Hitman #11 (February 1997)

Kyle's just lucky Bueno Excellente doesn't exist yet.

Hitman #11 (February 1997)
By Garth Ennis, John McCrea, Carla Feeny, and Willie Schubert
Cover by John McCrea
Edited by Peter Tomasi and Dan Raspler

My whole life I've been considered the loud one. It was always meant as a derogatory critique of the way I unconsciously expressed myself. It wasn't until I met the Non-Certified Spouse and she described me to my friends as "gregarious" did I realize that my loudness wasn't a flaw and an irritant. It was my exuberance and joy in being with and around people I love. While normally I would come off as shy or introverted, taking a back seat to others in most situations, when I was around my people, the people I was entirely comfortable with, I would guffaw and exclaim and talk overly loud in my excitement. Those in the surrounding area would think me a blowhard or a show-off or just a bellowing asshole. But I never cared or noticed until some jerk would later comment on how awfully loud I was or would leave a note on my desk post the office Christmas party hinting that maybe I should drink less. But whoever that asshole at Sidemark was who left that note could get fucked because I wasn't drunk and I drove my VW Bus home after that party. I was simply thrilled and enjoying my time with people whom I had gotten to know well over the year. Just because the higher-ups didn't know me and thought "He must be drinking because I've never seen him this expressive", it didn't mean I was fucking drunk! I was happy and full of joy and I was expressing it! We grow up with enough social inhibitions shoved down our throat over bullshit made-up rules that don't matter. Why would somebody want to make another person feel bad or feel lesser for expressing joy in their shared existence with others?!

What I'm trying to say is that Conservatives suck! The connection between my opening paragraph and that line is obvious enough to me but if you don't see it, maybe re-read the opening paragraph again while constantly thinking, "Conservatives suck!", and maybe you'll get it. If this were a typewritten essay handed in to Dr. Guenter in my Humanities class, he'd have written on it in red pen: "EXPAND ON THIS THOUGHT!" But it's not and I have my degree now so suck it, Dr. Guenter!

No, no! Don't suck it, sir! I really loved you as a professor! I'm sorry!

Kyle always did strike me as an easily manipulated tool of The Man.

The good thing about most easily manipulated tools of The Man is that they're also usually easily reverse manipulated, especially if you can talk to them one-on-one. But that's why most easily manipulated tools online aren't easily reverse manipulated because if you let them know how they're being manipulated, one thousand other easily manipulated tools will chime up to call you a DEMONcRAT or a HiLIARy lover or whatever the fuck stupid expression they've chosen to glom onto at the time because not a single one of them has ever had an original thought or successfully comprehended the world around them.

If you think I'm going especially hard on right wingers today, it's because you've got to point out on the regular how much you despise them so they'll stop enjoying your company which they are absolutely not welcome to enjoy. You've got to let them know they're not welcome here because they're dumb jerks that nobody likes (especially me!). Even the people they're living their life for, doing their own version of Virtue Signaling by praising Jesus or waving an American flag or saying "retard" as often as possible, don't like them. The only reason anybody got angry about people making fun of Charlie Kirk is that they know that's the way people will react to their death. And what scared them even more is that Charlie Kirk was supposedly a major figure in the right wing movement and look how fast everybody forgot about him and everything he said or did! It's like Rush Limbaugh. The only reason anybody talks about either of them is in an effort to appease their own fears. If people can forget these famous conservative asshats immediately, how the fuck do they have a chance at being remembered or loved in death?

Hmm. I didn't mean to imply that Kyle Rayner is conservative! I hope it didn't come across that way. I might not like Kyle Rayner but it's not because his ideas are shitty and unkind and from the stone age! I just don't like him because, um, fuck. I don't really know why! Maybe because he got his ring while pissing in an alley? Is that a thing that happened? I think that's what happened, right?! Also maybe his ideas are shitty and unkind and from the stone age. Why would I know having never read any Kyle Rayner comic books ever?! Stupid drunk alley piss boy. Man, I fucking hate Ganthet!

Tommy spends the first few pages of the comic book making Kyle Rayner look like a stupid asshole. That's not for geniuses like me who already knew he was a stupid asshole. That's for the people who liked him for some reason so they could, possibly, think, "Hmm. I never realized how huge a stupid asshole this stupid asshole was!" I suppose they could also be thinking, "What the fuck?! Kyle Rayner's super duper cool! Garth Ennis can suck my dirty butthole!" That's almost 100% what they thought because if I know one thing about Kyle Rayner fans, it's that they have dirty buttholes. If I know two things about them, it's also that they're stupid assholes!"

Man, I have friends who like Kyle Rayner! I hope they never read this "review"! Or if they do, it helps them to realize they need to wipe better.

"Doughball" is such a good insult. It's like is he making fun of his mind or his body or both at the same time?!

Mr. Truman and his goon Mr. Feekle have lied to Green Lantern about Tommy's plans so that he'll arrive and arrest Tommy. After that, the cops can kill Tommy and Kyle can be all, "I didn't kill him! I was just manipulated like a stupid asshole to do the dirty work of killers! Ask Batman! He'd understand!" And Batman would knock the reporter's microphone out of his face and be all, "Tommy who? I don't know who you're talking about and he never made me look foolish at all!"

The two fight for awhile like Marvel heroes and then Tommy is all, "Hey, Kyle, knock it off." And Green Lantern is all, "Holy shit how do you know my name!" And then Tommy is all, "It was my mother's name!" And then they cry and hug it out and head over to Noonan's for a few beers.

Or something.

Over those beers, Tommy learns that Kyle is an easily manipulated tool of The Man. Duh!

I mean, I'd probably be easily manipulated if they sent Dana Scully in to butter me up too.

Tommy lets Truman know that he's still kicking and that maybe they can meet up to talk about that government agency job of his. It's a trap, of course. Truman and Feekle figure as much so they go after some insurance: kidnapping Sean Noonan.

That doesn't work out too well for the agents they send.

Afterward, Noonan gives Tommy a call to let him know that what they thought would happen happened. It's also an opportunity for Garth Ennis to push the violence and humor to the side for a moment to make sure readers remember the third tool in his writing bag: sappy melodramatics!

I don't mean that as an insult! Sappy melodramatics really work in works like this when the humor and violence are over-the-top and extreme. Subtle emotional arcs isn't what's called for after a guy just mows down twenty people with a fucking machine gun.

The Ranking!
I had a few people in my life whom I often thought of as my dad or father figure. None of them were my actual dad. Great story!

Hitman #10 (January 1997)

This would be me if my stupid neighbors would appreciate me more.

Hitman #10 (January 1997)
By Garth Ennis, John McCrea, Carla Feeny, and Willie Schubert
Cover by John McCrea
Edited by Peter Tomasi and Dan Raspler

I've learned that the people closest to me (meaning my friends and family) seem to appreciate me less than strangers. Just a few days ago, some bloke on Bluesky hunted me down to lift me up on his and his friends shoulders in true appreciation of my amazing genius.

Personally my favorite bit from Crazy Asian Drinks was from my review of Non-Carbonated Soft Drink: "Somewhere, children are asking if they can have more soft drink on their mashed potatoes."

Like an unneutered cat, I have sprayed my stink all over the Internet for 30 years and every now and then, a voice will reach out to me and say, "Hey, remember that totally stupid thing you did? My friends and I fucking loved it!" A year or so ago, a kid who was too young to remember the wild west days of the Internet tracked me down on tumblr to ask if I was behind Future Retard and I had to proudly admit that, yes, I was one of the geniuses behind that all-too prescient web comic. When I first registered to Twitter as Grunion Guy, I was messaged by a junior high school girl who was all, "Are you the Grunion Guy who wrote "A Really Scary Story"? My friends are constantly quoting it!" And then I befriended them (not in a weird way) and watched them graduate and head of to college and be super funny online all the time and felt proud that I could be a creator of something that made an impact on somebody else's life and then also not turn out to be a total piece of fucking garbage! Some might argue that I am a fucking piece of garbage but I'd have to say the fact I'm Gen-X and so far left that even the Democrats think I'm a terrorist is something I'm proud of! Of course, now I'm going to have to have "Hey! Hey! I invented shit drink!" as the epitaph on my tombstone. I guess I could be remembered in worse ways. Like maybe having "Creator of Future R-Slur!" engraved on marble marking my still sexy corpse for all eternity. Or at least until they dig up my grave to build a row of cheaply made luxury condos on the land.

No wait! I've changed my mind! I think my favorite bit on Crazy Asian Drinks (by me! I have favorite bits by Ken and Brent too!) was in my review of Yeo's Soya Bean Drink: "I've never considered distilling my grandfather's underwear into its pure essence and packaging it in a can for ingestion but apparently some Malaysian named Yeo did."

Last issue ended with half of Gotham's cops pulling up outside Tommy's apartment (or Pat's, I guess. But whatever) and yelling through a bullhorn, "Come out and we'll shoot. But first we'll yell, 'Look out! He's got a gun!' whether you have one or not. Then later the District Attorney will be all, 'Look, members of the grand jury. Not only should a cop never be convicted because if one is, they'll never work with me again and I'll never win another case but a cop should never even have to set foot in a courtroom because, well, remember that thing I just said about how I'll never win a case if they stop giving witness testimony for me? So we're just going to throw out this case where fifty cops put five hundred bullets into a guy holding a butter knife dripping grape jelly and half a sandwich stuck in his mouth stuck together from the peanut butter so that nobody could for certain say he wasn't shouting, "I'm going to murder all of you with this butter knife!"'"

I'm not going to double check to make sure I got all those quotation marks correct. If the editor could give up on the last 100 pages of the Dungeon Crawler Carl book This Inevitable Ruin so that it's just littered with formatting errors, I'm not going to bother editing this shit little "review" of a Garth Ennis comic book that I won't know if anybody read until twenty years from now when somebody will message me and say, "Hey, are you that hot guy who said all that real shit about cops twenty years ago? My friends and I are constantly getting our ass beat by the roving 'A.I.' super cops when they hear us laughing about your Wicker Man bits!"

Like Dungeon Crawler Carl, Hitman solves a lot of his problems with explosives.

I need to learn to say "God out of the Inventory" in Latin because I think, due to the Dungeon Crawler Carl books, deus ex machina will soon be replaced by that.

Tommy's grenade was just a Diarrhea grenade meaning it wasn't fused to explode; it was just meant to make the cops shit themselves. After the cops dive for cover with loud "FRRRRRRRPPPPP!"s blasting from the seat of their pants, Tommy steps out and shoves a piston under one of their chins. I bet when he doesn't kill them, they'll all realize how he's actually a good guy and they shouldn't hold it against him that he held them hostage with a loaded weapon. They'll just think, "He's a better man than us because we would have killed him in a heartbeat's heartbeat!" But Tommy, being a charming and good-looking dude, lets the police know that he doesn't hold it against them that they're corrupt and cowardly pieces of shit. He understands that's just a requirement for the job.

It's statements like that previous one that gets me another kind of attention from strangers on the Internet.

Proof that not all strangers appreciate me more than my friends and family. Some treat me exactly like certain family members treat me!

Tommy lets the cops know that he knows they were sent to murder him in a "resisting arrest" confrontation. The cops are all, "Well, that's not great because now he really is resisting with potentially lethal force and he knows we were going to kill him without using that lethal force and, um, man, shitting yourself is really uncomfortable!"

One other thing the cops forgot because they're arrogant bastards who believe they deserve respect and believe they get that respect because they have guns and will use them on anybody who shows any amount of disdain towards them: they're not just in Gotham where people hate the cops, they're in The Cauldron where people really fucking hate the fucking cops.

I'd say, in military terms and not Lobo terms, this is a great opportunity for a fragging situation. And you can see the Captain knows it too.

Tommy convinces the Captain to convince his men to disarm by using a combination of his x-ray vision and his finger on the trigger of the pistol to the Captain's head. Meanwhile all of the local residents stand around cheering and screaming out more ways for Tommy to humiliate the police.

You fucking tell him, Tommy!

I've always had a healthy distrust of authority but I wouldn't blame people if they read Hitman and watched the original The Wicker Man and gasped in shock (much as the woman sitting next to me at The Matrix in 1999 gasped when the trenchcoated Keanu began lighting up people with automatic weapons and muttered, "This is just like Columbine!") as they said, "This is why he hates cops!" I think I really began hating cops when that local Santa Clara cop tried to lecture me and my friends for climbing on the school roof. He thought we were vandals but realized we were just kids playing with Star Wars figures but still couldn't shift his tone from "I'm busting vandals" to "I've made a mistake and caught some kids playing". So he took our names and when he recognized my name, he was all, "Is your father so-and-so? I went to school with him. How do you think he'd react if he knew what you were doing?" And being that my dad left when I was two, I basically said, "He wouldn't care?" The cop, realizing he couldn't shame us and had no real reason to yell at us because we were dumb kids playing with dolls, he finally just admitted defeat and left. And we went back to playing with our toys.

Fucking cops are just pieces of shit made sentient, I swear to Christ.

Since the cops have failed, Mister Truman, government agent of some other secret Suicide Squad-esque agency, takes over the operation to murder Tommy. But only after giving him one more chance to accept the job as superhero assassin working for the government. That's important because you always need to give the bad guys a reason not to immediately kill the good guys or else the protagonist's story would simply end ala The Sopranos at any fucking random moment. A good example is The Walking Dead. Every time Rick and his group ran into the "bad guys", the "bad guys" would give them every chance to live and then Rick would just murder-hobo the fuck out of everybody who could potentially be a threat. I'm not saying Rick was the bad guy but I'm also not not saying that Rick was the bad guy. It's, um, complicated!

I saw Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds at The Crystal Ballroom in Portland, Oregon, in 2002 or so and I can't imagine another time a band's tone ever matched a venue to that degree. Just fucking perfect.

I think Nick Cave and the Bad Seed's "tone" and the feeling of seeing a show at The Crystal Ballroom can both be summed up in one word: "cigarettes".

The Captain crashes the cop car that Tommy forced him, at gunpoint, to drive as a getaway vehicle. Just as Tommy crawls from the wreckage, Tiegel pulls up to help him escape. She's wearing a mask so that nobody will recognize her but Tommy instantly recognizes her. Granted, Tommy also has telepathy and x-ray vision so, um, you know. That probably explains that. Also her big titties, maybe?

Tiegel, a cop, explains why she, a cop, has decided to help an assassin get away from a bunch of other cops.

Those are her reasons but I suspect maybe she has x-ray vision too and she's noticed Tommy's big peepee. Also her mom is like totally into Tommy.

Because Tiegel's mom discovers the faucet on her lady parts still runs, and also because Tiegel's Nazi grandfather embarrasses the fuck out of her, Tiegel opens up to Tommy a bit more than she probably should. Also the big dick thing and her being super horny, probably. They decide to work together for the time being to expose Mr. Truman and get Tiegel's police captain fired for working with this government agency to murder a man using her cops. After that, they'll either fight or fuck. Or do both the way Batman and Catwoman do it. Fuckfighting is a Goddamned Gotham tradition.

While Tommy sits on a roof thinking about his youth with Pat and trying to come up with a plan to defeat the entire Gotham Police Department and a secret government organization, one of the government organization's assets confronts Tommy.

Ugh. Fucking Rayner.

I never liked Kyle Rayner but not because I liked Hal Jordan. I fucking hated Hal Jordan. I just didn't like Kyle because he was, um, so Kyle-ly. Just a big try-hard dope. A fucking Everyman reader insert who could handle the ring better than anybody ever! Me? I was a big fan of John Stewart and Guy Gardner. I think I liked Guy over Hal because Guy understood that he was using violence to solve all of his problems but Hal acted like he wasn't resorting to violence to solve all of his problems when, like, he did do that. All the time. He never entered a bar where he didn't wind up slugging somebody in the jaw. And John I liked because he was smart and an architect and not a fucking marine at all. Fuck you, modern take on John Stewart making him a military man! Ugh! Lame! So disgusting!

The Ranking!
Super horny and anti-cop and cool! Plus Kyle's baby leg was hilarious! Ha ha!

Hitman #9 (December 1996)

The rarely used perspective of the dead.

Hitman #9 (December 1996)
By Garth Ennis, John McCrea, Carla Feeny, and Willie Schubert
Cover by John McCrea
Edited by Peter Tomasi and Dan Raspler

You can correct me by pointing out all of the ancient, middle ages, renaissance, romantic, Victorian, modern, and postmodern texts that all use the perspective of the dead but I won't listen because I fucking said what I said already and now it's too late to be right so I need to just stick to my guns no matter how foolish it'll make me look. I mean, there are currently people out there declaring that they've spoken to Mitch McConnell when everybody knows the guy's either fucking dead or currently so lazy that he won't even take a single breath without the help of an expensive machine. So why can't I be all, "Why do you keep saying American Beauty? What does that mean? What does Dante have to do with anything? Yeah, I've heard of the island of Galapagos? Why do you keep shouting it angrily at me?! Hey yourself but, you know, my name isn't Nostradamus!"

Maybe what I was really trying to say was, "This cover covers a lot of ground from the whole future possibilities angle. Is the open grave representative of somebody Tommy's going to put into it? Is it already filled with somebody that's sending Tommy off into a killing rampage? Is it a metaphor of his future where he'll be dead from booze and/or violence soon? Do the fall leaves indicate a coming, um, fall?!" Yeah, that's what I meant. You can stop yelling Sixth Sense at me now!

But before I move on, let me say that House of Leaves is my favorite book written from the perspective of a dead baby and let y'all fight it out about how fucking wrong I am.

The issue begins with a bunch of killers going, "Death makes us sad!"

Oh, hey (Nostradumbass)! Speaking of death! Lindsey Graham just died! It's weird that everybody was all immediately, "Yeah, he's dead. Fucking slabbed, man. Done. Goodbye, tater!" But everybody else is all, "No, no. Mitch is alive! Seriously! Very much doing great!" If the afterlife were real, I bet Lindsey would be super sad to see he didn't warrant the lich treatment. If he even noticed what with all the demons shoving shit in his mouth and pitchforks up his asshole, I mean.

Anyway, Tiegel gets called up in front of the police board to be reminded that most of the cops in Gotham are corrupt and they fucking hate her for not joining them in being violent, selfish, greedy pricks. She isn't kicked off the force or anything but the chastising will probably drive her to drink and wind up spending the night fucking Tommy Monaghan. Tommy hasn't gotten laid since last issue (maybe the issue before that even!) and if your cool character isn't getting laid constantly, they might as well be the fucking nerd reading the comic book.

See?! Even Sean Noonan knows Tommy needs it bad!

Tommy explains how he's feeling after almost getting murdered by the greatest Hitman of all time. One of the long-term injuries from his near-death experience is that his telepathy now gives him a killer migraine. Probably the x-ray vision too. So nine issues in, Garth Ennis basically throws out the Bloodlines shit just to get to the non-super hero stories he really wants to tell. And one of those stories is about a Hitman who's ethics are better honed than every cop in Gotham (and everywhere else) which makes him a natural bone boy for a disenfranchised cop looking to really put it to The Man (by putting it to the bone boy). Because, yeah, Tiegel has been suspended without pay and she'll probably lose her job for good once she punches one of those bitch-ass pigs in his piggy pig face.

That'll do, pig. That'll do.

The cops don't take too kindly to violence being used for something other than oppression and reminders to show them some respect so they pull their guns on her. They don't shoot her because she is still one of them and it would be a huge headache to have to convince all the other cops who aren't corrupt (like maybe one or two stuck on desk duty because they'd snitch on any police brutality they witness) to go along with the bullshit press release explaining how Tiegel shot herself in the face seven times with seven different guns at the same exact moment. Sure, it sounds ridiculous but when has the press not bought into any obvious bullshit story given to them by the cops?

While leaving the precinct, Tiegel passes by the Captain's office and hears her speaking with a small accountant-looking government man with a huge ape of a man for muscle. They want the GCPD to murder Tommy in one of those fake resisting arrest killings so that nobody questions that he died as a scum-sucking anti-cop piece of shit. It's a story so easy to sell because a large number of people in America have somehow forgotten that we all hate cops and have hated them since they were slave-catchers and union busters and immigrant killers. Tiegel, knowing the cops are corrupt, probably now might be thinking, "Is Tommy the good guy? He definitely didn't murder me and Batman when he could have. And by not murdering us, that probably means he's a great lay. I mean guy!"

Enter Sixpack.

Sixpack is hilarious because alcoholism is hilarious. I mean, sure, sometimes it's serious like when you're reading Infinite Jest or your best friend's brother dies at 42 from it. But other times, it's totally hilarious like when Sixpack shits and pisses himself while suffering from severe hallucinations or like when your father is one and abandons you at two! Ha ha!

The government guy and his muscle track down Tommy at Noonan's. Tommy's all, "How'd you find me?" Mister Truman, the accountant dude, does not respond, "You spend 20 hours a day here. It's not fucking hard." Earlier, Truman didn't ask the cops to straight out murder Tommy immediately. First he wanted to offer Tommy a job killing superheroes who try to change the status quo by fighting corporate crime or cleaning up the environment or stopping lawless nations shove their weight around. Only if Tommy refuses did Truman want Tommy's death to be announced via a headline that reads, "Tommy Monaghan Rightfully Killed Lawfully and Justly Because He Didn't Let Some Cops Push Him Around!" Tommy refuses the job so the paper begins typesetting the headline.

Meanwhile we learn Tiegel's grandfather was a Nazi. And also her mother wants Tiegel to fuck Tommy. So her name meaning "crucible" in German probably means something!

And then dozens of cops show up at Tommy's door.

To be continued?! Is this edging?!

The Ranking!
Pre-cop-killer-tastic!

HItman #8 (Late November 1996)

Is this one of those "There's an event happening in Gotham due to Batman so all characters in Gotham must take part" issue?

Hitman #8 (Late November 1996)
By Garth Ennis, John McCrea, Carla Feeny, and Willie Schubert
Cover by John McCrea
Edited by Peter Tomasi and Dan Raspler

I think I have a vague memory of this issue. Isn't there some huge blackout thing in Gotham that's making Batman put in overtime and editorial was all, "Garth! Tommy's in Gotham. You have to do a 'Final Night' issue!" And Garth was all, "Hmm, a blackout, hunh? I guess Tommy and his buddies will just be sitting in Noonan's all night drinking beers and talking shite!" Maybe they also kill people who interrupt the gab sesh every now and then just to make things exciting. Also perhaps we learn Tommy's loss of virginity story? Not with a girl but with a gun, I mean! And I don't mean he fucks a gun! Or do I? Fuck, let's just read this shit!

The issue begins with the blackout. But it's not a Gotham blackout; it's a whole world blackout. I don't remember this "event" at all but I guess Darkseid ate the sun or something and now Hitman and his friends were going to have to just sit in Noonan's and wait it out.

Oh, fine. I'll do some online research to see what "The Final Night" was all about. It's scary though because the kind of people who say they do online research are total buffoons who believe the dumbest shit! So if I wind up believing that 9/11 was an inside job and that ordering pizza means you want to fuck children, I'm going to be pissed!

Apparently "The Final Night" was about somebody eating the sun but it wasn't Darkseid. And Hal Jordan died during it? Seriously?! How the fuck do I not remember this bullshit?! I have the vaguest memory of being a cynical asshole and scoffing at how this was just a Galactus story for DC with Dusk, the lady coming to warn Earth, just a stand-in for Silver Surfer. But I'm fairly certain this Hitman issue is the only tie-in comic I own of this crossover event. And it's barely a tie-in!

When the sun goes out, Hacken, Sean, Tommy, Ringo, and Natt lock themselves into Noonan's to get by on hot dogs and beer until the heroes turn the sun back on. While they tell stories, they occasionally have to take a break to shoot a looter in the face. So exactly how I remembered it!

Their stories revolve around the closest they ever came to losing their butt cherry. Sean goes first.

Noonan's story is a harrowing encounter with an officer alone together on a snowy battlefield.

I'm doing that thing right now where you tug your shirt collar and go, "Yeeeaaaooo."

Is that the correct noise? It's been awhile since I've watched a comedy from the '50s. Or was that move invented in the '60s and '70s on comedy sketch shows?

Sean Noonan doesn't sport a colostomy bag so you know he maintained his butt purity on this occasion. He's saved by air support flying over and the officer being too shy to buttfuck in front of witnesses.

Later Sean is all, "I didn't want that blade up my bunghole. But I sorted it later for good."

Of course you did, Sean! It's why God had to destroy Sodom! He couldn't let people spread the word about how great it is!

The boys take the story in stride but begin to get a little uncomfortable when Sean just won't stop giving them all the dirty details.

Stupid comic book using silhouettes to hide all the good bits!

Natt's up next and his story involves a drug deal gone wrong. How wrong's a drug deal got to go before somebody gets fucked in the ass, you're wondering? I think just regular wrong, really.

Natt ready to get smoked! "Smoked" is AAVE for "anal", right?

Hacken's a fuck up so he gets the story idea backwards and tells a story about a guy he knew who fucked some chickens.

I don't think you can fuck a chicken in the ass. I guess it's technically the cloaca? And it's also the vagina. And maybe the penis? Ugh. I'm never eating chicken again.

Ringo's next so you know his story is going to be all super serious. Ringo's story begins in Hong Kong where he was sent by an uncle to do his first hit.

I was in Hong Kong in 1997 and this must be the closest to the way it looked then that I've seen it depicted (and I don't even know if this is accurate! At least it looks familiar!). It's changed so much over the last 30 years, I never fucking recognize modern photographs of it.

I was going to dig through my old travel photos to find some of Hong Kong's skyline but was derailed by photos from my college graduation party at my grandmother's house. I was so young! And gorgeous! If I had a time machine, my story about the closest I ever came to losing my butt cherry would be me being attacked by older me at my college graduation party!

Dammit. I should probably post one now that I fucking talked about it. Just remember I was a little fat at the time. I lost like fifty pounds about six months after this!

From left to right: Sweetie, Doom Bunny, me, my sister, my nephew, and Bob "the Well-Done Comedian" Henline (in his raw form).

Ringo meets Death but Death isn't horny like Gaiman's Death. Was Death of The Endless horny? I remember her being horny! Was I projecting? Don't tell me I was projecting! I totally would have let her peg me. Anyway, Ringo manages to not get pegged by death. Hmm, Pegged by Death might need to be the title of my autobiography.

Anyway, I guess it's Tommy's turn next. Which doesn't seem like he needs a chance to go. Shouldn't he just point to his last two story arcs where he was almost taken out by a Nazi demon from Hell and the greatest assassin to ever where a white suit?

Tommy's story was just about learning to stand up to a bully or a guy with a gun pointed in your face when he was just a kid. Or, I mean, a guy trying to force his way into the back of your underwear.

This was before he perfected all of his fat jokes.

I'd make that panel into my header but it might make me cry every time I visit my own blog.

The Ranking!
Fuck I miss stories like this! I'm not saying they don't still exist but television series and comic books don't really like to take a moment of downtime to have characters just sit around doing character stuff! Everything is always PLOT PLOT PLOT! I sort of understand why after seeing all the stupid comments from friends and family every time an episode of The Walking Dead didn't advance the plot at all. And those same jerks basically hated 4 out of 5 episodes of Lost because that gem was basically character work every fucking episode! We had to learn why they all ended up in Purgatory! Except, I mean, obviously it wasn't Purgatory after a certain point! But it still works if you don't mind going with the flow as shit changes because changing shit from Purgatory to the Dharma Initiative actually works fairly decently. Anyway, great issue highlighting the main fucking reason Ennis wants to write this comic book: friends sitting around drinking and talking shite!

Hitman #7 (Early November 1996)

Cue the theme to The Bad News Bears.

Hitman #7 (Early November 1996)
By Garth Ennis, John McCrea, Carla Feeny, and Willie Schubert
Cover by John McCrea
Edited by Peter Tomasi and Dan Raspler

I know the theme to The Bad News Bears is actually "Carmen" but why call it that when the only thing I can think about when I hear it are daft kids playing baseball? I suppose I can also hear "Bolero" playing when I look at the cover but only if the massacre is happening in slow motion.

Pretty much the only reason I log into Facebook is for the memory feed because I'm the only person in my life who spends their time entertaining me. And it's memories like this that keep me coming back:

I wrote a poem!

"Once upon a midnight dreary, The Jabberwock could see me clearly,
Masturbating quite furiously over some hardcore gay porn,
With my rod out, quickly fapping, suddenly I needed crapping,
Urgently I stopped my slapping, flapping through my bathroom door.
'You're disgusting,' he gallumphed, 'grappling with your vorpal sword.'
Snicker snack and nothing more."

I should probably just take all of my memories from Facebook, mix them up in a hat, build a 365 day advent calendar and fucking fuck off of Facebook altogether! It really is useless for anything but the memories feed. The day Facebook starts putting adverts in the memory feed, I'm off of it for good. But first I need to download all of my terrifically hilarious posts! Most of them were wasted on friends and family anyway. The only people who get me are total strangers and future me.

This issue begins with Natt the Hat pulling a Christine on Moe Dubelz' place.

Christine (and her Lich driver) literally do this in the book to the guy who owns the auto shop where Arnie fucks her. I mean fixes her. No, no. I was right the first time.

The first guy Natt and Tommy kill is Lincoln the cop who was visiting Moe to warn him about Tommy still being alive. They ran over his feet last issue because Tommy didn't want to be on the run as a cop killer for the rest of his life. I guess this way, when the cops find his corpse in Moe Dublez' mansion, they'll just shrug and think, "Fucker deserved it, I guess. Not for being corrupt but for being stupid and getting his ass killed due to the corruption." Then they all steal a bunch of Moe's art to sell on the black market and logging the morning spent looting the place as overtime.

What follows are a few more pages of people being shot in the face and their heads exploding (one of those being the corpse of Joe Dubelz which means Moe really ain't long for this world now). I stopped counting bullets at about 144 by page 7. I guess if you do the math and multiply that number by 3 (being that the story is 22 pages), you get, let's see, um, 10,000 bullets!

"Listen to all that gunfire! Probably a good idea to get my body all up in there!"

Nightfist is neither stupid nor brave. He's just on a fuck-load of cocaine.

Don't do drugs, kids. But, I mean, if you really, really want to, stick to LSD and shrooms.

I told my mother, for the first time ever last week, that I used to go to Marriott's Great America and drop acid or do shrooms. She had just revealed to me that her boyfriend has never done drugs (he's in his late sixties! (she's a cougar in her late seventies!)) and I said, "Boring!", and then I heard him in the background go, "Hey!" Man, that made me laugh. He's a good guy and I'm glad she's finally dating after literal decades! Anyway, she told me she'd never done LSD but she had done shrooms once: at the movies while watching The Shining. Between the diet pill amphetamines and watching The Shining on shrooms, I now know why my mother was so fucking insane in the late '70s and early '80s!

After Nightfist gets it, the chef goes down to Natt. It doesn't seem worth mentioning but since the fight is 3 or 4 pages long, I think it mattered. Then Moe Dubelz finally gets his head blown off by Tommy. And finally, Tommy just about dies, again, to Johnny Navarone. Johnny only wings Tommy on the one shot he gets off before Tommy dives and fires off a wild shot that blows Navarone's gun up in his hand, ruining his future career as a hitman. Not that his future career lasts long since Tommy kills him just a couple panels later.

And so the story ends with Tommy and Natt on the roof in the rain. There's some foreshadowing and there's a fat joke. I'll just scan the foreshadowing and let you think up your own fat joke.

Pretty sure they reference Butch and Sundance in the final issue as well. I mean, I wouldn't be surprised. It's one of the all-time great gunfighter endings. Aside from Young Guns II, I mean!

The Ranking!
I'm not even sure I remember the ending to Young Guns II! I think it's just that stupid ending where the old man pretending to be Billy the Kid finishes his story and walks away or something. And even though I love the movie, it was a joke to say it had a great ending. It's funnier than saying the first movie because that one's ending was pretty good because Jack Palance takes one in the brain just when you think he's gonna get away with being a huge dick the whole time. But Young Guns II had a great soundtrack by Jon Bon Jovi! One of the songs on that album is the reason Hugh Grant answers Jon Bon Jovi to the question "Who said no man is an island?" while watching game shows at the beginning of About a Boy! "They say that no man is an island! That good things come to those who wait!" How many people watched that scene and just thought, "That guy's dumb!", instead of "Yeah! Jon Bon Jovi did say that!"

Oh wait! This was the ranking section! Um, uh, um . . . great googly moogly! So good!

Hitman #6 (October 1996)

This cover kept gaslighting me into thinking I was missing an issue. It's actually Part 3 of "Ten Thousand Bullets".

Hitman #6 (October 1996)
By Garth Ennis, John McCrea, Carla Feeny, and Willie Schubert
Cover by John McCrea
Edited by Peter Tomasi and Dan Raspler

According to the first six issues of this series (I'm including this one based on the cover), Tommy doesn't just have X-ray vision and telepathy. He also has some kind of invulnerability to bullets. Sure bullets blast through him and spray a lot of blood but they cause no real harm. They basically become the Ich Luger bullets from Heathers. Dude, I know they weren't real and it was just a lie. But the lie was told by such a handsome devil, I still believe the lie. Even after explaining that I know it was a lie! I want to go shoot some football bros right now with some Ich Lugers!

Johnny Navarone must have worked for Planetary because every dude who works for Elijah Snow winds up in a white suit. Your argument against that might be that The Drummer doesn't but I'd argue The Drummer doesn't actually work. The Drummer certainly doesn't work for Elijah Snow. He was more adopted by him. As was Jakita. Was Elijah Snow just collecting children?

Last issue, Tommy took a contract to kill Nightfist which turned out to be a set-up. The story previous to this one, Tommy took a contract to kill The Joker which turned out to be a set-up. It's even possible that the job before that, the one where he was to kill Moe Dubelz' father, the one where he ended up as a meal for Glonth, was also a set-up by the Bloodlines aliens. Who can say?!

When I ask, "Who can say?", what I'm actually saying is "I'm not going to believe anybody who offers any evidence contrary to the thing I've already decided to fully believe." After all, I am — by birth and by accident and by the words of the Constitution — an American. That whole "Change My Mind" meme featuring that piece of shit whose name I thankfully can't remember should be included in the dictionary definition of an American. "Change my mind" just means "You're a fucking fool if you think any evidence at all will divert me from the path I've already decided upon!" But even better, it's a portrait of the type of person who doesn't mind looking like a complete fucking idiot to most everybody in exchange for garnering an audience of the saddest morons in the country. "Look, ma! Nobody can change his mind! He's a genu-wine dee-bate genius!"

That reminds me of another so-called debate genius whose name I can't remember who lost a pretty big debate in Utah. I bet he wishes Ich Luger bullets were real! I mean wished. Sorry!

Just replace "hitman" with "online comic book reviewer" and Johnny's basically saying exactly what I say to introduce myself at parties.

After this long-ass villain monologue, Johnny shoots Tommy in the arm so he isn't that great a hitman. He can't even hit somebody's head when they're at point blank range and not moving! I would never miss a kill shot against a rival comic book review blog! Although I do partake in an awful lot of super villain monologues. Often with nobody even listening!

After Johnny shoots Tommy in the arm, he stands around for a couple panels silently. Doing nothing. At least nothing the reader can see. My guess, based on some of my earlier suppositions about Nightfist (and probably every other character in the DC and Marvel Universe over the last fifteen years), is that he's coming in his pants. His ejaculation takes so long that it gives Nightfist time to come in his pants and also time for Natt to throw a grenade at Johnny (and Tommy! But it's probably a stun or smoke grenade).

Johnny and Nightfist both coming in their pants at the same time. Romantic!

Based on that panel where Nightfist jizzes his shorts, I realize I need to apologize for being wrong earlier. Nightfist has way more body armor than just his forehead. When I first saw his design, I was too distracted by his groin chain to realize he had Kevlar across his chest.

Instead of a flash or smoke, the grenade Natt throws explodes. But because Natt yelled, "Tommy!", he alerts Tommy to the danger and he rolls out of the way. Johnny takes the brunt of the explosion but I guess it's one of those non-shrapnel grenades because he's not seriously hurt even though it explodes right at his feet. Maybe everybody's using stun grenades that look like actual explosions but cause no actual harm. Ich Luger grenades!

Tommy has the same concerns I have! But probably more so.

Once again, Tommy's dying from his wounds but he doesn't have a Nazi demon from Hell with magical healing powers to help him out. He needs medical help but the only place close enough is his girlfriend Wendy's place. I forget. Is she a doctor or something?! Or does he just figure it'll be nice to see her one last time before he dies?

I guess it's just a place where they can keep Tommy stable while they have Sean Noonan head to them to help. He knows battlefield surgery and shit like that because he was in Korea and he was a hitman and he owns a bar. Wendy freaks out a little bit because she didn't know Tommy was an assassin. But Tommy is all, "That's on you, honey! I told you when we first met and you thought I was joking! Stupid idiot!" I bet she feels like a fool now. Tommy comes from the school of Homer Simpson wisdom: "It takes two to lie. One to lie and one to listen!"

He never lied the same way Batman never kills. If you squint your eyes at the truth and say "technically" a lot, is how I mean.

Wendy gives Tommy and Natt and Sean a nice ethical verbal thrashing and they scurry out of her apartment with the terrible feeling that comes with somebody truly seeing you. Sure, they're great guys! They take care of their friends! They love to have a beer and a laugh while playing a little poker. But they're also murderers. And Wendy doesn't seem to think it's right that they can act so casual about taking the lives of other people, no matter how badly those people can be judged by society. They walk out with that feeling that Batman never wants to have to feel which, I think, is the main reason he doesn't kill. Who wants to be screamed at by some self-righteous person who has never needed to kill before and made to feel awful?! At least Batman, going all squinty, can be all, "I have not, technically, killed anybody ever! Technically!"

Meanwhile, Nightfist has recovered and is currently beating the shit out of drug dealers and stealing their cocaine because there's bat-nobody around to put him in the bat-hospital where he might later die of bat-sepsis which, technically, isn't a bat-person's fault. At all.

Actually on this night and fist, Nightfist is looking for intel. He wants to know the names of the jerks who tried to kill him. He learns that he was set up by the corrupt cop Lincoln to lure out Hitman so that Johnny Navarone could kill him. So instead of being dead, Nightfist becomes just another one of Tommy's problems. Or maybe a help, I suppose, if he concentrates on going after Lincoln or Navarone.

Tommy and Natt see corrupt cop Lincoln on the street and decide to give him a little payback in an absolutely comic book way. Meaning it doesn't make any sense but, you know what, who the fuck cares?

I mentioned earlier that you can tell the bad guys in the Ennis-verse by just how physically disfigured they get. Here's Lincoln now living a life with smooshed feet.

You know how people say "If you see somebody shoplifting baby formula, no you didn't"? They've got the same saying in Gotham but for when you run over a cop.

Tommy and Natt drop in on Pat to find him bleeding out in the tub. Navarone dropped by to grill him about Tommy but he didn't say shit. He was trying to be like the tough guys he hangs out with, like the hitmen and assassins. He wanted to earn their respect so he didn't blab. So I guess Pat does die this early! Look at me being surprised (sort of)! Tommy actually puts a bullet in Pat's brain to end his misery because he saw what Johnny did to him and also because he read Of Mice and Men and understood the main theme: if you have a best friend, you need to murder the shit out of them. But of course Tommy also understands the sequel to Of Mice and Men which Steinbeck never wrote: Of Mice and Men II: Other People's Dogs. See, the subtitle of that means it's time to go on a fucking rampage. This is why this story arc is called "Ten Thousand Bullets". Because Tommy's about to go shoot ten thousand bullets into Moe Dubelz, Johnny Navarone, and every one of Dubelz' thugs he can find.

That's what I just said!

The Ranking!
It's like six issues in and Garth had to be all, "Wait, wait. You remember this is a serious comic book, right? It's not all beers and cigs and laughter! It's about a hitman and people get shot and killed all the time! I think Garth Ennis plots his comics like this: "#1. Laugh with friends. #2. Laugh and drink with friends. #3. Laugh because the bad guy got maimed in a crazy way. #4. Sex and laughter and smoking. #5. Less laughing because we're getting serious face. #6. Weep you motherfuckers. #7. Laughter but because of the extreme violence necessary to redeem the weeping." It's a pretty good system!

Hitman #5 (September 1996)

If Hitman tweaked Nightfist's motto for his own use, it'd be, "He will night you with his man!"

Hitman #5 (September 1996)
By Garth Ennis, John McCrea, Carla Feeny, and Willie Schubert
Cover by John McCrea
Edited by Peter Tomasi and Dan Raspler

Oh oh! Should we look at a letter from my old high school friend, Soy Rakelson?! Yes please! Let's!

Soy, or Yor as he calls himself in this letter so I should probably do that as well, was responding to a movie review I wrote for M. Night Shyamalan's Unbreakable (Warning: dated language used by a character that was already meant to be offensive even in 2000). I'm going to be interrupting Yor's letter throughout so his quotes will be in blockquote formatting and my responses will be in, um, regular formatting.

Dear Editor,

First off, Yor directs the letter to the Editor because he needs to address authority. You'll see in the letter that his complaints revolve around the things fictional characters say but he can't quite accept the concept of a fictional work where two different characters with opposing viewpoints discuss something. He needs to ask an authoritative voice, "What does it mean? What is the answer? Give me the Truth with the capital 'T'!" Also, I guess, he knew I was the authority and he wanted to argue with me and not a couple of one dimensional cartoon characters. He probably just wanted to say, "Enough with the stupid conceit of differing viewpoints discussing a piece of media which suggests moral relativism to me because you, the writer, don't believe in Truth. What did YOU think, [MY LAST NAME]?"

The dialogue between Nice Alice and the other foul-mouthed man, Mr. Death Rock, regarding their discussion of Unbreakable was interesting, but unclear.

First off, that's Mr. Rock, Jovi fan. Second off, don't make me introduce you to Bo and Luke Duke! Third off, um, wait, I'm not Death Rock. Sorry. What I meant to say was Yor didn't actually find the review interesting. He simply found it unclear because I didn't write, "THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT I THINK OF UNBREAKABLE!" Yor's my friend who once asked me, during a discussion of Lost Highway, if the auteur doesn't have an obligation to make themselves clear to the audience. In that same exact conversation, he noticed my copy of John Barth's Lost in the Funhouse and was all, "Oh man! That story with The Swimmers is so good!" And I was all, "You mean the story about the sperm?" And he looked at me flabbergasted and was all, "Wait what?!" When I realized he couldn't have truly understood the story without understanding that the swimmers were sperm with one having an existential crisis, it meant he couldn't have truly understood the story. So I asked him, "Don't you think the auteur has an obligation to make themselves clear to the audience?" Anyway, Yor was looking for my actual feelings on the movie without all the fun fictional bullshit and the overall conceit of my whole movie review site. You know, where two diametrically opposed characters discuss a movie and not whether I actually liked the film or not. Sure, it's not the most philosophical work I've ever done because it mostly amounts to "I liked the movie because tits!" versus "I liked the movie because it was sweet and cute!" But overall, I think I got some decent insight into a bunch of films around 1999 and 2000.

Do you agree with the movie's premise that we are defined by our opposites?

This is how Yor always debated. He's ready to plant his flag in stable ground right from the start and then argues from that position while I was always all, "Whoa whoa whoa! You're moving too fast, buddy! I'm not even sure that that's the premise of the movie!" I mean, I could easily have come out of the gate with "Do you agree with the movie's premise that basing your life on a single text and then proselytizing to others to get them to believe your views on the intersection of that text and the modern world is not just a mistake but the foundational building blocks of terrorism itself?" One time we were riding bikes down Benton when he asked me, "Do you believe animals have souls?" And I was all, "Whoa whoa whoa! You're moving too fast. I don't even believe people have souls!" And then he got that look on his face which meant, "I've got to go back to the drawing board and consult some C.S. Lewis texts to find a way to trick this piece of garbage into getting some faith!"

Oh, and to answer Yor's question: No, I don't think that. Only people who believe in good and evil, black and white, God and Satan, would believe that! Oh, I see. Yor believes it!

Or is one's identity known intrinsically?

Yor loves to pose debate questions like this. "Do you believe the thing that I believe? Or do you believe the only other possibility?! Which is stupid, by the way!" I doubt Yor meant to sound so simple here. He was just deep in setting up his logic trap which needs to have clearly defined walls to lure in his victim. So you either believe his premise or the premise he's prepared to tear apart. Our identities are so complex! The only people who define them by their opposites are boring edgelord rebels who wind up turning to Nazism because they were once called an asshole online by a thirteen-year old in a Sailor Moon forum. But not believing that doesn't mean I have to believe that we're somehow born knowing our identity. Our identities are formed by our experiences. Thoser are varied and complex and almost never based on reacting to our opposites. Especially since we can't know what our opposites are if we don't know who we are (an idea we'll touch on more as we move further into Yor's mind. I mean letter). Perhaps there's something intrinsic in our temperaments that don't really change much due to whatever brain chemistry we were given but which we can change via pharmaceutical chemistry! I don't know and I wouldn't claim to know. But I do know that if you base your identity on your opposite than you either have to already have an identity to know who your opposite is or you have to be an unformed ball of goo with no curiosity or passion up until you meet somebody who makes you think, "That's dumb!" and then you become the antagonist of their story. In that view, you can never be the protagonist though and who wants that (except in the bedroom)?

And why must one be called "sad and needy" by consulting others to help clarify one's own identity?

Pretty sure this was the main reason Yor responded to my review. He felt personally attacked by Death Rock calling people who look to religion as sad and needy. You know he felt attacked enough to respond and quote only this insult by Death Rock when Death Rock previous to this used the slurs "retard" and "homo". Yor didn't have any problem with that because Death Rock didn't call people who need religion those things. He was mostly just talking about Bright Boy and, um, uh, Grunion Guy? Wait a second! Death Rock's a fucking jerk! How dare he?!

Yor quotes Death Rock by pulling "sad and needy" but the real quote was "Bruce Willis bought into it because he was just as sad and needy for defining as Mr. Glass." So Death Rock didn't describe a person as "sad and needy" for looking outward to clarify who they were. Death Rock was saying Bruce Willis was sad because of all the reasons Death Rock outlined earlier: bad marriage, loss of heroic feeling as a high school football star, survivor's guilt from the train accident. And Willis was also "needy for defining" or, more clearly, needy for meaning in his life. Death Rock wasn't saying Willis was needy! He was "needy for definition"! He was needy for meaning! That's on my writing, I suppose. It wasn't super clear and that whole "sad and needy" would have set off the defense sirens of anybody who knows in their heart that they are, in fact, sad and needy!

Okay, that was a cheap shot at Yor. Sorry, Yor! But you probably deserved it.

(I found it ironic that Death Rock found the most pleasure in drinking "like a Mexican whore." Is he not relying upon the identity of a stereotype to define his desire? You would think someone so critical of Mr. Unbreakable's search for happiness and identity would choose his words more carefully.)

Oh shit! You got him, Yor! You fucking nailed him! How dare Death Rock use a descriptive yet racially and sex worker negatively insensitive simile to describe one of his only passions in life (the others being The Dukes of Hazzard, beating the shit out of people, and Slayer)! I sometimes wonder how much Yor comprehends when he's reading a text and how much he's just looking for things that either share his confirmation bias so he can blast his load all over the back cover photo of C.S. Lewis or for things that are diametrically opposed to what makes him shoot his load on boudoir line drawings of C.S. Lewis in skimpy undergarments? "Is he not relying upon the identity of a stereotype to define his desire?" Um, no. He wasn't. He was just being colorful! And racist. And misogynist! Sheesh! Maybe stop being okay with all the casual gross shit Death Rock spews just to argue your points!

It seems he has many issues, but alas, this is not the focus of my letter.

That's better! I'm glad Yor noticed Death Rock has many issues. Also I'm glad it wasn't the focus of his letter. Best to just ignore it. Especially the part of Death Rock's issues which remind people that I wrote those things! I mean younger me wrote them. That guy isn't even me anymore! I wish he'd stop getting me in trouble!

I thought the movie was better than you give it credit for,

Forgive me for breaking up this next sentence into two parts but it's a long sentence and I'm easily distracted so I'd totally forget to discuss this if I don't do it immediately. So, first off, he addressed this letter to the editor and now he's acting as if Death Rock and Nice Alice's opinions are those of the editor. I assure you they are not. Did he not notice how Nice Alice actually liked the movie? But she does that thing where when she notices her boyfriend didn't like it, she sort of backs out of that strong stance and hints at maybe also not liking it? Not for sexist reasons like you'd think but because Nice Alice doesn't like conflict at all. At least not until she's ready to unleash the Second Gobi Campaign but, I mean, spoilers! Um, anyway, the editor didn't give the movie any credit in any way, Yor. Come on, man! Didn't you learn anything in our Critical Lit Theory class?! I know half of your brain power was taken up by dealing with the reality that our professor was gay but I'm sure you must have learned something!

You know what? I'm not sure Yor did learn anything from the Crit Lit Theory class because his big final project in the class was a defense of the Western Civilization Literary Canon! Which is, I must say, fine because if you want to most of 20th Century American Literature (and I know some of you don't give a shit. That's fine!), you do need to understand a fuck-ton of shit written by mostly wealthy white dudes. Also The Bible. I mean, I'm not all, "Everybody needs to read The Bible because it's a manual for life!" But I am all, "Everybody needs to read The Bible because 95% of all references come from that shit! The other 5% come from Shakespeare!"

particularly how Mr. Glass dropped hints about his true identity, such as his name being very suggestive of a comic book figure, his eyes and his head being disproportionately large to the rest of his body (as he explains the villain's traits earlier), and how he tells Mr. Unbreakable several times that they are on the opposite ends of the spectrum (implying not only in terms of strength, but in ethics).

Yor began this letter stating his initial premise of the film: we are based on our opposites. But how can that be the true premise when Yor acknowledges in this very statement that Mr. Glass already decided on his identity long before he ever met his opposite. Mr. Glass simply read some comic books and went, "I identify with the bad guy! Then he went on to be a bad guy. If we're supposed to believe that Mr. Glass read a comic book (A FUCKING COMIC BOOK!) and went, "Oh shit! I would like to be a super hero but I am nothing like them. I am, in fact, the opposite of them. Therefore, I have been defined by this comic book. I must now be that person that the comic book says I am!" then how are we supposed to take Mr. Glass seriously at all?! And if I think somebody would be a fool to take Mr. Glass seriously then I must take Bruce Willis unseriously! He didn't even have years of his life dedicated to reading comic books and he just goes, "Okay! I believe in your world view! Comic books are real!"

It's obvious why Yor wants to buy into the conceit of this movie. He's buying into the analogy because he believes in the comic book and he wants to believe that you can explain the comic book to people and they will go, "Yes! I get it! I love Jesus too!" I mean, that's the analogy here, right? But also the bad guy is the guy trying to convert people, right? So I'm not sure exactly what Yor's saying. I would have needed to dialogue with him a bit more to get at the roots of what he loved about the movie. But Yor was also conservative and had a fondness for bad guys and would say things like, "I don't agree with what that person is saying but I love that they have the passion and bravery to say it!" All the while though, we knew, secretly, he agreed with what the person was saying but also knew that "good" and "kind" people would never admit to those things. I don't have specific examples of what "those things" were but you can make some pretty educated guesses. It was the late '80s, early '90s so a lot of them, Yor being Catholic, had to do with people saying things like "Gay people shouldn't have all the rights!" and "Affirmative action is racist!"

Holy shit! I just remembered I have letters Yor wrote to the San Jose Spartan that would really make your head spin while you vomited split pea soup and fucked yourself with a crucifix. I might have lost my way with that description.

Most important, though, is how Mr. Glass values a knowledge of his own identity above that of the welfare of others.

Okay, now we're leaving behind the religious stuff and we're getting to the render unto Caesar stuff. I'm sure Yor liked the idea of defining oneself via a text and then trying to convert others. But now we see that Yor does not fully identify with Mr. Glass. Mr. Glass does not care about the bigger picture. He is suffering from that malady that all modern, non-C.S.-Lewis reading people suffer from: narcissism! The selfish pursuit of our own identity over the welfare of others! Seems a weird point to be made by a person who would drive around Santa Clara at night throwing vegetables out of his car window at pedestrians. Maybe Yor was just looking for his opposite: somebody who wouldn't drive around throwing vegetables at innocent people minding their own business. I can see this heading into the "atheists think they're their own god" argument. Yor definitely believes that we don't control our own destinies and to think that is blasphemous. So Mr. Glass searching for his own identity over anything else is narcissistic, selfish, and irreligious. He should be seeking something greater!

He commits terrorist acts to discover someone who will help him find his identity, and by doing so, reveals himself as a moral relativist (not to mention a murderer).

I get how that reveals him to be a terrorist and a murderer. But I'm not sure how he reveals him to be a moral relativist except that Yor wanted to equate his terrorism with moral relativism. One of the things Yor, a staunch Catholic, could never truly comprehend was how people could know right from wrong without a set of rules. Most of my friends understood that that statement meant Yor must be a sociopath because he couldn't understand right from wrong without a guide. But Yor saw anybody who didn't need the guide as being a moral relativist. Which is probably true because for a moral relativist, there really isn't any capital "T" truth. Now Yor uses moral relativism as a pejorative. He equates it with nihilism and a philosophy to excuse any evil or terrible act. But moral relativists acknowledge morality and right and wrong; they just also acknowledge that morality isn't a foundation on which everything else rests. Morality shifts depending on context! You know who isn't a moral relativist? Les Mis's Javert! And look where that gets him! Dead, that's where! Maybe don't worry so much about a starving guy stealing some bread not being adequately punished in accordance with man's current laws and just get on with your own life, dude. Go find some joy and whimsy in your own life! Unless that joy and whimsy is garnered by throwing cabbages at peasants as you pass by in your carriage. Not cool, man.

Furthermore, Mr. Death Rock's nihilism ("there ain't no meanin' for nobody") aligns itself nicely with Mr. Glass, and contradicts his [Mr. Rock's] strongly held assertions.

This is the problem with a moral foundationalist versus a moral relativist, a guy who bases all of his suppositions from an unmoving base stuck in concrete. Everything has to be built upon everything else or the structure is, to him, logically unsound. Yes, Death Rock is a nihilist in that he doesn't believe in an inherent meaning in existence. But how does that contradict any of Death Rock's strongly held assertions? You can be a nihilist and also love drinking yourself stupid. Some would say those go hand in hand! But never mind that! I mean, being a nihilist does not mean that you don't find your own meaning in your own existence. It doesn't mean you don't have joy. It doesn't mean you don't have opinions! You just don't believe that the universe exists to give you that joy and meaning and those opinions. Yes, Death Rock's "beliefs" do align nicely with Mr. Glass because, like Mr. Glass, Death Rock doesn't give a shit about the lives of others. But guess what? A lot of nihilists and moral relativists do give a shit about that stuff. I'd say I'm, ultimately, a nihilist in that I don't believe our existence means anything. But I also believe because our existence is fleeting and this is the only life we have and that there is nothing more after, to hurt somebody else, to make their existence worse, to kill or murder . . . those things are the absolute worst things we can do. If there is nothing but our current existence then making that existence intolerable for somebody else, making their one chance at life and love and joy impossible . . . that is true evil. That's my moral relativity. Is it Death Rock's? No! Because I'm not Death Rock, you idiot!

Despite the moral relativity Rock espouses, he goes on to impose his moral relativity on Mr. Unbreakable's supposedly doomed search for meaning, by criticizing the mere attempt.

I mean, word salad, anybody? Yor gets to the heart of all the assholes who suddenly want to destroy free speech here. "Criticizing" is not "imposing". It's as simple as that. Grow the fuck up, man.

Why do you consider it a weakness for someone to search for one's identity using comic books or religion, when you later imply that one is entitled to use any means necessary and use as much time as necessary?

I, the Editor, whom you've addressed this letter, didn't "consider" nor "imply" any of that. Death Rock's critique was about the way the idiot in the movie went about the search. Mr. Glass read comic books and went, "I'm not strong but I'm smart so I must be the villain!" And Mr. Unbreakable was all, "My life is falling apart but this weird fucker I just met told me about comic books and now my life means something!" Sure, Death Rock thinks it's a weakness to search for meaning. But he also thinks the characters are fucking weak in many other ways! Also, I'm not sure Death later "implies" that people should search for meaning. Maybe I'm misunderstanding what's being said here but it sounds like Yor read that Death Rock was all, "It's weak to search for meaning because it doesn't exist but you should be allowed as much time as possible to find that meaning that doesn't exist."

Are you so jaded as to believe because you have not discovered your identity, your peace, that others are incapable of the same?

Yor feeling defensive here. "I've found meaning in Catholicism and it isn't meaningless like you said, you jerk!" Look, Death Rock has discovered peace. Peace in nihilism. Look into it. It's a thing! It reminds me of this quote from Thomas Pynchon in Gravity's Rainbow: "If there is something comforting — religious, if you want — about paranoia, there is still also anti-paranoia, where nothing is connected to anything, a condition not many of us can bear for long." Death Rock can bear it, baby. And it brings him peace.

Oh, and maybe I should reprint Death Rock's reply here. It's only fair.

"Dude, is that how you see the world? Either this or that? 'Do you agree with the movie's premise that we are defined by our opposites? Or is one's identity known intrinsically?' Yer treadin' on the path of the severely beaten if yer suggestin' I'm defined by Bon Jovi. So, no I ain't agreein' with the premise of the movie. But that don't mean I suddenly agree with your only other belief of the way things can be. Known intrinsically? That can't be, Mr. Noslekas (look, Alice, I'm being polite and reasonable!). If I were raised in a friggin' dark room, I'm guessin' I wouldn't be the same person. I wouldn't know I like to drink like a Mexican Whore or kick ass or rock until someone's head explodes. But I also have a feelin', bein' who I am, I'd kick the fuckin' shit outta the walls a' that dark room and that the Duke boys would have a fuckin' hoe-down on whoever first opened the door to that room. I guess I couldn't call 'em the duke boys though. Maybe the Pleasure Givers. Yeah, that's what they'd be.

"Now, I weren't callin' Mr. Unbreakable sad and needy cause he needed to consult others to help clarify his identity. I called him sad and needy cause he finds himself in a weakened spiritual state after the train wreck and buys into some obviously insane clown who is completely obsessed with comic books. Like I alluded to in my review, Mr. Noslekas, Mr. Unbreakable would have been guzzlin' Kool-Aid at Jonestown if Mr. Glass had gone the obsessed religious angle. It ain't about being defined by metaphor, simile, allusion or allegory that I's got a problem with. The problem is fallin' into another man's obsession and buying in to that obsession. Mr. Glass was a nutcase. He defined himself long before Mr. Unbreakable came on the scene. He just had no faith. He were a convert that needed that glimpse 'a God before he could really believe. So he was weak. And Mr. Unbreakable was needy. He shoulda been listening to his kid who thought he was a hero long before this nobody Mr. Glass came around. And you, Mr. Noslekas, should meet my Dukes just for makin' me utter the fact that someone should listen to their kid.

"I ain't got a problem with the whole Mr. Glass subtle revelation of who he really is thing. But I think that argues my point better than yours. He's already defined. He don't need this joker security guard to do that.

"And Mr. Glass ain't really a nihilist, is he? He believes in a very specific paradigm of the world, doesn't he? In his mind, he knows what's what and how things work. The movie tries to make you think his comic book view is right because there was an opposite of him out there. But just suppose Mr. Unbreakable never friggin' appears, hunh? Mr. Glass is the same guy he's always been. A lost boy turned terrorist. And he ain't changed his stupid ass comic book world view. And I ain't criticizing the 'mere attempt' at finding meaning. I'm criticizing the buying into another person's obsessed view that is Mr. Unbreakable's entire search for meaning. You seem to have bought into this too, eh? Seems to me an insult to wives and children everywhere that this movie is sayin' a jerk off can only be happy with his family after he becomes a hero. Not that I think anybody with a wife and child SHOULD be happy.

"And to answer your last paragraph, I ain't sure I said it's a weakness to use comic books or religion or anything, actually (although it is pretty gay). To repeat, it is the obsession of seeing things in only one set of terms that is weak. Mr. Glass only saw the world through the pages of a comic book. This made him weak. There is no searching or questioning when you don't go further than a one source research paper. And whaddya mean, I ain't discovered my identity! I'm friggin' Death Rock, dude. Seems odd that ya didn't throw all your big words around tryin' to make some sort of pseudonym equals identity type argument."

Hmm. Nice Alice was also part of that review even if Yor seems to ignore all of her points. So I'll reprint her reply too!

"Oh! Boo hoo. My words can't be pink here! *sniff* Anyway, is Deathy gone? I hope so cause I liked this movie! I think people need other people. How would I know that it's nice to be nice if there was nobody to be nice to? This movie was about the loss of spirituality and meaning in a modern world. Mr. Glass is frightened by everything around him that could easily destroy his fragile body. So he finds a Book that leads him to strength. That book is Active Comics! He hears its message and goes forth into the world to...um, well, not make it a better place, exactly. Hmm. Maybe it's not such a nice spiritual message after all. This Book he finds isn't about being nice to others at all! It's about making him more secure about himself and his place in the world. Well, that's pretty selfish. That mean old Mr. Glass. But then, he's the villain, so let me concentrate on the hero.

"Mr. Unbreakable has lost his spirituality! His life is meaningless and mundane in this modern world where disasters claim lots of lives. But then he lives through one! Survivor's guilt and the search for meaning and something beyond death envelope his perceptions! He is in a very weak and spiritually insecure moment in his life. Questions abound! Why is he here and all that! And then he hears the message of a man who has found meaning in the Book! And his life is altered beyond compare. His worldly life is suddenly on track (OH! That's a mean pun!) because of this evil, selfish man. Hmm. Is it nice to get a good message from a bad person? Does the source of revelation really matter? I think it's not so nice but at least this Mr. Unbreakable is happy. Or is he only happy because he dealt with a devilish mental patient? I'm confused. I need to lie down."

Revisiting some shit I wrote 26 years ago wasn't too bad! I mean, it could easily have been worse! Especially from the mouth of a character like Death Rock!

Anyway, that's it! Finally! That should probably have been a post of its own but it was sort of about comic books and Hitman is kind of a moral relativist, I think, right?

Oh shit. Another moral relativist!

According to last issue, Nightfist sells the coke he steals from the dealers he kicks the shit out of. According to this issue, he also comes in his suit at least three times a night. I say that not because I see the stains on his costume but because he's drooling, he's way to into beating up criminals and stealing their cocaine, and he's written by Garth Ennis. So you just have to assume he blasting loads into his spandex all night long. Plus you don't wear a chain across your crotch attached to either thigh without having a crazy sex kink.

Nightfist puts a few dealers in the hospital, blows another load, and gets a tracking device placed on his ankle by one of the dying criminals. Obviously he's crazy but you can really tell he's crazy when he walks straight at a guy shooting bullets at him. Luckily the idiot with the gun has either terrific aim and bad luck or shitty aim and bad luck because he shoots Nightfist in the 2% of his body with any armor: his forehead. Okay, I guess his "fists" and calves are armored up too but I'm not in the accuracy business! I'm in the let's speculate how much man goo is in the crotch of that hero's costume business!

Nightfist steals the drugs and goes on his merry way. I guess Batman's okay with Nightfist? Maybe Batman's got that old person thing where he easily mistakes one thing for another and he thinks Nightfist is Nightwing.

How did Big Belly Burger become the main DC fast food joint? Bucky Burger should have gone hand-in-hand with Noonan's.

Natt and Tommy also speculate on Nightfist's relationship with Batman. Sort of. My guess is that until Nightfist gets his own series, Batman will ignore him because he doesn't need the revenue boost. Plus Tommy's going to kill him before he can build his reputation big enough to be noticed by Batman.

Tommy makes fun of Natt being fat and Natt makes fun of Tommy jerking off and pretending he has a girlfriend. It's scenes like these that Garth lives for. He just wants to write stories about sitting around with his friends drinking and busting balls. All the super hero shit is just so it'll have a ready-made audience. Also Ennis needed a way to make all of his fat jokes pay. He never seems to run out! I'm really surprised he named his restaurant Bucky's instead of Big Belly Burger. Maybe it changes later because it really sounds like a place Ennis would have created. Weirdest part of this scene at Bucky's is that I remember those massive fucking burgers these guys eat. Why can't I remember the plot to 75% of all the comic I've read but I can easily and readily picture the massive burgers in Hitman?!

Tommy's wary about the Nightfist job because his last job to ice The Joker was a total set-up. Luckily for Tommy, this job is also a set-up. Hmm, I guess I didn't mean luckily.

In this issue, Tommy and Natt's friendship origin story born in the, um, fires? No, no. Um, oh, I know: the boredom of Desert Storm!

This could come back to haunt them in the most serious story arc of the series!

I don't know if that later SAS story arc has anything to do with this moment (although it should if it doesn't!) or if that story arc comes out of Sean Noonan's past but that's why I said it "could" come back to haunt them! But Natt does mention that if the SAS ever gets wind of that story, they're going to be fucking dead men. So, you know. I think they get wind of the story!

Later, Tommy and Natt attempt to murder Nightfist (whether or not they're successful is unclear as the set-up interrupts their double tap finish). Johnny Navarone tosses a grenade at them and then walks up on them firing. And that's where it ends so I have to assume Tommy wasn't just killed because remember: Hitman runs for sixty issues! He's invulnerable until then! None of the other cast is though and we'll see them all drop off, one by one, over the series. All except Hacken and Six Pack. I think they survive. Oh, and, of course, BAYTOR!

The Ranking!
Motherlovin' cool, bro!