A couple of quick notes:

In the vampire story, the lead vampire has just travelled from the pages of Ennis’ HELLBLAZER run (providing a pleasing cap to that story as well as an interesting contrast in how Constantine and Monaghan resolved their respective problems - now *that* would be a mind-blowing crossover!)

The “Fresh Meat” arc in #44-46 is almost certainly a homage to the very early 2000AD story FLESH, which also featured a one-eyed dinosaur and time-travelling would-be hunters.

Perhaps Starman (which’d give you a mid/late-90s hat trick, since you’ve already covered Hitman and Chase), although that might be a little daunting.

Especially since I sold my run on Starman a while back and forgot to buy the trades before several of them went out of print.

I know, I’m an idiot. But DC has been making noises about reprinting Starman again soon. With any luck, they’ll reprint it in chronological order instead of the stupid skipping around (and skipping issues) they did in their last reprint. And I sure would love hardcovers, maybe even a few Absolutes. It’s a series that’s worthy of it.

I’m not sure what your favorite cover is, but I was always partial to #39’s cover. It brilliantly portrayed the Tommy/Ringo relationship and told so much about the characters. Great piece of storytelling on McCrea’s part.

I’m not sure if I’d call it my favorite, but it’s definitely one of my top three. I think my favorite is probably #14, which just sums up so much of what’s wrong (and thus funny) about “Zombie Night at the Gotham Aquarium.”

I realize this was an ambitious and time-consuming project, but do you plan on writing another similar article down the line? If so, may I suggest Joe Kelly’s Deadpool run? I know you loved that book, especially the second half when Walter McDaniel came on as artist, and it’s certainly one of my favorite runs of all-time.

There’s always the possibility. This was a fair amount of work, but I was enthusiastic about it after re-reading the series so it didn’t take me *too* long to finish. Deadpool is definitely one of those I’d like to re-read at some point. And I’ve long talked about doing one of these for Suicide Squad, but I re-read all those just a few months ago and didn’t do the review, so I don’t know if I’ll ever get around to that or not.

Hopefully, the JLA/Hitman comic is a precursor to DC waking up and getting trades for this series in print.

I’ve mentioned this before, but you turned me on to the book with issue #36. It was the second part of the Ireland story, but I was still impressed and not at all confused.

I’ll have to agree about that two-page spread in the 50th issue. Holy crap, that truly blew me away. One of the best Hitman moments, definitely.

I’m not sure what your favorite cover is, but I was always partial to #39’s cover. It brilliantly portrayed the Tommy/Ringo relationship and told so much about the characters. Great piece of storytelling on McCrea’s part.

I realize this was an ambitious and time-consuming project, but do you plan on writing another similar article down the line? If so, may I suggest Joe Kelly’s Deadpool run? I know you loved that book, especially the second half when Walter McDaniel came on as artist, and it’s certainly one of my favorite runs of all-time.

I remember seeing this book during my days in high school at my local grocery store and flipping through it but never purchased it unfortunately. Hopefully DC will give this series new life and maybe put it in an Absolute format soon. I’ll have to check out the JLA/Hitman series now after reading this. I would love to find issue 34 somewhere.

Question: If one is offended by cruelty to animals, should they read Hitman? Dogwelder comes to mind, but it would only be cruel if he killed the dogs first, rather than simply finding them that way, which is sick and twisted, but not really cruel since they are already dead.

I’m a bit offended by cruelty to animals (especially dogs) myself, and while the whole Dogwelder thing never seemed as outrageously funny to me as it did to those who hate dogs (like Warren Ellis), it did seem funny. There’s never any scene of him killing a dog or anything, and it’s certainly easy to decide that he’s welding dead dogs that he found onto people.

In the context of the tone of the rest of the series, it only ever mildly bothered me. Whereas I did tend to get pretty annoyed at Ellis’s constant hatred of dogs being paraded in everything he wrote. Not enough to quit reading him, but enough to be annoyed by it every time it popped up.

As with all things, it’ll come down to your personal tolerance levels, but I’m a bit of a softie for dogs, and it never bothered me so much as to ruin the series.

Thanks, that helps. You seem to have the same feelings about Ellis. I really like his writing, but whenever I come across one of his diatribes about dogs, I am (a) disgusted and (b) bored with how he never lets it go.

I’ll check it out, but most likely only if DC publishes the trades again. I don’t have the money, the energy or the space to track them down in single form.

So I guess my question is: would I be better off getting back issues from Mile High, or crossing my fingers and waiting for reprinted trades?

Question: If one is offended by cruelty to animals, should they read Hitman? Dogwelder comes to mind, but it would only be cruel if he killed the dogs first, rather than simply finding them that way, which is sick and twisted, but not really cruel since they are already dead.

I’m a bit offended by cruelty to animals (especially dogs) myself, and while the whole Dogwelder thing never seemed as outrageously funny to me as it did to those who hate dogs (like Warren Ellis), it did seem funny. There’s never any scene of him killing a dog or anything, and it’s certainly easy to decide that he’s welding dead dogs that he found onto people.

In the context of the tone of the rest of the series, it only ever mildly bothered me. Whereas I did tend to get pretty annoyed at Ellis’s constant hatred of dogs being paraded in everything he wrote. Not enough to quit reading him, but enough to be annoyed by it every time it popped up.

As with all things, it’ll come down to your personal tolerance levels, but I’m a bit of a softie for dogs, and it never bothered me so much as to ruin the series.

Wow, near the top of the list of questions I never thought I’d ask…

I’m actually being serious, though. I am an animal lover and am put off by depictions of cruelty to animals, so I’m not sure about this series. I don’t want to not see the forest for the trees here, but I’m just curious if it’s a running thing or not.

As a “for instance”, I like Transmetropolitan, but I am turned off by Warren Ellis’s depictions of cruelty towards dogs, just because he doesn’t like them.

Help? Insight? Therapy?