At last month’s C2E2, I got the chance to chat with current Detective Comics writer Peter J. Tomasi for Multiversity Comics. We mostly talked about Tomasi’s plans for Batman’s big 80th anniversary celebration, but I also managed to ask Tomasi a bonus question about his time editing one of my favorite series: Garth Ennis and John McCrea’s Hitman.

Because that question didn’t fit with the rest of the interview, I’m posting it as bonus content here! Read on to learn Ennis and McCrea’s original plans for what is most certainly one of Hitman‘s most memorable scenes, as well as Tomasi’s thoughts on what other ’90s DC series deserves a complete collection.

Matt Reads Comics: Alright, now I’m going to make you tell me your most interesting Hitman editing story.

Tomasi: Well, we can start with issue one, and the “Tommy vomiting on Batman” scene. That was ready to go to print, and it was an awesome shot. It’s not there now, but it was just a great shot of Tommy blowing goo all over Batman. It was an amazing shot, just the vomit hitting Batman’s chest and splattering his face.

And let’s just say, the people upstairs said, “We don’t want to show Batman being vomited on.” And I’m like, it doesn’t make him weak. He socks Tommy; there’s a great beat, and he pops him. And that’s the stuff you remember. You remember these off-kilter moments. Nobody remembers another fight scene or the same-old crap. Everybody remembers the small, emotional moments in a character’s history. Those are the ones that linger forever and ever, and those are the ones people dig.

I wish we could’ve had that original art there. But that was a blast, working on that series was awesome. Garth and John were firing on all cylinders all the way through. I wish they’d make an omnibus of that.

Matt Reads Comics: Yes.

Tomasi: That deserves an omnibus. There’s two books in my mind right now that deserve one complete collection. And it’s Hitman, and it’s The Spectre by John Ostrander and Tom Mandrake.

Matt Reads Comics: That one I actually haven’t checked out yet.

Tomasi: You should check that out. It’s one of the most amazing comics ever published. It’s 62 issues of one story, and it’s amazing.

Matt Reads Comics: I’ll definitely check that out. And actually, for Hitman, I started collecting that series at Wizard World Chicago probably … ten some years ago. Something like that. And I think you guys had collected like two volumes at that time. So I was definitely hunting down single issues.

Tomasi: Yeah, they were slow in collecting it. And they were just going to start collecting it again, and they stopped –

Matt Reads Comics: Yeah, at Volume Four or something.

Tomasi: They should just start it fresh and do a whole omnibus of it. But we’ll see. Hopefully.