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Old 05-05-2005, 10:27 AM   #1
wktf
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Comic Book Reviews 5/4/05 Part II

Continuing this week's reviews, begun on http://www.statueforum.com/showthrea...449#post181449

Classic Trade Paperback Reviews: Preacher Series

Wktf’s Review

Preacher: Gone To Texas TPB Volume 1 (of 9)
DC Comics/Vertigo
Written by: Garth Ennis
Drawn by: Steve Dillon
Highly Recommended by: Sam Wilson

“Gone to Texas” is the first volume the multi-volume trade paperback Preacher series from DC’s Vertigo line. There’s a quote from Kevin Smith on the front cover that says, “More fun than going to the movies” and I’ll be damned if he isn’t absolutely right about that.

Sam Wilson recommended this series to me and, actually, most highly recommended the fifth volume, “Dixie Fried.” But, I found this one first so I picked it up as soon as I saw it. It’s probably a good idea to start at the beginning, anyway. This is by far the strangest, most unusual, most uniquely original story I’ve read in a long time. It starts out weird and just keeps going further and further out there. Jesse Custer is a minister in a back-water Texas town. Tulip is the girl he left without warning five years ago to go to Texas. She hasn’t forgotten it and is still pretty bitter about the whole thing. And Cassidy is a crude, hard drinking but fiercely loyal vampire from Ireland (yes, you read that right, a vampire from Ireland). These three are thrown together to become the unlikely partners in this buddy/road story that starts with Jesse’s getting a gang beating for calling his townspeople on their sins, Tulip’s fulfilling some contract hit and shooting half the face off someone in a car, and Cassidy’s taking a bullet in the head and smiling about it (our first clue there’s something supernatural about this freaky guy) as he gives Tulip a ride out of the trouble she’s stepped into (we never learn why Tulip’s taken this hitman job in this volume). In the meantime, up in Heaven (I kid you not), a lower order of angels called the Adelphi, who sit at the left of Heaven’s throne, are panicking because a creature called Genesis has escaped his prison on their watch. Genesis has killed a Seraphi, a higher order of warrior angels who sit on the right hand side of Heaven’s throne, and has made his way to Earth to find a human host.

Genesis is where this story really picks up steam. It turns out this creature is the love child of a male Seraphi and a female demon from Hell, and that Genesis has the power to rival the Almighty himself! The two lovers from the wrong sides of the tracks are murdered by their superiors after learning both of their carnal act and the offspring they created. Genesis, in a massive conflagration, inhabits Custer’s body in the middle of a church sermon, killing everyone in the church but Jesse. As a result, Jesse gains the power to control others’ wills. The Heavenly hosts now are afraid because, with this union of the mortal and the divine, “the two together will know the secret ways of Paradise as no other mortal has done. Together they could end us all.” They dispatch one of their own to resurrect the Saint of Killers, a trigger happy supernatural cowboy, to kill Custer after first killing the angel who summoned him. From there we have one of the most graphically bloody (as if it hasn’t been already), foul-mouthed, and blasphemously obscene stories I’ve ever read in my life. It turns out that God, himself, quit his role after Genesis’ birth and simply bailed on Heaven and Earth, leaving Heaven in the hands of the Seraphi. Jesse, having learned this from an Adelphi, has decided to call God out on his lack of responsibility. So, he’s off to find God and give him a piece of his mind, and Tulip and Cassidy appear to be going along for the ride. It’s wonderful. The interaction of our three main characters with each other and with the other players in this book makes for some shocking, jaw dropping and truly original fiction. It’s just great reading…if you can stomach it, that is.

Sam Wilson’s review

Preacher: Dixie Fried TPB vol. 5 (of 9)
DC Comics/Vertigo
Written By: Garth Ennis
Drawn By: Steve Dillon
Not For: The week of stomach, or Goths.

“Preacher” was my first real exposure to “alternative” comics as a teenager. It was my sophomore year in college, and I was still an impressionable 19-year-old know-it-all. Yeah, I was young and stupid and was realizing learning was “cool”, and I was a college student and I had to start hanging out at coffee shops and reading dissident poetry, protesting the “man”. Well, okay, I was a rich man’s son so that felt pretty hypocritical. Instead I just decided to check out other comics besides my weekly fill of capes. I remember seeing the original adds for “Preacher” at my LCS, Jesse Custer’s head surrounded by fire looking over a church, eyes lit up manically. I figured this book might be worth checking out.

Let me tell you, those first few story arcs of “Preacher” really blew me away. The characters, their interactions, and the violence, oh yes, the violence. It was like watching a movie made by John Woo and Sam Peckinpah after they did an eight ball and slammed 4 redbulls, and then said fu$# off to the MPAA and went butt crazy with themselves. Yes, “Preacher” is violent. Yes, it was disturbing, but it all had a point. It was part of a larger story; yeah, yeah, they didn’t have to go so over the top, but if you feel that way you’re missing the point. “Preacher” was about breaking conventions. You had a main character that was honorable, fair, and righteous surrounded by extreme violence, debauchery, and the occasional iron cast sex toy. Ennis was writing about the American dream, but going through the American nightmare to get there.

Then we come to my absolute favorite “Preacher” story, “Cassidy: Blood and Whiskey”, reprinted along with the New Orleans chapter of the “Preacher” epic. When I recommended this comic to wktf, I suggested he check out the first volume, “Gone to Texas”, and then this volume. Even though it is toward the middle of the run, to me it best represents what “Preacher” is all about. At this point in the story we know Cassidy’s “origin”, and we know he has at least one huge character flaw, but what was he like before hooking up with Jesse and Tulip?

“Cassidy: Blood and Whiskey” has our favorite Irish Vampire heading off to New Orleans after having sex with some random southern Sheriff’s wife, and subsequently getting his brains blown out. Cassidy smells something strange in the air and ends up in New Orleans. For the first time in his century of living he comes across one of his own, another vampire named Eccarius.

Eccarius is an Ann Rice vampire, or at least that’s what he thinks Vampires are supposed to act like. He hangs out with the local Goth kids and from what I can tell has pretty much been a total douche since he has crossed over to the living dead (as Cassidy says, he’s a wanker). To make a long story short, Cassidy gives Eccarius and his followers a hard earned lesson in life and self-identity in what is possibly the most hilarious, brutal and damned entertaining stories I have ever read.

Buy Preacher darnit, this is Garth Ennis masterwork. Steve Dillon’s art has never been better. The TPB’s were recently out of print, but DC is now putting them back in print with new covers. Buy them. Read them. Live them. You won’t be sorry.

Last edited by wktf; 05-05-2005 at 10:30 AM.
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Old 05-05-2005, 03:15 PM   #2
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Any Preacher fans out there?
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Old 05-05-2005, 03:48 PM   #3
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Furie, if you're out there you would totally dig Preacher. You too Cage. Trust me.
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