As a new Vertigo creator (End of Life with Steve Pugh), I was asked to write this guest column. What an unbelievable honor! Sincerely!

They said they used to have Vertigo creators write them and they want to do it again and so I was sent a bunch of examples of the old ones by such industry greats as Paul Pope, Brian Azzarello, and Peter friggin’ Milligan. All of their columns were very smart and deep and cool, and they made all their books sound so cerebral and meaningful, and well, I’m giving you a heads up, friends—I don’t got that. I’m a lot of things, but I’m not sure smart and cool are two of them.

But I think End of Life is really good. I can say that. I’m saying it humbly and objectively.

End of Life is about a young hitman, selfish and inconsiderate and self-involved and maybe a little slow who messed up bad.

Look, we’ve all been there. We’ve all been young and dumb and screwed up because of that. Except, if you’re a hitman and you’re our hero Eddie Stallion, you screwed up with your hitman coalition The Menagerie and you did it in a way so severe and so offending that they put a price on your head and now you’re on the run. Your great life of making stupid money and buying whatever you want and going wherever you want and partying all the time is over. Now all you have in this world is what you got in your pocket and you need to disappear from a nation full of hitmen that only want you dead.

So, what do you do?

You go the one place you think they’ll never look.

You hide out with your ex-Menagerie hitman dad who wants you dead more than anyone else. And it’s in the middle of nowhere. There’s literally nothing here. It’s the freaking sticks and it’s full of weirdos and your life is over, but at least you’re not dead.

Yet.

But there’s something really bad happening with that dad who wants you dead, and your first love happens to be here too for some reason. There’s a very evil, very obnoxious cancelled comic strip creator who has turned to crime like a Road House despot, an endless number of animal-themed hitmen, some doofus named Cooper that everyone likes for some reason, even though he sucks, and, oh yeah, even your best friends are coming to this dinky little town to end you and get that contract money.

I don’t think there’s ever been anything like End of Life at DC before. The previous book I did with industry veteran Steve Pugh (Hellblazer, Animal Man, Harley Quinn: Breaking Glass) called Peacemaker Tries Hard was close. A fun action romp filled with heart, ridiculous characters, more ridiculous situations, violence, charm and (hopefully) relatable emotional scenarios. And I mean, sure, I’m heavily inspired as a creator by books like Garth Ennis’s Preacher and the incomparable Giffen/DeMatteis’s Justice League, but End of Life is neither of those things. It’s probably nestled somewhere in between the two.

In my books, I just want people to have fun and feel things, but also go on a ridiculous, thrilling, violent roller coaster. And End of Life absolutely does that. It’s the book I wanted to make. And while this book isn’t cerebral or smart, I think those things are what makes it fit so nicely into the Vertigo line. Because those books have always been something more than smart and so very meaningful—they’ve been unique. They’ve been the voice of good creators getting to really tell the stories that they needed to tell and because of that they’ve been good.

And I think End of Life is really good. I can say that. Humbly and objectively.

-K
 

End of Life #1 by Kyle Starks, Steve Pugh and Chris O’Halloran is now available in print and as a digital comic book.