I used to love Hellblazer back in the day. I read the series when it first came out and stuck with it for a number of years before ultimately dropping the title. There was a time when my choice was between reading everything I wanted to or buying groceries. I was fat. Groceries won. By the time the stories in this volume were originally published, I was no longer reading the book. And that's a shame. Over vacation at the beginning of December I read the previous volume of this, collecting the first half of the Ennis/Dillon run. It was wonderful. This book finishes up their amazing run. To date, it's been my favorite run. Garth Ennis did such an amazing job building up (and ripping apart) the supporting cast. He put John through the fucking ringer and it was so much fun to watch John fall, pick up the pieces and rise again, sticking it to the fucking devil.
DC/Vertigo has done something pretty wonderful with this series. They've gone back and are in the process of "remastering" the run. Most every issue has been collected in trade before, but what they're doing with this run is more of a chronological reprinting of the entire series. Some of the stories presented in the earlier volumes haven't been collected before because they didn't fit the trade paperback format. I think volume 14 is the most recent one out, so I'm a bit behind, but I'm catching up!
I enjoyed this run so much I ordered the first Preacher trade. I need to get to that soon.
Writer: Garth Ennis
Artist: Steve Dillon, William Simpson, Peter Snejbjerg
Vertigo
