Reptilian

I'll admit I haven't read the others but Hitman is one of my all-time favorite books. I like the feeling of family that Tommy and his pals build over the course of the book. This is one of those books that just continues to improve as it goes along with both Ennis and McCrea honing their craft and growing more comfortable with each other's strengths as the book progresses.

@Kyletheobald it really is just a remarkable series!

Hitman is somewhat unique as it is an ongoing series in mainstream continuity that has a definitive start and end. Not many comics get closure, and certainly not as impactful as this one.

It is also a series that keeps the reader off balance with its rollercoaster tone. One arc they’re fighting displaced dinosaurs and another confronting childhood trauma. Best of all, Tommy is just an imperfect man who makes the right decisions when it matters.

Obviously I love The Demon as well, which spawned the Hitman character. Ennis brings the best of dark humour, moral hypocrisy and dignified barbarism to the title. Paired with McCrea’s gaunt, sinewy depiction of Etrigan making him seem more sinister and deviant, the series distinctly stands out from others as unique. I’ve read it at least three times.

I’ve wanted to read the Vertigo Hellblazer for a long time. But the only financially viable way to do so is digitally. The thought of reading 300 comics on a screen is off putting for me.

I almost bought the collected trades of Preacher a while back. It seems like the kind of title and subject matter I would get into, but have yet to.

None of them. I could barf up a better story than Garth Ennis in his prime.

Hellblazer and preacher

^^Would love to sample some of your barf sometime to compare. From experience on here, people who don’t like Ennis tend to dislike his attitudes towards religion.

I dislike Garth Ennis because he writes like a 14 year old boy. The boys, for example, the worst comic book ever written. I am not religious at all, and I thought hellblazer was okay at best and boring drivel at worst.

I can see why you could conflate Ennis with a 14 year old boy, when he uses a lot of base, sexual humour, his characters are often men acting immature or without responsibility, and he utilises violence for shock value. Of course, for all these examples he has proven, especially in Hitman, that he can deliver a dramatic storyline with heart and value. Hitman is one of the few titles I’ve had strong emotional responses to. The Boys, which I have not read but have been aiming to, seem to embody the “men behaving badly” abuse of power trope. It is intentionally an examination of power in the wrong hands. I’ve heard it is very juvenile humour, which makes sense, because these “heroes” act like amoral children burning ants with a microscope. Homelander is a man-child with a god complex.

If he has an aggressive editor he is tolerable and sometimes even okay. None of his work has ever been truly great or groundbreaking to me though. Nothing he has ever written is something I believe only he could do.