Monday Memories #30 - Hitman #32

Each Monday this year I'll be taking a look back at a random comic, prestige format issue, graphic novel or collection of reprints from amongst my 3,000 or so comics that date from 1962 to 2003 - I figured anything in the last ten years would be too recent to hark back to.

The comics are chosen completely at random and apart from a four week lead-in period, even I don't know what I'll be looking at in the weeks to come!

How Many People Did Tommy Monaghan Kill? Part 1

Sometimes, I really do think I have too much time on my hands.

Over the weekend just gone I was working through a batch of comics, cataloging them for the lovely people over at Collectorz.com.  I'm currently working through a long box that stores most of my Garth Ennis written titles and have started going through the fantastic Hitman series.

I know, I know, I should be working on the Annotated Final Crisis, finishing off those last couple of issues that I still have to breakdown but, well . . . honestly, this is just a bit more enjoyable.

In issue #1, Tommy meets Wendy, a girl he's attracted to and starts dating.  Trouble is, he doesn't tell her that he's a hitman and that he kills people - okay, technically he does but she thinks he's joking and he doesn't correct her.  When she eventually finds out, they have a blazing row:

I have to admit, I read that and thought . . . how many has he killed?

Armed with a day off work and a penchant for prevarication, rather than do half a dozen things that I should do (like the Final Crisis stuff) I decided to count through the first 20 issues of Hitman that I've cataloged so far and tot up the numbers of deaths caused by Tommy, Natt the Hatt, Sean Noonan, Ringo Chen and Hacken.

So what's the score so far:


There's a bit of estimation in there - there's plenty of scenes where Tommy and Natt are both blowing the crap out of the bad guys, but it's close enough for government work, I think.

Of course, I'm opening up a Pandora's box here - after Hitman, I really should go through The Demon and include any killings there, not mention anywhere else Tommy turns up.  Thinking about it, though, all that means is I get to read more comics again . . .