoman, who’s stolen a magic rifle that might be just what they need.

Plenty of action in this one, plenty of supernatural and superhero genre elements, including a memorable movie-worthy action sequence wherein the Mawzir takes on an army of cops while the good guys are holed up in a church trying to figure out what to do. But what makes this work are the story elements that play against type. The unconventional means that Tommy and Natt use to get Catwoman’s attention remains one of the funniest jokes of the entire series (it involves a dead cat and a spotlight), and Catwoman’s voluptuousness and skills are unusual in the context of Hitman, making her the equivalent of a sexy supermodel who can hang with and outshoot the boys, and thus pretty close to the perfect woman. There’s also further movement down the relationship road with Monaghan and Tiegel, and a terrific use of supporting hitmen Ringo Chen and Natt.

This story arc also introduces Section Eight, the superteam headed up by the drunken superhero Six-Pack, whose accomplishments seem to mostly involve telling obviously delusional stories in Noonan’s while drinking himself stupid, vomiting and passing out. Six-Pack’s team includes Defenestrator (a Terminator look-alike who, true to his name, pushes people through windows that he carries around with him), Dogwelder (who, uh, welds dogs to people) and Bueno Excellente (who fights crime with the powers of perversion), along with a few others. It also brings in Baytor, a weird-looking demon whose only words seem to be “I Am Baytor!” and who will become a regular at Noonan’s bar. These bizarre, funny characters are the kind of thing that all too often over-power Ennis’s modern-day work, drowning any more serious themes or intent, but used sparingly, as flavor and humor, in the pages of Hitman, they really work.

Hitman Annual #1: The theme of DC’s annuals in 1997 was “Pulp Heroes,” and the variation on the theme that Ennis chose was “Weird Western Tales.” The result is a pop-culture laden tribute to the Man With No Name, as Tommy goes to a Texas border town, and mixes it up with a corrupt sheriff and a gang leader over a lost coffin full of money with the help of a local ex-military man. The result, as illustrated by 2000 A.D. regular Carlos Ezquerra and Vertigo regular Steve Pugh, is full of gunfights, standoffs and all the twists of a good western, with Tommy Monaghan in the Clint Eastwood role. It’s best if you have a fondness for that genre and especially the Eastwood/Sergio Leone classics, but if you do have that, it’s one of the best standalone stories of the series’ run.

Hitman #21: The month in which DC had some sort of weird cover theme where each book featured a giant headshot of the lead character. They actually look kinda cool (if not as cool as Marvel’s 25th anniversary covers with the same basic idea), but the most memorable cover was actually a Deadpool parody cover featuring the word balloon “Hey, look. It’s my head.” OK, that’s off the topic at hand, which is Hitman #21, a sweet, romantic standalone that features the first, ahem, intimate encounter between Tiegel and Monaghan. Which features some wonderfully awkward moments for Tiegel, and then even more awkward moments for Tommy when events conspire to land him in the midst of a drug deal and a shootout. It’s got moments of cute, moments of hilariously funny, moments of action and a terrific payoff. The Monaghan/Tiegel relationship was fraught with difficulties, but this was the peak for both characters, as they let down their guards and share an important moment.

Hitman #22: Another standalone, the “Christmas issue” of Hitman, and one that is such a favorite of mine that I pull it out every year to re-read. It’s a twisted little tale about a Scrooge-like janitor at a nuclear power plant who is transformed by a nuclear accident into a radioactive monster, and who finds a Santa costume and goes on a rampage. Enter Tommy and Natt, who stand to earn $10 grand in X-Mas spending money by wasting the dude. Two Blues Brother and Blade Runner references later, the boys get their Christmas wish and evil radioactive Santa gets his come-uppance. All of this accompanied by a rhyming set of narrative captions to put you in that Clement Clarke Moore (Night Before Christmas) mood, featuring such memorable rhymes as “‘Word!’ said his homie, ‘I got my nine! Let’s go bust a cap in that nuclear swine!’”

Hitman #23-27: “Who Dares Wins” was an arc where the Desert Storm “friendly fire” incident first mentioned back in “Ten Thousand Bullets” came back around to haunt Tommy and Natt. It’s another case of past violence having ramifications, and in addition to having pissed-off SAS hunting them down, Tommy and Natt also wind up on the wrong side of Men’s Room Louie and his mobsters. So really, it’s two vendettas, both more or less fairly earned, coming down on the characters at the same time. It’s also probably the darkest story the book had featured up to this point, with the SAS portrayed as deadly, near superhuman killers who had Natt and Tommy completely outmatched. Indeed, the internal strife of the SAS unit is what leads Tommy to escape with his life, rather than any particular skills in his arsenal.

This remains my least favorite of the Hitman stories, because it felt like Ennis’s crush on the SAS and showing off how badass they were interfered with the story rather than enhanced it, and while it did pay off a long-running story for Tommy and Natt, it really did feel like they were mostly guest stars in a story about this SAS unit. It’s still a really good story, but it is, to me, the weakest of the run. It’s also the story where Garry Leach comes on as inker, and it’s a very noticeable development, with heavier shadows and much more defined lines in McCrea’s art. When I first read the book in the ’90s, I preferred McCrea on his own, but upon re-reading, I find that the Leach collaborations were definitely stronger.

Hitman #28: A one-off epilogue to “Who Dares Wins” and prologue to “Tommy’s Heroes” all in one, this issue was another great character study by Ennis, McCrea and Leach. Because Ennis is so well-known for carnage and outrageous humor, it’s often forgotten that he can also do more subtle, human characterization, and the one-off issues of Hitman were some of the best examples of that. This particular issue sees Tommy on the outs with Tiegel, in one of the most realistic “love/hate” relationships you’ll see in comics, as well as dealing with the guilt of what he does and learning that Natt deals with his guilt in very different ways. It’s a great example of why Tommy could be a paid killer and yet seem like a stand-up guy, a likable protagonist, and his feelings of guilt over what happened in “Who Dares Wins” helps to spur an important decision in “Tommy’s Heroes.” This issue also features one of my favorite Baytor sight gags in all the run, as the demonic bartender gets up and gets (Irish) jiggy with it in Noonan’s when Sean hires an Irish band to play. “I am O’Baytor!” Nice.

Hitman #29-33: Tommy, Natt, Hacken and Ringo hire on with a shady U.S. company (think early Blackwater) to prop up an African government against an armed revolution. Turns out that the government has an aged, corrupt dictator and he has two very corrupt and very nasty superhuman bodyguards, and the gang has to decide between the money and the principles. It’s probably not a spoiler to reveal which way they choose, but I won’t spell it out. What I will say is that it’s clearly influenced by Ennis’s love for any number of war movies, and there are plenty of references for fans of the genre, including an obvious “Kelly’s Heroes” ref mentioned by the characters in the form of a Tiger I tank. It’s an interesting shift of locale and even genre, but it feels completely right for Hitman’s cinema-influenced style, and while there have been plenty of epic shootouts in Hitman already, turning it into a full-fledged military battle really let McCrea and Leach cut loose.

Hitman #1,000,000: OK, this takes a bit of explaining. Basically, Grant Morrison did this big crossover miniseries called DC One Million, where the heroes from one million years in the future came back to the present. As a tie-in, a lot of DC comics had a #1,000,000 issue. Hitman seemed a weird fit for the crossover, and it is, but it’s also a chance for Ennis and McCrea to really exercise their comedic chops by mercilessly poking fun at the whole thing. Some nerds from the 853rd century use time travel to pull Tommy into the future, so that they can get his iconic “Hitman” powers, only it turns out that his legend has been wildly exaggerated and his “powers” really aren’t transferable. It’s one of the weaker issues of the run, honestly, all joke and no heart, but it does feature an absurdly funny piss-take on one of the other Bloodlines heroes, Gunfire, who had the dubious power of being able to turn anything he held into a deadly firearm. Leading to one of the funniest lines of the Hitman series, namely “Oh my God, I turned my ass into a hand grenade–”

Hitman #34: In my opinion, this is the single best issue of Hitman in the run… and it may be the best single issue Garth Ennis has ever written. It’s a very simple story, in which Superman, facing a crisis of faith, meets up with Tommy on the roof and has a heart-to-heart, which results in him getting a much-needed boost. The same Garth Ennis who seems to have nothing but scorn for superheroes in modern projects like The Boys shows that he gets Superman, that he has an admiration for what the character is meant to be, and also uses Superman as a metaphor for America, contrasting the ideal with the reality. It’s a fairly moving and intelligent story, capped off with a pretty funny gag, and it’s one of the best Superman stories in the past 10 years, while also telling the reader something important about the lead character of the book in the way he relates to Superman. It’s this issue that makes me cringe all the more at the one-note aspects of Punisher and The Boys… good as they may be, I know that Ennis is capable of so much more.

Hitman #35-36: After a lighter issue in One Million and an optimistic one in #34, this two-part arc begins a series of dark tales for Hitman that will more or less continue until the end. The sense of humor is still there, but there’s a more fatalistic tone, and a lot more loss for all of the characters, from here on out. This is probably the darkest of the stories in the entire run, as Tommy meets the Irish sister he never knew he had and learns the truth of his mother and father. It’s an ugly story, and there’s even more unpleasantness as Tommy is angry with his more or less adoptive father Sean Noonan for keeping it from him. Tommy’s search for his roots takes him back to Ireland, where he suffers some pretty dire losses and can only seek the most violent of retributions. While Tommy’s stories have often had an underpinning of tragedy, the hurts and revelations piled upon him in this story are some of the cruelest.

Hitman #37-38: It was at this point that another DC crossover intruded on Hitman, and as with most of the others, all it did was provide an interesting writing challenge that Ennis rose to admirably. In this case, Gotham was cut off from civilization and became a “No Man’s Land,” and that actually fit in pretty well with the lawless vibe that Tommy and friends lived in. A young mother, unable to go to the police in new Gotham, came to the principled killers at Noonan’s to find her young son, who had vanished. Given the cover, it’s probably not a spoiler to reveal that the boy’s disappearance has to do with vampires, and so Tommy and his crew wind up facing off with a crew of nasty bloodsuckers. It seems a weird fit, but thanks to the effects of the last arc, the poignant loss of a young boy and the general supernatural/weird science vibe of many of the Hitman story arcs, it works. It also plays off of Tommy’s increasing guilt and desire to do some good, not to mention starting to heal the Tommy/Sean rift begun in the last arc. The “No Man’s Land” status quo continued to inform stories from here on out as well, especially in “For Tomorrow” and “Closing Time,” when the lack of cops and law made the villains’ maneuvers that much easier.

Hitman #39-42: In the same way that “Tommy’s Heroes” was Ennis’s tribute to war movies, “For Tomorrow” is his tribute to Hong Kong cinema. “For Tomorrow” is a focus on Ringo Chen, the Chow Yun-Fat-inspired hitman who has both friend and potential rival to Tommy for as long as the series has been running. It features the return of a supporting character not seen since the second arc of the series in a surprising role that will have major ramifications for Tommy, and also reveals the backstory of Ringo Chen. It has the by now traditional pattern of overwhelming adversaries, major lumps for our heroes and then a bloody, gunfire-packed reprisal, but there’s a more ominous tone to the whole thing. When Ringo’s story concludes in #42, it’s probably the first indicator that Ennis and company have their eyes on the finish line of this title.

Hitman #43: Another epilogue of sorts, as the first few pages more or less result from the ending of “For Tomorrow,” and those pages provide the impetus for a great Tommy/Tiegel story, told entirely in this issue. Oh sure, a lot of the issue is about Natt and Tommy taking on a hit and humor (and murder) ensuing, but what you’ll remember about the issue is the last two pages, which provide one of the funniest gags of the entire series as well as a pretty good statement of where the Tommy/Tiegel relationship seems destined to end up. A lighter issue, all things considered, but a fairly important one, and another example of how good the one-off issues of Hitman often were.

Hitman #44-46: The Injun Peak research facility returns, as Tommy and Natt accidentally find themselves time traveling and fighting dinosaurs. First in the past, and then in modern-day Gotham. Mixed in with the obvious attraction of guns and bazookas against dinosaurs and dinosaurs rampaging through Gotham is a likable character bit about Tommy’s childhood love for dinosaurs, an interesting bit of insight into the personality of a powerful T-Rex and another angry military bastard who gets ruthless, bloody come-uppance in his pursuit of Tommy’s death. It’s weird to call something as carnage-filled as this arc “light,” but the dinosaur/time travel element is definitely on the funny, odd side and it’s considerably less dark than the pathos-filled “Old Dog” that follows or the swan song for a major character “For Tomorrow” that preceded it.

Hitman #47-50: At this point, it had become quite clear that Ennis had his eye on the end of the series. I can’t remember at what point the end was announced, but this story saw the death of another major character, which was quite a turning point in Tommy’s life, as well as the introduction of another major enemy arrayed against Tommy and his friends. Sean Noonan takes center stage in this one, as we get a flashback to a military story that helped shape him into the honorable, strong man that he is in Tommy’s day, and we get to see that though neither man can say it thanks to their macho exterior, both Tommy and Sean are aware that they’re more or less father and son.

While it’s really an epilogue to “The Old Dog,” technically, issue #50 is a standalone, one of two looks into the future where characters reflect on the exaggerated, inaccurate legend of Tommy and his crew. Where the One Million Issue played the concept for laughs, this one takes the opportunity to have an older character reflect on the truth of Tommy’s life after he’s gone, allowing Ennis to step back from the story a bit and talk more about the characters and their legacy. McCrea delivers another stunning “picture is worth a thousand words” bit of storytelling in the two-page splash that shows how Tommy reacts to the death in “The Old Dog,” and it’s another of those “horrible vengeance” responses that Tommy and friends unleash upon those who would hurt them and their friends. Issues like this one, with a touch of melancholy and plenty of appreciation for the twisted but sincere honor that these characters represented, are what helped this series become a favorite of mine.

Hitman/Lobo: This came out right around the time of “Superguy,”, but it takes place well before that, as a writer’s note on page one reminds the reader, “Clearly, this story takes place before most of the cast were slaughtered.” A strange pairing, but one that also somehow works. Lobo’s lowbrow tendencies are actually a perfect fit for elements of Garth Ennis’s work, and an arrogant, blustering bounty hunter makes a pretty good foil for Tommy, especially given his tendency to attract strange elements like demons and aliens into his average tough guy life. Anyway, Lobo’s a jerk in Noonan’s bar, picks on Six-Pack, pisses off Tommy, who shoots him in the eyes and then leads him on a merry chase through The Cauldron. And this chase, which also involves local mob figures gunning for Tommy, results in hilariously over-the-top carnage, culminating in the unkillable Lobo going up against Six-Pack and Section Eight and getting utterly humiliated over and over again until he’s forced to flee the book in shame. With one last humiliation on the last page to send him out. Oddly good for the Lobo fan and the Lobo hater alike, and Doug Mahnke’s art is perfectly in line with McCrea’s sensibilities while being different enough to set the Hitman/Lobo one-shot apart. Not an essential read, in terms of the series continuity, but a lot of fun, especially for those who enjoy the sort of humor that Six-Pack and Section Eight embody.

Hitman #51-52: Another swan-song for another supporting character, as this two-part arc shines a light on a heroic story of Six-Pack and his superteam, Section Eight, as they battle one last menace from Injun Peak. Plenty of over-the-top superhero mockery here, as Section Eight’s last stand is a goofy parody of the big epic superhero team battles, but there’s also some serious respect for heroism and sacrifice in the eventual payoff for Six-Pack and his team in the last few pages. Funny and outrageous, but also surprisingly sweet and touching. It actually makes a pretty good companion piece to Hitman/Lobo, and I recommend reading it immediately after that.

Hitman #53-60: It’s definitely not easy to end a series as strong as Hitman had been, but “Closing Time,” the final eight-part arc, is just about perfect. Ennis, McCrea and the rest had been building to this ever since “For Tomorrow,” when they started offing major supporting characters and foreshadowing the truth of these characters’ existence, which is that nobody gets out alive. “Closing Time” offers up a couple windows of escape, promising an unexpected happy ending for Monaghan and Natt, and in the end, it is sort of a happy ending, but it’s bittersweet, and just about the only ending I can imagine being this satisfying.

At any rate, leaving aside that the book ends on a high note, resolving the thematic throughline of the book so strongly as to render it immensely re-readable, it’s also a very well-constructed arc. Ennis introduces two characters a bit late in the game (the old Eastwood-esque cop Lieutenant Connolly and the spook enemy turned ally McAllister), and I suspect that what they add to the story might have been stronger if they’d featured a bit earlier in the run, but they still both serve their purposes well. McAllister is in fact a character from the “Local Heroes” arc, but she was more or less off-screen, and never met the main characters, so for all intents and purposes, her introduction is here.

But this arc really does tie up all the outstanding plots, as well as allowing for some reflection on the character. Another enemy springs up thanks to someone Tommy has killed in the past, and provides the perfect contrast between a rookie but talented killer and a killer with experience. Tommy has it out with Tiegel in an unexpected way that does justice to both characters. And we get extended flashbacks to the lives of Tommy, Natt and even Sean Noonan, including, at long last, the story of how Tommy and Natt met in the first place. The story draws in elements, characters and occurrences from throughout the series, and features a heroic, doomed battle of principle against overwhelming odds that is right in line with the movies that informed Hitman’s sensibilities to such a great extent. After building up for so many issues, expectations are high, and Ennis and company really stick the landing on a near-perfect ending.

It is an absolute travesty that this book is out of print. With any luck, it’s a mistake that will be corrected in 2008.