10 months after the cancellation of The Demon Vol. 3, Hitman was spun into his own ongoing series. The series was helmed by his creators, writer Garth Ennis and artist John McCrea.
While Hitman never sold fantastically, its timing was right: Ennis had begun Preacher through DC’s Vertigo imprint, and its success led many to try Ennis’s other ongoing series. Hitman had much of the same violence and humor as Preacher, only toned down and set firmly in the DC Universe.
Ennis and McCrea were able to conclude Hitman on their own terms, after just over five years, and the title did not continue following their departure. In this, Hitman seemed closer to a long-form Vertigo series (e.g. Ennis’s Preacher, Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman, or Grant Morrison’s The Invisibles) than a typical DC series.
In late 2007, Garth Ennis and John McCrea brought Hitman back for the two-issue Justice League / Hitman. The story, which took place before the conclusion of the original series, essentially tied up plot threads left by League members’ past interactions with Hitman. It was one of the best Hitman stories.
Collections of the series began in late 1996, the same year the series debuted, but then began running behind the monthly issues. To the consternation of fans of the series, DC stopped the collections with five volumes, collecting a little less than half the overall series.
