“This is probably the most popular volume as L abandons H (I’ll leave it at that in an attempt to not spoil anything).
This is one of a few BIG comic book events that was spoiled for me by Wizard, the comics magazine.
Wizard was a real dick about spoilers. Not because it contained spoilers. That seems pretty natural and unavoidable. If you’re going to write an entire magazine about comics, you’ll get into some of that shit.
But they managed to sneak attack you with spoilers where you wouldn’t expect to find them.
For example, if they ran an interview with Garth Ennis shortly after Preacher ended, I would avoid it because I was reading it in trade, so I was usually about a year behind, and I’d be wary of having something important spoiled.
But WIZARD, these fuckers, spoiled the ending in a single sentence on a mail-in card where you could select winners for some kind of Wizard Award. I didn’t think it’d be that fast, but they managed to spoil a 5-year series in one line? What the hell, man?
The Sandman spoiler wasn’t AS bad as that one, but it was totally unnecessary.
I once got a letter published in Wizard’s letters column, a complaint, which was [Abe Simpson again] the style at the time.
If memory serves, Wizard had written something about how Sony kept putting out different editions of the X-Men movie (the only one in existence at that time) that didn’t have a lot of different special features. I took to pen and paper and said something like, “That’s a pretty hypocritical claim from a monthly magazine that does different, collectible covers every month.”
They printed the letter, I don’t know why, but whatever, I guess you have to print a letter by a butthole kid every now and then.”