Hitman Book 4: Ace Of Killers (#15-22)

"I am Baytor!" - Baytor

Hitman, the story so far.  With the power of X-Ray vision and telepathy, contract killer Tommy Monaghan rose to the top of his profession in Gotham City.  Serious injuries in book 2 have limited the usefulness of his telepathy but he's still the number one, go to guy for weird hits.  When he isn't out killing for money, he hangs out in a bar called Noonan's with fellow killers Natt the Hat (his best friend), Ringo Chen (who might just be better than him at killing) and Hacken (who is.. he's just Hacken) under the watchful eye of bar owner and father figure to Tommy, Sean Noonan.  Tommy's adventures are set firmly in the mainstream DCU and he has already clashed with Batman and teamed up with Green Lantern.  This book which is one arc, plus two one shots sees the return of Jason Blood and Etrigan the Demon and adds Catwoman into the mix as Tommy and friends take on a vengeful demonic being he defeated back in book one. Onwards!

THE ACE OF KILLERS - The story begins with a short scene of Catwoman stealing a rifle from a museum. Then we cut to Tommy and Natt stocking up on Ordinance at a dockside warehouse. Suddenly the demonic Mawzir from Book One attacks. Tommy and Natt manage to escape in their car while the Mawzir claims that "this city is mine." The Arkonne, the Lords Of The Gun in Hell are not impressed that Tommy escaped, but the Mawzir says he has rounded up some humans to help flush Tommy out.

Mawzir is back, and he's pissed.

Back at Noonan's, Natt and Tommy discuss the situation. Sean tells Tommy that someone in the bar has been watching them all evening, so they follow the man into the toilets and interrogate him.  Tommy tries to read his mind but only gets "MAWZIR", going deeper now gives him terrible migraines.  The frightened man says that they were holed up in their gang hideout and the Mawzir just showed up and took over. They leave and bump into Tiegel who says the Gotham PD fired her.

She invites Tommy back to her place and they commiserate over drinks.  Later she makes a drunken pass at Tommy, but he is a perfect gentleman and just tucks her up in bed.  Then he meets with Natt, carrying a dead cat in a bag (it was dead when he found it, don't worry).  When the Mawzir attacked he managed to get an image of Catwoman from it's mind and so using a dead cat and a floodlight he makes a "cat-signal" to attract her attention.  Amazingly it works and Catwoman appears, Tommy tells her he saw her in the demons mind.

The Cat Signal

Catwoman: "Is this a joke?"

Tommy: "Uh-uh.  Why would I bring you all the way up here if I wasn't one hundred percent serious?"

Catw:oman: "Because you might be some kind of degenerate, leering pervert."

Natt: "Turns out he is a degenerate, leering pervert..."

Tommy swears it's the truth and that he saw her with a gun.  She then recalls a client who wanted her to steal a fancy gun called "The Ace OF Winchesters".  When she realises she's been used by a demon, she decides to join forces with Tommy and Natt and take the Mawzir out.  After Catwoman leaves, Tommy and Natt swoon over her, and Tommy grins and teases Natt about seeing her with his X-ray vision.  Meanwhile Tiegel wakes up and dimly recalls the previous night which results in a big "NOOOOOOO!"

Jason Blood, the charmer.

Tommy enacts the next part of his plan which is tricking Jason Blood into coming to Gotham.  Blood being the human who shares a soul with the demon Etrigan, also featured in Book One. Blood resists helping him at first, but it turns out Tommy did an "offscreen" job for him that Blood ducked out of paying for, so Blood reluctantly hears him out. When he hears about the Ace Of Winchesters, Blood gives it's backstory as a legendary occult artefact whose most notable property is the ability to kill demons. Tommy figures that the Mawzir decided to remove the one thing that Tommy could use against him.

Tiegel then turns up and wants to talk with Tommy, but before they can, the Mawzir attacks.  Tommy, Natt, Blood, Catwoman and Tiegel all manage to get to the car and escpae, they hunker down in a nearby church where the Mawzir can't get them.  Tommy hands out guns, Catwoman won;t kill though, but she will lay down suppressing fire against the Mawzir's human gang.  Tommy then tells Blood they need Etrigan's help, like now.

Tiegel, meet Catwoman

Outside the church, the Mawzir tells his hapless human gang that it is their job to soak up bullets until he can get his hands on Tommy.  Inside the church Tommy tells Blood that they need Etrigan to get the gun from the Arkonne and bring it to the mortal world so he can use it to kill the MAwzir. Blood agrees as does Etrigan.  Etrigan isn't rhyming at the moment, he is diminished, Blood has taken Etrigan's heart from him.  The current Lord Of Hell is a mad demon called Baytor, who wears the "Crown Of Horns".  Etrigan needs the Crown to give him the power he needs to take on the Arkonne. So off he sets to get it.  Meanwhile Tommy and Tiegel continue their belligerant sexual tension.

Tommy: "C'mon, am I really such a bad guy?"

Tiegel: "Yes!"

Etrigan

Drunken fantasist "hero" Sixpack turns up at the church to help Tommy, but realises it's too much for him.  He then sets out on a quest to reunite his "superteam" Section Eight.  This threads through the next issue but to make it easier to read, I'll introduce them now. The team is made up of Friendly Fire, who can only hit his teammates. Dogwelder, who welds dead dogs to people. Bueno Excellente who fights crime with "the power of perversion" (ah, it's not a Garth Ennis comic if it doesn't include sodomy somewhere). Shakes, who um.. shakes. The Defenestrator who whacks people with windows. Jean De Baton-Baton who uses the power of Frenchness against his foes and Fleghgem, who.. well draw your own conclusions, it's gross anyway.

Section 8, assemble!

Back in Hell, Etrigan wrestles the Crown Of Horns from Baytor.  He walks up to the Arkonnes castle and demands entrance only to be blasted down to his skeleton by a huge gun. He manages to put the crown back on and grows his body back.  Meanwhile, the Mawzir's attacks have let up for a short while and Tommy and Tiegel talk some more.  She gets snippy about his reaction to Catwoman.

Tommy: "Just talking tactics Tiegel. Kind of an idea I got for later on. You ain't jealous are you?"

Tiegel: "You wish."

Tommy: "Yeah, I do."

Tiegel: "What?"

Tommy: "Yeah I do wish. I figure at least one of us ought to be honest about the way we are feeling."

Etrigan comes for the Arkonne

Back in hell, a rejuvenated Etrigan tears his way through the Arkonne's castle.  They try and order Mawzir back to help them, but Mawzir is so fixated on killing Tommy he refuses and Etrigan destroys them and takes the gun.  Back in the mortal world, Blood tells them Etrigan has the gun, but that'll take two hours to bring it to the surface.  Tommy says he can get it faster than that by swapping places with Etrigan.  Blood says NO, but Tommy read his mind earlier and knows the summoning incantation to bring forth Etrigan in Bloods place.  He recites it and Etrigan arrives screaming in triumph much to the alarm of all assembled.

Etrigan is feeling fiesty. Tommy says he can't hurt him on consencrated ground.  So Etrigan uses his fire breath to blow the church to smithereens and de-consencrates it. Tommy though has hold of Etrigan's heart that Blood was carrying with him.  Tommy offers the heart for the rifle, but Etrigan will only accept if he is given the heart first.  Suspecting he'll be double-crossed Tommy says no.   The Mawzir then realises the church can no longer stop him and he and his bodyguards launch an attack.  Our anti-heroes hide out in the cellar. Tommy reads Etrigans mind and Etrigan tells him he is stalling the Mawzir oh and can he have his heart please?  Then he kicks Tommy out of his head, the feedback knocks Tommy out.

The gun for your heart Etrigan...

Outside Section 8 arrive and the unlikely heroes manage to kill or disable all the Mawzir's men left out there. The Mawzir uses a hell grenade to blow open the cellar.  Etrigan curses Tommy for taking to long to hand over his heart, then finds Baytor has travelled out of hell with him in the folds of his cloak. Finally Tomy takes a risk and hands over Etrigan's heart and Etrigan gives him the rifle.  Tommy points it at the suddenly scared Mawzir who starts begging for his life.  Tommy pulls the trigger and there is an awful click, the sound of an empty gun.

Uh-oh..

Gleefully the Mawzir smacks Tommy around, while Etrigan replaces his heart, which also restores his rhyming.  Baytor though has the ammunition belt.  Etrigan demands Baytor give it to him, but a sultry Catwoman asks Baytor to give it to her instead.  He of course does so, and with the Mawzir distracted, Tommy manages to grab the Winchester and Catwoman tosses him the ammo.  He chambers a round and blasts the Mawzir with it.  A short gun battle ensues as Tiegel, Natt and Tommy take out the last of the Mawzir's men and Tiegel and Tommy share a passionate kiss. They find the Mawzir seperated out into the five Nazi's officers he was constructed from.  Tommy kills them all, finally and utterly kiling the Mawzir for good.

Even demons cannot resist the power of boobs.

Etrigan looks like he might cause trouble, but Natt threatens him with the Winchester and he returns to Hell, with Blood back and very pissed off with Tommy over him giving Etrigan his heart back. Tommy, Natt, Tiegel, Catwoman and Section 8 escape through some old tunnels to avoid the police presence the gun battle attracted. Back at Noona's Tommy asks if Baytor can stay there as he did save all their lives.

Sean: "But he's weird.  What are the customers gonna think?"

Tommy: "Come on.  A giant space monster ate the sun last year.  People get used to stuff."

The inevitable happens...

Catwoman bids Tommy farewell, telling him to keep the gun as it may prove useful to him once again.  Then Tiegel leaves, telling Tommy to call her.  Finally Etrigan reappears and in a roundabout way thanks Tommy for giving him his heart back, and that he likes Tommy, but also Tommy should watch his back too.  "I'll be waitin'" says Tommy and that concludes this plot arc.

KISS ME - The last two chapters are two one-shots.  This first one is drawn by Steve Pugh and sees Tommy and Tiegel take their relationship to the next level as well as kicking off some trouble that'll come back to bite Tommy in the next book. After an evening hanging out at Noonan's, Tommy heads to Tiegels, who is inside wearing a sexy red dress.  Then she starts to panic and takes the dress off, changing back into a T-shirt and jeans.  Then she starts practicing how to tell Tommy she is a virgin when he opens the door and startles her, causing her to blurt out:

Tiegel: "Ah! Monaghan! I've never made sex before!."

After recovering from her humiliation, she confesses that she is attracted to Tommy because he is the first man to treat her as an equal, as a human being. They kiss, then we next see them in bed, post coitally smoking a cigarette each. She says she enjoyed it, but it feels a bit weird as well.  She's having a hard time still reconciling Tommy the nice guy with Tommy the killer.

Sexy time.

Tommy: "I ain't trynna excuse what I do, you know? But Jesus, I ain't apologising for it neither."

Tiegel: "And you want to be with me, even if I feel like this about you?"

Tommy: "I wanna be with you because we're great together Tiegel."

Suddenly Tiegels Mum and Grandad return home unexpectedly and in a panic Tiegel pushes Tommy out onto the balcony where he scrables to put his clothes on.  Then the balcony gives way and he crashes through the roof of a building across the street and into the middle of a drug deal between Lefty Lugano an Z-Dogz.  The guns come out and the misunderstanding results in everyone but Tommy ending up dead.  Then Tiegel calls down to Tommy and makes another date with him, leaving him punching the air with joy.

THE SANTA CONTRACT - This is a Christmas issue whose main gimmick is that the narration is all in rhyme.  A disgruntled, Christmas hating nuclear power plant worker called Bob Smurd accidentally falls into some nuclear fuel and rises again as a mutant who can burn people to death with his touch.  So he puts on a Santa outfit and goes to declare war on Christmas.  The power plant owners decide to hire Tommy and Natt to deal with him, which is fortuitous for them as they are both currently broke.   They get tooled up which results in this fantastic bit of rhyme:

Bob Smurd reborn.

Narration: "'Word!' said his homie. 'I got my nine! Let's go an bust this nuclear swine!'.  So they took their nine millis and a big forty four, and a hand grenade Tommy was keeping in store.  And enough ammunition to fight a small war. And went to inform vile Bob Smurd of the score."

They find him causing mayhem at the shopping mall and take him out using first their car then their guns.  Later they return for drinks at Noonan's celebrating being able to buy Christmas gifts and reflecting on the crazy year they have had.  Natt leaves Tommy with a present, which Tommy unwraps and when he sees its a kids cop playset he goes chasing after Natt while Sean laughs his head off.  And that's the end of Hitman Book Four.

Even Hitmen celebrate Christmas

Book Four keeps up the quality of the previous books, with plenty of mayhem but also balances it out with the blossoming of Tommy and Tiegel's relationship into something more serious and it allows us to see a more loving and tender side to him that at least explains why he can be found so charming by readers even if in another book he'd more likely be cast as the villian.  This is roughly a third of the way through the series and it's noticable that the stories after this start to pull away from using other DC characters, although the stories are still set in the main DCU Gotham.  The two one-shots are a nice breathing space between the epic "Ace of Killers" arc and the very serious "Who Dares Wins" one that kicks off the next book, which I hope you'll be joing me for in a few days time.

Hitman Book 3: Local Heroes (#9-14)

"...All of a sudden I just don't feel like runnin'" - Tommy

Hitman, the story so far.  Acquiring the gifts of telepathy and X-ray vision, hitman Tommy Monaghan has risen to the top of his dubious profession.  He lives in a shady part of Gotham City called The Cauldron and when he isn't out shooting people he hangs out with his friends at a bar called Noonan's.  In the previous book his childhood best friend Pat was brutally tortured to near death by someone looking for Tommy, forcing Tommy to put him out of his misery.  Tommy managed to take out the man who did this but not before being badly wounded himself and losing his relationship with a woman called Wendy when she found out that he really was what he joked about being.  Tommy's adventures take place firmly in the mainstream DCU, he met Batman in the first volume and in this one will meet the Kyle Rayner Green Lantern.  While Ennis obviously has some respect for Batman, this isn't true of Kyle and he's portrayed as about as dim as you can get without crossing the line into open mockery.  With that said then, lets crack on.

LOCAL HEROES - The story begins with Pat's funeral, which is well attended.  It ends with Tommy, Sean, Hcken, Ringo and Natt by the graveside.  They each take a swig of booze and poor the rest on the coffin. Hacken admits that what Pat did before he died, he "never heard of anything as tough as that before".

Meanwhile Detective Tiegel is being questioned over her use of a dead collegue as a bullet shield when taking on a group of armed villains.  She lose her temper and accuses everyone of corruption, she is allowed to keep her job for now.  But later she gets into a fight with the dead guy's old partner and this results in her getting a suspension.  As she goes to confront the Captain she stops and hears her talking to a shady guy from the government who wants to recruit Tommy for something and if he disagrees, the Gotham police force will take him out publically.

Detective Tiegel

Meanwhile at Noonan's, Tommy is telling Sean how his injuries sustained in the last book are affecting him.  He can hardly keep one hand level and using his telepathy has become painful, if he goes too deep he gets a horrible migraine. Truman and his bodyguard Feekle find Tommy in the bar and ask to talk to him.  Tommy agrees but immediately starts needling Feekle about his name. Trueman says his department deals with superheroes.

Truman: "Bright costumes.  Incredible powers.  Battles with the city/country/world at stake.  Bit of soap opera. Public can't get enough of it. Our aim as far as possible is to control them...but what we want to talk to you about is their destruction."

Truman, the little creep.

Tommy says no.  He will not and never will kill a good person.  No matter how much money he is offered.  Truman says it's a shame and he and Feekle leave.  Later Tommy is at Pat's packing up his things, when suddenly the place is surrounded by many armed police.  Using his wits, Tommy manages to take their leader hostage and gets the rest to drop their guns.  He and his hostage get in a car and drive it away, while the locals cheer Tommy for putting one over on the police.

[As an aside, what's absolutely fascinating about this, is that Ennis did in fact reuse this idea of CIA backed superhumans who keep the rest of the superheroes in check with his main protagonists of The Boys.  Although context is everything, the morally upright heroes of the DCU need no shady govermental monitoring so this is an obviously villainous plan that Tommy is offered as becoming part of.  In The Boys the majority of "supes" are venal, corrupted, immoral and murderous and so a group of lets say "anti-heroes" charged with smacking them down when they get too far out of line is one the reader can get behind (I'll be discussing The Boys in April and May of next year, mark your calenders folks).]

Surprise!

Hearing of this, Truman says it's time to go to Plan B.  It might encourage Tommy to change his mind, if not Feekle can deal with him. Still in the car, anothr car piles into the side of it and it turns out to be Tiegel who tells Tommy to get in and then drives away shaking off the rest of the police as they go.  Tiegel says she didn't want the shady guys getting their hands on him as he "a bloodbath waiting to happen."

He takes her to the home she shares with her African-American mother and WW2 veteran grandfather, a German WW2 veteran.  Yes really.  Her deceased dad was a white cop. Tommy turns on the charm with her mother who is delighted Tiegel has bought a man home for once. Later when it's just Tiegel and Tommy talking, she tells him he everything she despises. He says he's choosy about who he shoots.  She says that makes no difference.  He then makes to leave.

Tiegel and Tommy get acquainted.

She asks him to stay and admits she jumped wihout thinking when she rescued him.  He says he's up to his neck in trouble, and just killing Trueman won't help.  Tiegel has an idea, why don't they make his plans public.  That way they can blackmail him and also embarress the Gotham Police colluding with him.  Tommy agrees.  Next day he is chliing on a rooftop thing when suddenly Green Lantern attacks him.

Green Lantern accuses Tommy of being hired by a Crime Syndicate to kill him. They end up in a running battle which ends in an impasse, Green Lantern's fist to Tommy's face, Tommy's gun to Green Lantern's head.  Tommy then proves he would never kill a good guy by withdrawing his gun.  He and Green Lantern go to Noonan's where he and Sixpack have some fun with Kyle over him being a replacement character.

Green Lantern and Tommy fight it out

Green Lantern tells Tommy he was told Tommy was out to get him by an Agent McAllister.  she showed him pictures of Nightfist and said this fate was planned for him.  Tommy laughs at how used Green Lantern must feel, although he admits the police have a lot of reports on him.  Green Lantern reacts with shock when Tommy says he is a hitman, but Tommy tells him to relax and that he only kills bad guys.  Tommy then fills Green Lantern in on Truman's proposed plans to recruit him as a superhero killer.  Green Lantern reluctantly agrees to help him and Tiegel blackmail Truman.

Kyle isn't the brightest bulb in this storyline.

Tommy phones Truman and tells him to meet him outside the Hilton Hotel the next night and perhaps they can do business.  Truman arranges to have Sean Noonan kidnapped to ensure Tommy's good behviour.  This goes badly for the men he sends.

Afterwards he phones Tommy to let him know he is alright.  After Tommy puts the phone down he thinks to himself.

Tommy: "'See you Sean' an' I nearly say uncle Sean by accident... that's nothin' though. Theres been times I nearly called him dad."

Sean deals with his attackers.

The next day, Tiegel takes up a smiping position and attaches a wire to Tommy so they can record what Truman says to him. There are Truman's goons hiding all down the street Tommy's X-Ray vision tells him.  But Green Lantern is their back up for when things kick off.  Tommy then walks out and meets Truman.  Truman tells him that metahumans are humanties greatest threat.  If they realised their potential and started to work together, normal government by the people would be over.  He says Tommy would have access to the highest level of killing technology, and he will rid the world of the "superhuman plague".

Truman: "Under my orders, if I tell you to firebomb the Batmobile, you do it. If I tell you to execute an Amazonian Princess, you do it.  If you find yourself looking down a telescopic sight at Superman and I say kill, you will pin him in the crosshairs and send a muclear bullet directly into his skull".

Tommy battles Feekle.

If Tommy says no again, his friends will be killed and Tommy tortured for life.  Tommy does say no and starts to walk away.  Truman's men begin to attack, but Green Lantern in a ring construct spaceship appears and they surrender to him. Mr. Feekle however, raging about being mocked by Tommy chases him into a shop.  But Tommy blasts him stone dead.

Later Tommy meets with Green Lantern, who says he was not happy working with Tommy but perhaps justice is darker in Gotham.  He keeps talking not noticing Tommy has slipped away leaving him monologuing to himself. Tommy contacts Truman and tells him he has copies of the tape and if anything happens to him or his friend they'll be released to the media.  Truman agrees to leave Tommy alone.. for now.

Oh Boo Hoo, Green Lantern.

Tommy and Tiegel have a chat together where he mentioned she said she would arrest him one day.  She says she's still suspended so can't.  He asks if she would if she wasn't.  She says "almost certainly".  Grinning, Tommy bids her farewell.  The story ends with Tommy at a baseball game.  The Gotham team are the underdogs here, there's been a fix but it will only take the team so far.  Tommy wants a win, not for the bet he put on them but for Pat.  And I assume (knowing nothing about baseball myself) that the team wins when the batsman strikes a home run and Tommy reacts with ecstasy.

ZOMBIE NIGHT AT THE GOTHAM AQUARIUM - There are more dodgy goings on at Injun Peak Research Facility.  One of the scientists has been murdered but managed to write "call Monaghan" in his blood before dying.  Tommy and his friends are relaxing when the call comes through, they met a scientist who tells them that  Doctor Oswald Minett has gone rogue.  He was responsible for Project Wormwood.  He invented a gas that would revive the recently dead, with the hope it had military applications.  But the zombies were uncontrollable and only wanted flesh.  Not one to give up they suspect he's going to try a mass test but not on humans.

When Undead Octopus's Attack!

This gives Tommy the idea that he'll be at the aquarium, which he is.  He starts boiling the water in all the fish tanks until they are all dead and he releases the gas.  At the aquarium Tommy and Natt bump into Ringo who had also been given the contract. Natt is then attacked by a zombie octopus.  They manage to blast it to death.  Then Hacken chainsaws his way in, he just tagged along to see what was happening.  Tommy opens the door and is presented with a whole room full of zombie animals.

Brains?

They start fighting then and Hacken gets bit in the hand by a zombie baby seal that Tommy has to club to get to let go.  Hacken panics that he'll turn into a zombie now he's been bitten and his hand needs cutting off.  Better safe than sorry, Ringo chops it off with the chainsaw.

Natt: "Gotta admit, that guy Hacken is one hardcore dude, you know? Most anybody else would have died of shock straight away."

Hacken: [blasting his severed hand] "Gotta make sure of it. Don't want it coming after me".

Ringo: "Does that seem like a mind remotely susceptible to shock?"

Natt: "Point".

Hacken then deals with some zombie penguins in this awesome panel.

There are no words...

They then start making their way through the aquarium looking for Minett.  On the way they are attacked by a zombie dolphin.

Zombie dolphins FTW

They take it down, but Minett has seen them and drops zombie fish on them. He then confronts armed with a gun.  Tommy asks him if you can become a zombie by being bitten, the scientist says no, you have to be dead and exposed to the Wormwood gas.  Before he can kill them, a zombie shark breaks through it's tank and practically bites Minett in two.  In the rush of water the boys lose their weapons.  Tommy still has his and blasts open the door and the water rushes into the next room.  They jump down into the water and grab their guns and go all out on the zombie animals.  With all of them dead, they leave before the authorities can give them any trouble.

Zombie animals are no match for the Hitmen

The story ends with Tommy contemplating the stack of notes infront of him.  His pay for dealing with the zombies and Minett.

Natt: "What you doin' with your half?"

Tommy: "I'm mailing every cent of it to Greenpeace before I'm too sober to care."

Natt; [wordlessly moves his stack of cash next to Tommy's]

Tommy: "I guess we must be crazy, huh?"

Natt: "Nah.  You're crazy.  I'm just stoopid."

And thus ends probably the funniest Hitman arc of them all and the book overall.

This is a really enjoyable book.  We get to see Tommy use his wits, charm and cunning to get out of mess after mess in the first story.  Tiegel is a nice, fiesty addition to the cast.  Like us the audience she is both attracted to Tommy by his affable personality and sense of loyalty, while being repulsed by the fact he's a hired killer.  Poor Green Lantern gets the piss taken out of him for most of the story, but he does come through and help Tommy out of a tight spot.  It goes without saying that "Zombie Night..." is utterly hilarious with John McCrea's art really shining as it portrays the variety of zombie animals.  Thus endeth Book 3.  The next book sees the return of Etrigan and a villain Tommy already defeated once...

Hitman Book 2: 10,000 Bullets (Hitman #4-8, Hitman Annual #1)

"Nobody disses Natt the Hat's hat" - Natt the Hat

Hitman, the story so far.  In a 1993 crossover event called Bloodlines an Irish-American hitman by the name of Tommy Monaghan gets the powers of X-ray visions and telepathy which elevates him to the top of his profession.  He lives in a shady part of Gotham City called The Cauldron and hangs out with his mates in a bar called Noonan's when he isn't out capping people.  The Hitman comic started proper in 1996 and ran until it's cancellation in 2001.  In the first book, Tommy managed to get a powerful conjoined twin mobster called Moe Dubelz mad with him when he killed his other half Joe.  This book resolves that dangling plotline and also sees the start of one of the repeated themes of the book, that by refusing to change who he is and what he does, Tommy suffers physically and emotionally and starts to lose everything dear to him. The bonds of brotherhood and loyalty are also a big part of Hitman and this book sees them tested for the first time. It also sees Ennis realise that a telepathic hitman is somewhat overpowered and takes steps to limit how much that power can be used by Tommy.

HITMAN: 10,000 BULLETS - The story begins with Tommy pondering on what happened during the events we are about to see.  With Ennis using it as a way of passing judgement this early on, on Tommy and the chaos and death his lifestyle brings AND makes the reader complicit in their enjoyment of such a way of life that Tommy has, brave stuff.

Tommy: "It's all just a laugh, it's all a big adventure full of guns and jokes and crazies, and then my best friend dies  and I lose the girl I thought I had a chance with - and if you're really there God, are you trying to tell me something?"

And this could be something he says about the series as a whole.  Yeah it's great fun when he and his mates are fighting killer penguins, but the downside is personal loss and tragedy.  It's fascinating to find such a meta condemnation this early in the books run.

Jonny Navarone.  What a dick.

The story begins proper with Tommy being confronted by another hitman while in bed, who wants the one hundred grand Moe Dublez put on his head.  Tommy shoots him with a gun he has under the covers and goes back to sleep, grumbling. The action then cuts to the grotesque sight of Moe Dubelz and his dead conjoined twin still attached to him.  A suave killer called Johnny Navarone arrives and tells Moe he's had access to a secret agencies files that told him what Tommy's metahuman abilities were.  He has a plan to kill Tommy and will do it for half a million dollars.  Moe acquiesces.

Tommy gets a hit supplied to him by a cop.  Seems a costumed "superhero" called Nightfist has been going round killing drug dealers then dealing their supplies himself and he wants him taken out.  Tommy agrees.  We then see Tommy in bed with Wendy, they have been dating two months and Tommy hasn't told her what he does still.  Which is a problem as Wendy admits she's in love with him. Later at Tommy's place he finds another friend of his, Natt the Hat is back in town due to the death of his Mum.  Before they can do any catching up they are attacked by a gang of ninjas.  Yes, really.  They fight them off, and as Tommy blows up the car the ninja's are chasing them in he says to Natt, "welcome home you son of a bitch".

Tommy and Natt the Hat.  If you want swearing, read a Vertigo book!

Tommy introduces Natt to the gang at Noonan's, describing him as his "best buddy", this results in a single panel and an easily missed "shocked" reaction from from Pat, who is Tommy childhood best friend. Tommy says he and Natt met in the army and served in Desert Storm.  Sean tells Natt he served in the Korean war himself.  This trope of the protagonists of his stories having military backgrounds is one Ennis uses quite a bit.  I assume it's to emphasise the fact they are no strangers to either guns nor violence.  Anyway, Natt and Tommy say they didn't serve with much distinction.  They only managed to accidentally kill an S.A.S patrol, and hurriedly covered it up.  This throwaway story comes back to haunt Natt and Tommy with a vengeance in a later book.  Back at the pool game, Pat needles Hacken one too many times and Hacken punches him, immediately Tommy and Sean pull a gun on him.

Hacken: "That's right chicken! You go an' hide behind Monaghan and good old uncle Sean.  You never been worth Jack on your own... you're just a slimy little weasel!  An' you know it!."

Hacken is displeased.

Hacken leaves and later Tommy admits to Natt that he does have a point, Pat is continually on his case, but that Hacken's such a moron they figure he deserves it.  Natt then starts to pretend to hold Tommy up so they can attract Nightfist's attention.  They finally do and Tommy shoots him, but as he does so he hears the word "grenade" in his mind, and he and Natt get caught in an explosion.  Johnny Navaronne appears and shoots Tommy several times, telling him as he does so that he is the best hitman.  That boastfulness gives Natt time to recover and throw a grenade of his own and he manages to get Tommy away.  Tommy says no hospitals and Sean's is too far away, they'll have to go to Wendy's house.

Wendy is horrified, both by the state Tommy is in and finding out he was telling the truth about being a hitman.  As Natt starts bandaging Tommy she tells him she'll call the police, but stops when Natt says that'll result in Tommy's death.  She calls Sean instead.  Back with Moe Dubelz and Johnny, Johnny reflects that he has the address of Tommy's known associates from the cop who set up Tommy with the Nightfist job, but who in fact was working for Johnny.  Later Tommy wakes up at Wendy's badly hurt still, but alive.  She is incredibly angry with him.

Wendy: "You brought your evil into my house.  You're a murderer, a stone killer... all this time."

Tommy: "I never lied to you".

An understandably pissed off Wendy.

She slaps him hard.  Then as he and Natt and Sean leaves her final word to them is "scum".  Due to his armour, Nightfist survived his shooting by Tommy and beats the information about who set him up out of one of Dubelz men, then swears melodramtic vengeance on them.  Tommy and Natt meanwhile head to Pat's place.  But when they arrive they are faced with the horrifying sight of Pat naked, in a bathfull of blood.  He was tortured by Johnny Navarone to give up where Tommy was but didn't break, no matter what Johnny did.  And in another example of the subtlety of the comic, we see Tommy looking down Pat's body in absolute horror but saying nothing, implying Pat's been castrated if you have a mind to go there (I do).  Grief stricken, Tommy says he wishes Pat has told Johnny everything and that it wouldn't have mattered.

Pat: "Nah. I wanted to stand up for myself Tommy. Just for once... wanted to be a tough guy."

Tommy: "Well you were Pat.  You were the toughest guy of them all."

We then hear a shot as Tommy puts Pat out of his misery.  Natt asks him what he'll do next.  Tommy says they'll go to Moe Dublez place and kill everyone there and won't stop until every last one of them is dead.  "Cool" responds Natt.

Pat,  horrifically injured and close to death.

At Moe's, the corrupt cop is warning him and Johnny that Tommy is alive and out for revenge.  Suddenly Tommy and Natt's car piles through the window and crushes the cop against the wall. Tommy and Natt, armed with semi-automatic rifles, get out and start killing everyone there.  Moe and Johnny escape the immediate vicinity.  Nightfist also arrives but is caught between a hail of bullets from both sides and killed.

Natt and Tommy split up.  Natt gets into a fight with a huge and aggressive chef.  He beats him down and when the chef begs for mercy, Natt responds he "ain't heard zip about mercy for the chef."  Tommy takes on Moe Dubelz and shoots and shoots and shoots him.  Moe still mamages to get his hand around Tommy's throat before Tommy takes him down finally with a headshot. 

Tommy versus Moe.

Unfortunately this distraction meant he wasn't able to detect Johnny sneaking up behind him.  With no time to take aim he snaps off a wild shot in Johnny's direction and miraculously hits Johnny's gun hand, shattering the gun and taking off two of Johnny's fingers. "You've ruined me!" exclaims Johnny.  Then as Tommy closes for the kill he says that two killers of their calibre could achieve a lot working together.

Johnny: "Believe me Monaghan: We're better than the rest of these scum."

Tommy: "But we're all scum, Johnny"

Johnny: "What?"

Tommy: "We're all scum".

And he executes Johnny. We're back where we started this arc now, with Tommy wallowing in self pity.  Natt arrives and tells him to keep his head straight and not get lost in this stuff.  Then he and Tommy walk off together in the rain.

And it is kinda your fault too Tommy...

 THE NIGHT THE LIGHTS WENT OUT - The most notable thing about Hitman existing in the DCU is that certain crossover events have to be incorporated into the on-going narrative.  This issue takes place during the events of the 1996 event "Final Night" where a monstrous alien called a Sun Eater arrived in our solar system and well, it eats the sun.  As the heroes battle to sort things out, Earth grows cold and so Tommy and his friends hole up at Noonan's bar and tell each other stories of them dealing with the possibility of death.

Sean recounts that the closest he came to death was when he was serving during the Korean war.  His battalion was fighting thousands of Chinese, and when they were all dead, all that was left of Sean's battalion was him and his sarge and they were completely out of bullets.  Then they spot more Chinese coming towards them, when Sean panics and asks his sarge what to do, his sarge grimly snaps up his bayonet and gets ready to take them on.  Thankfully the air support arrived and took out the attackers, but the sarge didn't make it.

Sean Noonan survives the Korean war just barely.

Natt recalls that for him it was when he was back in his old gang.  The new leader set him up during a drugs for guns deal.  The drugs he was supposed to be handing over was just a note saying he was going to waste the other gang leader for sleeping with Natt's sister.  Luckily for Natt this gang leader was a deep cover cop who takes out Natt's "buddies" and apologises to Natt for running out on his sister, saving Natt's life he hoped would make them square.

Hacken, missing the point of the stories being about facing death starts telling a story where he killed lots of chickens.  Then Ringo Chen has his turn.  After performing a hit in Hong Kong he was sipping champagne and enjoying the view when a man came up behind him.  Ringo turned and shot him, but the man did not react.

If it's the DCU's "Death" incarnate, she's lost her looks here!

Mystery Man: "You are a killer yet you appreciate the beauty in a skyline or the taste of a good champagne. You bring death, you like life."

Ringo: "I've found the two need not be mutually exclusive."

Ringo believes he met Death that day, and that maybe for the others Death will look different.  Finally Tommy tells the story of the first time he faced death.  He was a kid in the local orphanage and Pat who was being raised by Sean was his best friend.  They were being bullied badly and one day Tommy organised all the local kids into delivering a beatdown on the bully.  Later that day, the bully came back, tearfully holding a gun.  But Tommy stared him down and he dropped it and ran off crying.

Tommy: "'cause you point a gun at most guys an' it paralyses them. It's like they're hypnotised, starin' down the barrel, thinkin' about what it'll do to 'em.  But it ain't the gun that's gonna tell 'em that. It's the guy holdin' it.  It's in his eyes."

Happy childhood memories, aah.

And so ends this crossover issue.  While the superheroes battle in space and Hal Jordan sacrifices himself to restart the sun or something, we get a quiet story of rememberance that helps establish some character traits and history.

HITMAN ANNUAL - This issue is the only one not to have John McCrea on art duties in it, split as it is between Carlos Ezquerra and Steve Pugh.  It's Ennis's take on a western as Tommy is called down to a remote town called Tiburon in Texas by the Chief of Police there.  There is an uneasy peace between his force and the local Mexican mobsters led by a man called Santiago.  The latest source of friction is that a land developer has bought up the rights to build on a graveyard, and it is rumoured that in one of the graves is two million dollars left there by a gang who went to lie low in Mexico and never came back.

A very "Joe Dredd" looking police chief.

The Chief says that Santiago has someone with metahuman powers helping him out and he heard that Tommy dealt with things like that.  Tommy says he'll look into things before taking the job. Later in the day in the local bar, Tommy meets an ex-Gulf War veteran called Jorge who has Gulf War Syndrome thanks to exposure to some weird chemicals while helping dispose of weapons in Iraq.  While they chat, Santiago arrives with his metahuman, a man called Manko who is insanely fast on the draw, and he warns the Chief off the money and tells Tommy to get out of town, though Tommy humiliates him by holding a gun to his groin.  Tommy does decide to leave but not because of Santiago.

Tommy: "Life in Tiburon is hard enough on people to begin with. Last thing this place needs is me making things worse."

Spitefully, the Chief contacts Santiago to tell him Tommy is leaving and Santiago sends him men to ambush him at the hotel.  There is a huge gun battle, but Tommy is captured and beaten up then dragged behind a truck.  He regains conciousness with Jorge looking after him.  Jorge says he got the note Tommy left and phoned the number, he also gives Tommy back his shades and his fathers gun to defend himself with.  Tommy is full of gratitude.

Jorge: "The hell with it.  You join the paratroopers, you expect to be pulling marines outta trouble."

Jorge comes to Tommy's rescue.

Jorge also warns Tommy that Manko was in his unit during the incident with the chemicals and that he was the only one to take the dubious cure being offered afterwards and he was never seen again until now.

Later the coffin in question is found and the police and Santiago's men confront each other in the main street.  Tommy arrives on the scene and so does Natt, who tools Tommy up.  Santiago says he has a present for Tommy, which is Jorge, minus an arm, tied to the bonnet of one of his men's cars.  A three-way gun battle commences, during which Tommy rescues Jorge.  It ends when, during a stand off between Manko and Tommy, Natt sneaks up behind them and blows Manko's head off with a shotgun.  Tommy then wounds Santiago and Jorge finishes him off.  The Chief meanwhile has opened the coffin to find worthless paper money inside.  Tommy ties him up and leaves him in the coffin, and Natt bulldozes the earth back over him.  Then the two of them walk off together and so ends Hitman's take on the spaghetti western.

Tommy and Manko face off in the street in cinematic style.

Overall this book is full of goodness.  The heart of the book is 10,000 Bullets, which gives Tommy his first loss of the series, both of a friend and of a relationship.  It also offers up a possible judgement about finding entertainment in the very things Tommy is good at in an interesting play on expectations people might have of a Garth Ennis character archetype.  As well as all the shooting, there are some wonderfully subtle character beats and Natt the Hat is an instantly appealing character who always can be trusted to have Tommy's back in a bad situation.  Very bromantic. The Annual is fun, while the crossover tie-in is a nice look at how big events in the DCU impact the normal lives of non-superhero types. Thus endeth book two.

Hitman Book 1: A Rage In Arkham (Demon Annual #2, Batman Chronicles #4, Hitman #1-3)

"It's way to easy to get superpowers these days.  Hell, I should know" - Tommy Monaghan

The two regular features of this blog (Alan Moore Obscurities and Videgame Tie-In's) get to take a month of because all of November will be devoted to the seven collected volumes of Garth Ennis and John MaCrae's Hitman series.  Why?  Because it's my bloody 40th birthday this month and I am treating myself.  Anyway, Hitman had an interesting genesis.  The titular Hitman, an Irish-American called Tommy Monaghan was introduced in The Demon Annual #2 which was part of a "Crisis Crossover" called Bloodlines, and where he got his superpowers of telepathy and X-Ray vision.  He then guested three years later in an issue of the Batman Chronicles before being spun off into his own series in April 1996, which ran for sixty issues plus extra's until it was cancelled in 2001.  This series is set firmly in the main DCU, so no "fucks" or "cunts", no full frontal nudity and relatively restrained violence (at least as far as Ennis is concerned, it's still very violent for a mainstream book!).  The publication history of the trades is interesting.  The first four collect around the first third of the series in relatively slim volumes.  They then when out of print for most of the noughties, then were republished with the other two thirds of the series crammed into three much thicker volumes.  I'll be dividing the reviews into arcs to make things clearer and covering the extra one-shots individually as well.

Pretty badass

I must say, having read The Boys first I was initially unsure how much I would enjoy a book drawn by John McCrea as he didn't impress me at all with his work for that series.  But he is much better suited to this type of series.  He is able to use exaggeration and charicature to great effect, and has a meaty, thick black-lined style that has a nice impact when drawing fight scenes as well as being expressive during quiet moments.  The colouring helps massively here as well, The Boys had a much more subdued colour palette and his work suffered for it.  Here the colours are striking and vivid and help give his art a strong look that really stands out from the usual Marvel and DC style fare.  Garth Ennis is my second favourite writer of comics after Alan Moore, with an ability to construct characters you really care about despite their flaws and is really superb at naturalistic dialogue and daft or tense situations. Anyway, with that said, let us begin.

THE DEMON ANNUAL #2 - This issue was part of the 1993 DC crossover event "Bloodlines". You can read more via the link, but basically it had aliens coming to Earth and drinking spinal fluid.  This usually killed the victim, but in a few cases it gave a person super-powers instead.  It was intended to create a new wave of modern 90's EXTREME heroes, but it's widely considered that Hitman was the best thing to come out of the event and the rest of the heroes faded away, usually ending up as cannon fodder in later DC events.

Tommy's first scene

The Demon was an on-going series being written by Ennis and illustrated by McCrea (the art is cruder in this issue, McCrea improves alot in the gap between this and the next appearence of Tommy).  The Demon itself is a yellow fellow clad in red called Etrigan, who's speech is all in rhyme.  He is linked to a man called Jason Blood who, when he needs Etrigan chants "Gone, gone O form of man.  Rise the demon Etrigan" and Etrigan will be summoned from hell to deal with the situation for his own inscrutable reasons.  I first came across him in Alan Moore's run on Swamp Thing, where he was deadly serious.  Here Etrigan is a much lighter figure, joking around and dropping pop culture references,  I had to make quite a mental readjustment to this take on him.

Tommy is introduced waiting to perform a hit, but before he can, one of the aliens called Glonth attacks and kills his mark, then comes after Tommy and slurps his spine too.  But Tommy survives and is rushed to hospital, he awakens to find his eyes are now black pools and that he can see through people down to the skeleton and is overwhelmed by their thoughts (he later gains control of these abilities and can turn them on and off at will).  Tommy escapes the hospital and goes to his friends Pat's house to get tooled up.  He then declares himself "not Tommy, Pat.  Hitman".  But this ID is never used again.  He's always referred to as "a hitman" rather than "the Hitman".

Ah, sweet, delicious spinal fluid.

The man he was going to kill before Glonth  munched his and Tommy's spines was a mobster called Robert Dubelz. His siamese twin sons Moe and Joe want revenge on the monster and Tommy and put out a contract on him.  Tommy decides to crash the funeral and deal with the twins.  As he observes the guests arrive he sees Jason Blood, trying to read his mind leaves him shaken.  Glonth then crashes the wake and so does Tommy.  Jason switches places with Etrigan and starts to fight Glonth.  Tommy battle spills over into Etrigan's and he gets knocked down, but manages to rally and kills Joe Dubelz one half of the twins before also turning on Glonth.  Glonth now outmatched, flees, while Moe Dubelz bellows that he'll have his revenge on Tommy. Tommy and Jason Blood both leave the funeral.

Glonth takes on Tommy and Etrigan

Jason Blood: "It's not always a good idea to go peering into the dark.  Sometimes you might not like what you see."

Tommy: "And sometimes, Mr. Blood.  Sometimes, you ain't got a choice."

And the Annual ends.  It's a great intro for the character of Tommy, and establishes characters and plot threads that get picked up three years later when Tommy gets his own series.

BATMAN CHRONICLES #4 -  It starts with the arresting image of Batman with a gun jamed in his mouth by some two-bit thug.  The thug was actually after Tommy, but using his powers, Tommy managed to manipulate the thug into covering Batman who was stalking him while he goes off to deal with his latest mark a creature who escaped a research laboratory and is part of a plague Gotham is suffering.

Get out of that one Bats (he does easily)

Tommy: "They've come up with a guy called Thax.  Now Thrax is a sort of walking disease bomb. They engineered him so they could just drop him in an enemy city and he'd just walk around  spreadin' pnuemonia, ebola, the mumps...your tax dollars at work."

Batman escapes the thug holding him hostage and goes to find Tommy, who has located the monsterous Thrax. Batman refuses to let Tommy kill Thrax saying his blood could hold the plague cure.  Tommy says Thrax has a timer inside him ready to set him off like a bomb.

Batman: "I will not let you earn blood money of this creatures life. I will not let you kill him"

Tommy: "For crying out loud Batman, look at him."

Sucks to be Thrax

This conflict over saving a single life when many more are at stake is something that comes up between Tommy and Bats in the 2007 JLA coda to the series as well.  For now Tommy observes that Thrax has dies and that he should use white phosphoros to deal with the body before the disease timer goes off.  Batman reluctantly lets him, and in the explosion, Tommy escapes.  Batman has bigger things to worry about right now, with the plague still rampant, but swears he and Tommy will meet again.  This one-shot is a nice reintroduction to Tommy, showing his clamness and cleverness when dealing with the likes of Batman and keeping his own skin alive as well as establishing him as a Gotham city boy.  It was good enough to get Tommy his own ongoing series a few months later.

The Rage In Arkham begins...

HITMAN #1-3: A RAGE IN ARKHAM - The start of the series has Tommy going over how his metahuman abilities give him an edge in his chosen field as he takes down a gang of thugs and some hired supervillains.  We then get to meet Tommy's friends at a poker game, who will become more significant in later arcs.  There is the older man Sean who owns the bar Noonan's which they all frequent and he's a retired hitman.  There's his nephew Pat, who isn't a hitman but who supplies Tommy with guns.  There's Ringo Chen, who might just be a better hitman than Tommy and Hacken, who is just... Hacken, the comic relief of the series.  Tommy also says he doesn't use his abilties playing poker because he has standards.

Meanwhile, in Hell, two demons called the Arkonne - The Lords of The Gun - observe Tommy saying he is just what they are looking for, despite his one scruple of not killing anyone good.  They think if they can lure him to a place of evil they can twist him into accepting their offer to work for them. They send their current enforcer, the Mawzir to Gotham to engineer this meeting. 

The Arkonne

Back on Earth Tommy bumps into a woman while unloading firearm supplies from his friends car.  He jokes to her that he is a hitman and uses telepathy to see she likes Indian food and invites her out for a curry.  Inside Pat's place, Tommy gets offered a million dollar contract over the phone. When he goes to meet his contact, he finds out it's for the Joker, who is currently locked up in Arkham.  Later that contact gets beaten up by Batman and tells him what Tommy is planning to do.

Tommy ends his date with Wendy like a gentleman, but then gets attacked by Batman.  He tries to fend him off, but Batman grabs him and punches him in the stomach and Tommy vomits curry all over Batman's feet, who then tosses him into the street where several cop cars are waiting, and Tommy gets arrested.  Using his telepathy to discover one of the cops is having an affair with the other cops wife, he tells them this and the cuckolded cop makes the other stop the car and they get out and he knocks him out.  Tommy in turn knocks that cop out and goes to Pat's to get free of the cuffs and to get tooled up for the hit.

Tommy and his best friend Pat.

At Pat's, Tommy comments that he can't understand the lengths being gone to, to protect the Joker.

Tommy: "He's a motherlovin' bomb waiting to go off, is what he is. A sensible man woulda bust a cap in him years ago.  But oh no, not Batboy."

Pat is concerned that Tommy still intends to go through with the hit.  Tommy sees the million dollars as a way out of Gotham and to a life in Manhattan.  Pat says he'd miss him.  Tommy tells him to come with him. A pleased Pat then reels of a list of hits people want doing to inmates of Arkham "beer and pizza money" for Tommy. Then Tommy goes to Arkham and manages to infiltrate past the police cordon by hijacking a cop car.  Inside he starts capping and maiming inmates.  He arrives at the Joker and shoots him in the head, but the wound heals and the Joker turns into the Mawzir and shoots Tommy.

The Mawzir revealed.

Mawzir: "There is no million dollar contract on the Joker, Monaghan. There is no new life for you in New York city.  There is no quiet retirement safe from sudden death.  There is no hope.  There is no future.  There is only me."

A hellish cloud appears over Arkham and all the cops bar the mixed race female detective Tiegel are too scared to go in.  She does as does Batman. The Arkonne appear and tell Tommy they want him to kill for them, like the Mawzir, who is five nazi officers fused into one being.  Tommy tells them they can "stick their offer".

Tommy blasts his way free of Mawzir and blows open Killer Croc's cell with a grenade, and Croc attacks the Mawzir.  Tommy bumps into Tiegel and Batman closely followed by the Mawzir.  Batman deals with Killer Croc while Tiegel chases after Tommy.  The Mawzir injures Tommy further, but Tommy uses telepaphy to discover the Mawzir can be hurt by his own gun.  Tiegel blasts it out of the Mawzir's hand and Tommy catches it and badly wounds the Mawzir.  The Arkonne give him one last chance to join them but Tommy tells them to "blow."  He then makes the Mawzir heal him and say that the Arkonne suck, before killing him.

Tommy 1, Demons From Hell 0

An injured Batman appears and Tommy covers both him and Tiegel with another gun.  He says to Batman:

Tommy: "I ain't your problem big man. I don't sell smack to kids or rob old ladies, or try to teleport Gotham to the moon.  The guys I whack, hell it's what they do. So how about staying off my case?"

Batman says he's a hitman, of course he's Batman's problem. Tommy says he could easily kil them both, or tell everyone just who Batman really is.  But he won't do that and leaves.  Batman, Tiegel and the Arkonne all expound that one way or another they'll get Tommy Monaghan.  The book ends with Tommy watching the sun come up, reflecting he didn't get a million dollars, but he does have one good thing in his life - a second date with Wendy.

Tommy, ostensibly a good guy

On the face of it, to begin with, Tommy looks like just another gritty 90's anti-hero.  Amoral and willing to kill anyone who gets in his way.  But actually, he does have morals. He never does kill anyone who doesn't deserve it, the "Hitman who only takes metahuman contracts" angle is dropped completely after this and he tangles only with murderers, mobsters and monsters almost always in self defence.  It's also made clear that although he is a funny and likeable guy, the world he inhabits is one he can't escape from due to what he does.  It's a nasty, grubby little world and he either isn't able or isn't willing to transcend it and it ends up costing him family, relationships, friends and finally everything.  Oh there's plenty of fun stuff that happens along the way, but this series gets as dark as you can while still be a part of the mainstream DCU.  In a way it's actually a judgement on the 90's anti-hero archetype, showing the terrible cost bourne by the soul of living your life that way.  But like I said it's not all bleakness and horror, just wait until you see the zombie penguins and invasions of dinosaurs that happen in later books. And Dogwelder, mustn't forget Dogwelder!