With Alan Grant’s departure, young writer Garth Ennis took over as writer of The Demon Vol. 3. After working on comics in the United Kingdom, DC had recently given Ennis the reigns over Hellblazer.
Ennis would later develop a reputation for the sort of dark humor that Alan Grant had brought to the title, perhaps even going further into the scatological. But the young writer, despite working on Hellblazer, seemed to struggle somewhat with The Demon‘s supernatural elements. Ennis seemed to thrive instead on gangster and war-related stories, which he managed to work into the title.
Few remember his work on the title well, and fans of Alan Grant’s work on the title were especially disappointed. Ennis’s run on The Demon is remembered, however, for introducing Hitman, in The Demon Annual #2. Hitman would go on to appear in two storylines written by Ennis.
The Demon Vol. 3 was cancelled with #58, about a year and a half after Alan Grant’s departure. But Ennis would soon spin off Hitman into his own series, which would go on to survive even longer than The Demon Vol. 3 — and would become more fondly remembered.
After The Demon‘s cancellation, Alan Grant returned to the Demon in Batman / Demon, a prestige-format one-shot pairing the two characters. Grant had also written Batman, making the pairing a logical one.
