Last Issue Special # 2: Vigilante

SERIES: Vigilante

DATE: 1988

THOSE RESPONSIBLE: Paul Kupperberg (writer), Mike Gold (editor)

CATEGORY: ACCEPTANCE

I don't actually have many issues of Vigilante, though I'd definitely like to get more. One of the relatively few series to actually wrap things up in the final issue, the series ended with the surprising suicide of the main character after several issues depicting a slow drift into paranoia and guilt-ridden murder. A text box by the editor and writer on the last page is quite forthcoming, explaining that while "sales on this book weren't setting the world on fire, it was the two of us who asked for the cancellation of this book in order to tell this story." There's perhaps a touch of denial in the promise that the supporting cast would regularly appear in a follow up book by Kupperberg (Checkmate), which itself was cancelled less than three years later. Still, Vigilante is a good example of how a series should end and I wish more would follow its example (though not necessarily with the suicide of the main character--you know what I mean!).