Rick the Vic

A priest with a taste for sacrilege and who dabbles in the dark arts, “Rick the Vic” was a close friend of John Constantine.

John’s friends don’t usually live long though and this was no different for Rick, who kills himself when The First of the Fallen, on a crusade to revenge himself upon John Constantine by taking out his friends, closes in upon him.  Rick’s suicide was an attempt at escaping, but, as he should have known, suicide is a mortal sin, so he finds himself in Hell with no option but to betray another of John’s friends to The First of the Fallen.

Rick was one of multiple characters in Hellblazer created by then-writer Garth Ennis who were all offed in Ennis’ final arc on the title, as Ennis seemingly doesn’t like other people playing with his toys.  Whereas many characters in the Hellblazer comic book who die may pop up again in a flashback at one time or another, this isn’t the case so much for Ennis’ cast except for during the 5 issue “Son of Man” story Ennis returned to write some years later.  The one exception to this is that Rick along with some other Ennis creations/casualties appear in non-speaking capacity as members of John’s recurring gang of ghosts.