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Preacher
Preacher, Volume 9: Alamo
In this final volume, the story comes to an explosive climax. As the net closes around Jesse Custer, so the renegade Preacher embarks on his own endgame, a terrifying strategy that will place him between Starr, Cassidy and the implacable Saint of Killers and lead to a showdown with God himself.
Collects: Preacher #59–66
Collects: Preacher #59–66
240 pages, Paperback
First published May 1, 2001
About the author
Garth Ennis
2,631 books3,017 followersEnnis began his comic-writing career in 1989 with the series Troubled Souls. Appearing in the short-lived but critically-acclaimed British anthology Crisis and illustrated by McCrea, it told the story of a young, apolitical Protestant man caught up by fate in the violence of the Irish 'Troubles'. It spawned a sequel, For a Few Troubles More, a broad Belfast-based comedy featuring two supporting characters from Troubled Souls, Dougie and Ivor, who would later get their own American comics series, Dicks, from Caliber in 1997, and several follow-ups from Avatar.
Another series for Crisis was True Faith, a religious satire inspired by his schooldays, this time drawn by Warren Pleece. Ennis shortly after began to write for Crisis' parent publication, 2000 AD. He quickly graduated on to the title's flagship character, Judge Dredd, taking over from original creator John Wagner for a period of several years.
Ennis' first work on an American comic came in 1991 when he took over DC Comics's horror title Hellblazer, which he wrote until 1994, and for which he currently holds the title for most issues written. Steve Dillon became the regular artist during the second half of Ennis's run.
Ennis' landmark work to date is the 66-issue epic Preacher, which he co-created with artist Steve Dillon. Running from 1995 to 2000, it was a tale of a preacher with supernatural powers, searching (literally) for God who has abandoned his creation.
While Preacher was running, Ennis began a series set in the DC universe called Hitman. Despite being lower profile than Preacher, Hitman ran for 60 issues (plus specials) from 1996 to 2001, veering wildly from violent action to humour to an examination of male friendship under fire.
Other comic projects Ennis wrote during this time period include Goddess, Bloody Mary, Unknown Soldier, and Pride & Joy, all for DC/Vertigo, as well as origin stories for The Darkness for Image Comics and Shadowman for Valiant Comics.
After the end of Hitman, Ennis was lured to Marvel Comics with the promise from Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada that he could write The Punisher as long as he cared to. Instead of largely comical tone of these issues, he decided to make a much more serious series, re-launched under Marvel's MAX imprint.
In 2001 he briefly returned to UK comics to write the epic Helter Skelter for Judge Dredd.
Other comics Ennis has written include War Story (with various artists) for DC; The Pro for Image Comics; The Authority for Wildstorm; Just a Pilgrim for Black Bull Press, and 303, Chronicles of Wormwood (a six issue mini-series about the Antichrist), and a western comic book, Streets of Glory for Avatar Press.
In 2008 Ennis ended his five-year run on Punisher MAX to debut a new Marvel title, War Is Hell: The First Flight of the Phantom Eagle.
In June 2008, at Wizard World, Philadelphia, Ennis announced several new projects, including a metaseries of war comics called Battlefields from Dynamite made up of mini-series including Night Witches, Dear Billy and Tankies, another Chronicles of Wormwood mini-series and Crossed both at Avatar, a six-issue miniseries about Butcher (from The Boys) and a Punisher project reuniting him with artist Steve Dillon (subsequently specified to be a weekly mini-series entitled Punisher: War Zone, to be released concurrently with the film of the same name).
Taken from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garth_Ennis
Another series for Crisis was True Faith, a religious satire inspired by his schooldays, this time drawn by Warren Pleece. Ennis shortly after began to write for Crisis' parent publication, 2000 AD. He quickly graduated on to the title's flagship character, Judge Dredd, taking over from original creator John Wagner for a period of several years.
Ennis' first work on an American comic came in 1991 when he took over DC Comics's horror title Hellblazer, which he wrote until 1994, and for which he currently holds the title for most issues written. Steve Dillon became the regular artist during the second half of Ennis's run.
Ennis' landmark work to date is the 66-issue epic Preacher, which he co-created with artist Steve Dillon. Running from 1995 to 2000, it was a tale of a preacher with supernatural powers, searching (literally) for God who has abandoned his creation.
While Preacher was running, Ennis began a series set in the DC universe called Hitman. Despite being lower profile than Preacher, Hitman ran for 60 issues (plus specials) from 1996 to 2001, veering wildly from violent action to humour to an examination of male friendship under fire.
Other comic projects Ennis wrote during this time period include Goddess, Bloody Mary, Unknown Soldier, and Pride & Joy, all for DC/Vertigo, as well as origin stories for The Darkness for Image Comics and Shadowman for Valiant Comics.
After the end of Hitman, Ennis was lured to Marvel Comics with the promise from Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada that he could write The Punisher as long as he cared to. Instead of largely comical tone of these issues, he decided to make a much more serious series, re-launched under Marvel's MAX imprint.
In 2001 he briefly returned to UK comics to write the epic Helter Skelter for Judge Dredd.
Other comics Ennis has written include War Story (with various artists) for DC; The Pro for Image Comics; The Authority for Wildstorm; Just a Pilgrim for Black Bull Press, and 303, Chronicles of Wormwood (a six issue mini-series about the Antichrist), and a western comic book, Streets of Glory for Avatar Press.
In 2008 Ennis ended his five-year run on Punisher MAX to debut a new Marvel title, War Is Hell: The First Flight of the Phantom Eagle.
In June 2008, at Wizard World, Philadelphia, Ennis announced several new projects, including a metaseries of war comics called Battlefields from Dynamite made up of mini-series including Night Witches, Dear Billy and Tankies, another Chronicles of Wormwood mini-series and Crossed both at Avatar, a six-issue miniseries about Butcher (from The Boys) and a Punisher project reuniting him with artist Steve Dillon (subsequently specified to be a weekly mini-series entitled Punisher: War Zone, to be released concurrently with the film of the same name).
Taken from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garth_Ennis
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Displaying 1 - 29 of 378 reviews
April 1, 2021
Garth Ennis. Thank you. Steve Dillon RIP... thank you for your legacy. A series about God, fundamentalist Christianity, conspiracies, toxic masculinity, Texas, the South, unrequited love, disability, love, betrayal, addiction... or simply a story about the weakness of men, and their fragile egos? A masterwork of multi faceted story telling mixed with a huge swab of dark humour. A Five Star series overall. This volume gets those stars for the record, despite a technical 9.5 out of 12.
February 9, 2017
Damn near perfect.
All the threads come together, snarl, and then make something gloriously beautiful even though it looks the the end of a horrible, horrible mess. And you know what? I actually kinda expected the dog to actually be god. But No. Spoiler time: the dog is just a dog. :)
All through this comic, I knew it was always about these three, or five if you include the redoubtable Starr and the merciful Saint, but how it all came back to the first three, the story's core, is just so goddamned beautiful.
Cassidy, Jesse, and Tulip. So gorgeous. What a fucking awesome tale. :)
And I laughed my ass off when Tulip started making cracks about Jesse's initials. And somehow, I was also extremely satisfied by the Saint's little wrap-up, too. I think I'd want a little rest after all that hate, too.
This comic is going to go on my list as one of the greatest greats. :) Easy.
Ah, well,
All the threads come together, snarl, and then make something gloriously beautiful even though it looks the the end of a horrible, horrible mess. And you know what? I actually kinda expected the dog to actually be god. But No. Spoiler time: the dog is just a dog. :)
All through this comic, I knew it was always about these three, or five if you include the redoubtable Starr and the merciful Saint, but how it all came back to the first three, the story's core, is just so goddamned beautiful.
Cassidy, Jesse, and Tulip. So gorgeous. What a fucking awesome tale. :)
And I laughed my ass off when Tulip started making cracks about Jesse's initials. And somehow, I was also extremely satisfied by the Saint's little wrap-up, too. I think I'd want a little rest after all that hate, too.
This comic is going to go on my list as one of the greatest greats. :) Easy.
Ah, well,
December 14, 2014
Where else would Jesse Custer’s quest end but at the Alamo?
As for the how it happens, I think the book says it best:
“Isn’t it funny when you think your story’s going one way, and it turns out it was going another way all along?”
As for the how it happens, I think the book says it best:
“Isn’t it funny when you think your story’s going one way, and it turns out it was going another way all along?”
September 24, 2021
This is a collection that collects the final issues of this comic run. Obviously this is not the place to start reading this comic. This one wraps up all the individual stories while Jesse and Cassidy have their final confrontation.
I started reading this series because I saw that they were doing a television show from it. I watched the television show and thankfully the comics have been so much better. They have been crude on every level with gratuitous levels of violence while addressing issues of religion, family, and love. Will the writers be able to pull off the finale? They do and not in a way I was expecting at all. I was expecting a balls to the wall finale with everything thrown at me including the kitchen sink. Instead, the writers went in a different direction and this was subdued. It totally caught me by surprise. We get resolutions to all kinds of characters and these resolutions range from happy endings to deaths. I thought the writers did an excellent job of tying up all the loose ends.
This didn't go the way I wanted it to go but I am more than okay with it. It was a great way to end this series that spoke to my inner child with its sometimes crass and crude nature. It also spoke to the adult in me as it tackled important issues throughout its run. It handled this mix easily and this was a delight to read.
I started reading this series because I saw that they were doing a television show from it. I watched the television show and thankfully the comics have been so much better. They have been crude on every level with gratuitous levels of violence while addressing issues of religion, family, and love. Will the writers be able to pull off the finale? They do and not in a way I was expecting at all. I was expecting a balls to the wall finale with everything thrown at me including the kitchen sink. Instead, the writers went in a different direction and this was subdued. It totally caught me by surprise. We get resolutions to all kinds of characters and these resolutions range from happy endings to deaths. I thought the writers did an excellent job of tying up all the loose ends.
This didn't go the way I wanted it to go but I am more than okay with it. It was a great way to end this series that spoke to my inner child with its sometimes crass and crude nature. It also spoke to the adult in me as it tackled important issues throughout its run. It handled this mix easily and this was a delight to read.
September 25, 2016
First and foremost, Preacher did not end as I expected it to be. It has less violence and blood than the previous concluding arcs. The final setpiece is rather subdued and "quiet", save for a couple of explosions and gunshots. Though it is not the end I have expected, Garth Ennis has ended it in the best way Preacher could have possibly ended. And surprisingly, the ending has a heart and full of hope. Thus in a few words, I try to summarize what I felt about the ending, and please pardon my language:
"And they fuck*ng lived fuckin*ly happily ever after. So f*ck you and I love you, Preacher has ended."
Alamo, the last volume is way more grounded and personal than the other volumes of Preacher. In fact, it is those personal grudges and motivations that drove all the main characters in doing what they ought to do. All the religious political BS and the "confronting god" thing for me just took a backseat in this last arc.
If there is one negative thing I can add in this review, it was really Jesse Custer's plan. It may be brilliant and feasible from the preacher's point of view, but it is anti-climatic and a eenie-bit of a letdown from a reader's point of view. I mean, that has got to be the Jesse's main mission in the whole series, a sort of genesis versus god fight ala-Mortal Kombat right?
As for the main series, Genesis really, really felt to be hugely underused and underdeveloped. The demon-angel lovechild didn't not really lived up to its full potential and the power of the Word being not as formidable and dangerous as it should have been. And what ultimately happened to Genesis was too convenient. Its fate was inevitable, but yet too convenient.
Arseface's charm was felt until the conclusion of his story, but he could have been part of a larger scheme. But this is just nitpicking though. He is anyway the Hodor of the story. Herr Starr's fate was also inevitable, but Ennis made sure that it was helluva fun to see him being laughed at which is a sort of guilty pleasure feeling. The Saint of Killer's on the other hand got his dream of revenge fulfilled, though I doubt if the satisfaction will last forever. This kinda reminds me of Kratos.
As for Jesse, Cass and Tulip, our three main characters, I will let you read what ultimately happened to them.
For me, Preacher may not top the feeling I got from Scalped for a big chunk of the series but Ennis certainly nailed a better ending than Jason Aaron. It was funny as hell and a ridiculously fun trip, being with Jesse and co. Thank you Ennis, Fabry and Dillon for giving us such a great read!
"And they fuck*ng lived fuckin*ly happily ever after. So f*ck you and I love you, Preacher has ended."
Alamo, the last volume is way more grounded and personal than the other volumes of Preacher. In fact, it is those personal grudges and motivations that drove all the main characters in doing what they ought to do. All the religious political BS and the "confronting god" thing for me just took a backseat in this last arc.
If there is one negative thing I can add in this review, it was really Jesse Custer's plan. It may be brilliant and feasible from the preacher's point of view, but it is anti-climatic and a eenie-bit of a letdown from a reader's point of view. I mean, that has got to be the Jesse's main mission in the whole series, a sort of genesis versus god fight ala-Mortal Kombat right?
As for the main series, Genesis really, really felt to be hugely underused and underdeveloped. The demon-angel lovechild didn't not really lived up to its full potential and the power of the Word being not as formidable and dangerous as it should have been. And what ultimately happened to Genesis was too convenient. Its fate was inevitable, but yet too convenient.
Arseface's charm was felt until the conclusion of his story, but he could have been part of a larger scheme. But this is just nitpicking though. He is anyway the Hodor of the story. Herr Starr's fate was also inevitable, but Ennis made sure that it was helluva fun to see him being laughed at which is a sort of guilty pleasure feeling. The Saint of Killer's on the other hand got his dream of revenge fulfilled, though I doubt if the satisfaction will last forever. This kinda reminds me of Kratos.
As for Jesse, Cass and Tulip, our three main characters, I will let you read what ultimately happened to them.
For me, Preacher may not top the feeling I got from Scalped for a big chunk of the series but Ennis certainly nailed a better ending than Jason Aaron. It was funny as hell and a ridiculously fun trip, being with Jesse and co. Thank you Ennis, Fabry and Dillon for giving us such a great read!
September 12, 2021
Neredeyse ağlayacaktım lan. Çok ilginç. Bu kadar sert bir hikayeden gelmesi tuhaf oldu. Neyse, ateş gibi finaldi. Değiştirmek istediğim ufak tefek bir iki şey var ama böyle de tadından yenmiyor. Kitaba başladım ve koltuğa yapıştırdı beni. Yan karakterlere kadar, bütün hikayeler sona ulaştı. Parlak 5.✨
April 1, 2012
Unfortunately, the last book in this series turned out to be a major disappointment. This review will talk briefly about this last book, but also the series as a whole.
Let's start with the main character, Jesse Custer. I loved that he stood for doing the right thing no matter what, that he wasn't afraid to call anyone (even God) out on their bullshit. However, for someone who is so bent on holding God accountable for bad things, for justice, and for doing right, he kills a lot of people. A lot of people. And sometimes in brutal fashion. Yes, the people he kills are not pleasant and have done some horrible things; but should someone trying to be so morally upright be so brutal? It would be one thing if Jesse expressed doubt about any of this, some questioning, but he doesn't. He plows on, sure of the righteousness of his acts. It's a strange disconnect.
God is also a big problem here. As I mentioned in my review of the first collection, I was very nervous about how Ennis would actually handle portraying God. He set himself up for a big task. Jesse's quest is to find and confront God, so Ennis needed to find someway to portray an omnipotent, omniscient being or find some clever way of not making the confrontation happen. God shows up a few times along the way. After each I had hoped that it wasn't actually God, that it was a trick or something. God just seemed so...small. In the end, as it turns out, in a completely anticlimactic way, Jesse never gets the confrontation he quested for and God turns out to be an insecure, desperate asshole who's not too bright. Ennis could make this work, but it's so...boring. This is not a new idea. Anyone who has read the Old Testament in a serious way is left with some serious questions about God's nature. But Ennis does nothing fresh with this material. God does not feel very God-like, especially when he creates a character powerful enough to kill him. It just comes across as contemptuous of the Christian God without even bothering with a good story for him.
The gore and sexuality of the series, of course, made a big splash when it originally ran. At first it was sort of funny, but it wore out very quickly when nearly every character had some sort of over the top sexual fetish or sexual humiliation to deal with. Oh, someone had their manhood bitten off. Big deal. Oh, someone builds a giant meat sculpture and screws it. Yawn. Oh, he was accidentally chemically castrated. Big whoop. It could have been much more entertaining if there wasn't so much of it. Sometimes less is more.
What happened to Cassidy? The direction his story ended up taking seemed to come way out of left field. It seemed that Ennis tried to justify it by having one character say that Cassidy became your friend and you trusted him and then he screwed everything up big time. This might have worked if hints had been dropped earlier for the reader about this, but there was nothing. Suddenly Cassidy goes from being a funny guy to an ex-junkie who gave blowjobs (more over the top sex stuff!) to score his drugs and someone who was willing to stab his good friend in the back to get in bed with the guy's girlfriend. WTF? I really, really didn't like this part of the story.
By the end of the series I was bored and frustrated. There was far too much sex for it to have any sort of impact. There was far too much unnecessary filler back story thrown in. The portrayal of God was just lame. The primary human protagonist was also just eye-rolling lame. The primary driver of the story, Jesse looking for God, never satisfactorily happened. The moral authority of Jesse was severely compromised by his willing embrace of brutal violence and killing. I was disappointed to say the least. There was a lot of missed potential here.
Let's start with the main character, Jesse Custer. I loved that he stood for doing the right thing no matter what, that he wasn't afraid to call anyone (even God) out on their bullshit. However, for someone who is so bent on holding God accountable for bad things, for justice, and for doing right, he kills a lot of people. A lot of people. And sometimes in brutal fashion. Yes, the people he kills are not pleasant and have done some horrible things; but should someone trying to be so morally upright be so brutal? It would be one thing if Jesse expressed doubt about any of this, some questioning, but he doesn't. He plows on, sure of the righteousness of his acts. It's a strange disconnect.
God is also a big problem here. As I mentioned in my review of the first collection, I was very nervous about how Ennis would actually handle portraying God. He set himself up for a big task. Jesse's quest is to find and confront God, so Ennis needed to find someway to portray an omnipotent, omniscient being or find some clever way of not making the confrontation happen. God shows up a few times along the way. After each I had hoped that it wasn't actually God, that it was a trick or something. God just seemed so...small. In the end, as it turns out, in a completely anticlimactic way, Jesse never gets the confrontation he quested for and God turns out to be an insecure, desperate asshole who's not too bright. Ennis could make this work, but it's so...boring. This is not a new idea. Anyone who has read the Old Testament in a serious way is left with some serious questions about God's nature. But Ennis does nothing fresh with this material. God does not feel very God-like, especially when he creates a character powerful enough to kill him. It just comes across as contemptuous of the Christian God without even bothering with a good story for him.
The gore and sexuality of the series, of course, made a big splash when it originally ran. At first it was sort of funny, but it wore out very quickly when nearly every character had some sort of over the top sexual fetish or sexual humiliation to deal with. Oh, someone had their manhood bitten off. Big deal. Oh, someone builds a giant meat sculpture and screws it. Yawn. Oh, he was accidentally chemically castrated. Big whoop. It could have been much more entertaining if there wasn't so much of it. Sometimes less is more.
What happened to Cassidy? The direction his story ended up taking seemed to come way out of left field. It seemed that Ennis tried to justify it by having one character say that Cassidy became your friend and you trusted him and then he screwed everything up big time. This might have worked if hints had been dropped earlier for the reader about this, but there was nothing. Suddenly Cassidy goes from being a funny guy to an ex-junkie who gave blowjobs (more over the top sex stuff!) to score his drugs and someone who was willing to stab his good friend in the back to get in bed with the guy's girlfriend. WTF? I really, really didn't like this part of the story.
By the end of the series I was bored and frustrated. There was far too much sex for it to have any sort of impact. There was far too much unnecessary filler back story thrown in. The portrayal of God was just lame. The primary human protagonist was also just eye-rolling lame. The primary driver of the story, Jesse looking for God, never satisfactorily happened. The moral authority of Jesse was severely compromised by his willing embrace of brutal violence and killing. I was disappointed to say the least. There was a lot of missed potential here.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 9, 2016
Until a few months ago, I had never heard of this series or its author (I know, is unforgivable). I read the first for curiosity and then, I am going forward, devouring one book after another, following the adventures of Tulip, Jesse, Cassidy and all other major and minor characters who appear in these books.
Ennis is in no hurry to conclude, carries the various stories, unfolds them with precision and concludes some (such as Arseface and Lorie). The result is a stunning final, with a double confrontation between Jesse and Cassidy, but also between the Grail and Jesse, which closes the series giving the reader all the answers, leaving no unfinished stories. There is also a few surprises. Even the place of this clash, Alamo, a place full of meaning, seems to be in keeping with the style of comics.
The character of Starr, the super villain, in recent books has been painted so grotesque and funny, the most absurd things have happened to him and, while remaining a ruthless and cruel individual, cannot help but bring a smile. Phenomenal some of his dialogues and scenes, as when is sitting on the w.c, using toilet paper with the faces of his enemies printed above.
Tulip O'hare definitely deserves the prize for the toughest character: beautiful woman, foolproof shooter and lead hurricane. In some cases, a bit disturbed, but that is part of its charm.
In the end, in my opinion, the search for God by Jesse Custer, it is not the focus of the whole story. It is this strangely assorted group, Jesse, Tulip, Cassidy, their stories, their relationships, their destinies. The imprint of the Western genre was obvious from the start, but especially in this book. Memorable the last, where Ennis leaves us with the classic image that typically always shown.
Ennis is in no hurry to conclude, carries the various stories, unfolds them with precision and concludes some (such as Arseface and Lorie). The result is a stunning final, with a double confrontation between Jesse and Cassidy, but also between the Grail and Jesse, which closes the series giving the reader all the answers, leaving no unfinished stories. There is also a few surprises. Even the place of this clash, Alamo, a place full of meaning, seems to be in keeping with the style of comics.
The character of Starr, the super villain, in recent books has been painted so grotesque and funny, the most absurd things have happened to him and, while remaining a ruthless and cruel individual, cannot help but bring a smile. Phenomenal some of his dialogues and scenes, as when is sitting on the w.c, using toilet paper with the faces of his enemies printed above.
Tulip O'hare definitely deserves the prize for the toughest character: beautiful woman, foolproof shooter and lead hurricane. In some cases, a bit disturbed, but that is part of its charm.
In the end, in my opinion, the search for God by Jesse Custer, it is not the focus of the whole story. It is this strangely assorted group, Jesse, Tulip, Cassidy, their stories, their relationships, their destinies. The imprint of the Western genre was obvious from the start, but especially in this book. Memorable the last, where Ennis leaves us with the classic image that typically always shown.
February 27, 2023
Ottimo finale per questa serie.
Il Predicatore prepara la scena per l'atto finale e chiude tutti i discorsi rimasti aperti.
Cassidy, il suo passato e il loro rapporto.
Il Graal, e già che ci siamo anche Hoover.
Tulip.
Il Santo degli Assassini.
La coppia di angeli fuggiti dal paradiso.
E ovviamente Dio.
Abbiamo anche una chiusura per Lory, Facciadiculo e Salvation.
Un finale senza sbavature, con tutti che si comportano come devono e che riescono anche ad avere un'ultima evoluzione.
Un finale ovviamente pieno di sangue e morti, sennò che finale di Preacher sarebbe?
Contento di aver fatto questa cavalcata assieme a Jesse Custer e di averlo accompagnato nella sua ultima battaglia, giustamente ad Alamo
Il Predicatore prepara la scena per l'atto finale e chiude tutti i discorsi rimasti aperti.
Cassidy, il suo passato e il loro rapporto.
Il Graal, e già che ci siamo anche Hoover.
Tulip.
Il Santo degli Assassini.
La coppia di angeli fuggiti dal paradiso.
E ovviamente Dio.
Abbiamo anche una chiusura per Lory, Facciadiculo e Salvation.
Un finale senza sbavature, con tutti che si comportano come devono e che riescono anche ad avere un'ultima evoluzione.
Un finale ovviamente pieno di sangue e morti, sennò che finale di Preacher sarebbe?
Contento di aver fatto questa cavalcata assieme a Jesse Custer e di averlo accompagnato nella sua ultima battaglia, giustamente ad Alamo
August 9, 2013
After reading the previous eight volumes, I was committed to this series in a big way. So for Alamo to have an ending worthy of the series' overall quality was, in a word, a relief. There is little I can say without spoiling the ending, except that every major character has their moment in the sun, and a satisfying resolution to their story.
August 29, 2019
The final end of one the best adult graphic novels now TV series. I always thought that it would not be able to be done on TV its ok but the GN are best .
You never get full depth of the art work in show .This 2nd read of this series never tier of re-reading book if it is good & been able to go from 1-9 in few weeks with odd other book in-between is much better too.
You never get full depth of the art work in show .This 2nd read of this series never tier of re-reading book if it is good & been able to go from 1-9 in few weeks with odd other book in-between is much better too.
September 7, 2015
God damn, for some reason I've been wanting to read this book for YEARS, but never got around to it until now.
Preacher was one of the gateway comics - got me back into comics after 12 years away from that rather expensive and addicting habit. I couldn't believe after so long away, just how *adult* and hilariously vile and updated my love had become.
And Mr. Ennis (and Ellis, in that most ridiculous and hilarious Transmetropolitan) were such masters of the profane, how could I possibly refuse their bizarre and juicy worlds?
I bought one trade after another in each of these series, slowing down only when I worked up the nerve to stick a toe back into the capes and tights and discovered creators like Bendis, Brubaker, Vaughan and Morrison to slake my oily thirst.
Eventually I got to near the end of both those series and didn't buy their final volumes until I'd started to forget their detailed story lines and thought I'd better re-read them before hitting the home run. And thus it's been about 12 years since I ought to have read this sucker.
What should I say about this sacred tome, after finally consuming it? What would I make of it to others that wouldn't spoil the joy and heartache of the surprises in store for you there? And what is the point of trying to put into words an experience that would mostly be lessened for the exercise?
Did I like it? Most certainly.
Was it what I expected? Yes and no.
Was it a deserving ending to this series? Hells yeah. To me, it stands up there with the end of Scalped (the only of these kind of series I've properly finished - whereas I've got a mission to complete with Y: The Last Man, Transmetropolitan, Ex Machina).
Was it better than The Boys? Yes, a little less over the top (but not by much) and a bit more poetic.
So, on a scale of 1 to Dirty, Vile and Funny, do I recommend this to my Shallow Comics buddies? Absolutely. Will read it again.
Preacher was one of the gateway comics - got me back into comics after 12 years away from that rather expensive and addicting habit. I couldn't believe after so long away, just how *adult* and hilariously vile and updated my love had become.
And Mr. Ennis (and Ellis, in that most ridiculous and hilarious Transmetropolitan) were such masters of the profane, how could I possibly refuse their bizarre and juicy worlds?
I bought one trade after another in each of these series, slowing down only when I worked up the nerve to stick a toe back into the capes and tights and discovered creators like Bendis, Brubaker, Vaughan and Morrison to slake my oily thirst.
Eventually I got to near the end of both those series and didn't buy their final volumes until I'd started to forget their detailed story lines and thought I'd better re-read them before hitting the home run. And thus it's been about 12 years since I ought to have read this sucker.
What should I say about this sacred tome, after finally consuming it? What would I make of it to others that wouldn't spoil the joy and heartache of the surprises in store for you there? And what is the point of trying to put into words an experience that would mostly be lessened for the exercise?
Did I like it? Most certainly.
Was it what I expected? Yes and no.
Was it a deserving ending to this series? Hells yeah. To me, it stands up there with the end of Scalped (the only of these kind of series I've properly finished - whereas I've got a mission to complete with Y: The Last Man, Transmetropolitan, Ex Machina).
Was it better than The Boys? Yes, a little less over the top (but not by much) and a bit more poetic.
So, on a scale of 1 to Dirty, Vile and Funny, do I recommend this to my Shallow Comics buddies? Absolutely. Will read it again.
August 6, 2008
You'd think a storyline about holding God "accountable for his crimes" that has stretched out over five years would come to a slightly more epic conclusion. Yes, I understand that killing God could be considered a somewhat epic undertaking, but it was delivered with all the style and panache of a wet newspaper. Just a tad anticlimactic.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 14, 2010
Following Jesse Custer through nine volumes of Preacher has been an exercise in hilarity and despair. And a hell of a lotta gore. It had its ups and downs in terms of pacing, but I can forgive the lackluster moments when I consider how captivating Garth Ennis’ characters are. From the first volume, I was hooked. Jesse’s determination, Tulip’s loyalty, Cassidy’s devil-may-care attitude, Starr‘s fanaticism, the Saint‘s focused hatred--it’s the personalities involved that make Preacher the entertaining read it is.
That said, this series isn’t for everyone. Like others have stated, Preacher can be downright offensive. But then again, have you lived on this planet? Life is offensive. We deal with hatred and ignorance on a daily basis; Ennis uses these examples to drive home Jesse’s goals and to showcase his desire for something better for the America he adores.
And boy, does he love America. The notion that this country is great, that a person can achieve anything he wants should he only put his mind to it, is repeated throughout the series--not only by Jesse, but also by Cassidy. Jesse takes it to new heights, however, because of his fixation on the cowboy mentality. He’s the type of man who does his best to right the wrongs he encounters. He perpetuates the image of the honorable cowboy and shows that the myth can still exist in our modern-day world.
There are other themes running strong in Preacher. Personal revenge is a biggie since it motivates every single character at some point, driving them toward irrational actions that don’t often turn out for the best. Softening the blow of that is the concept of second chances. Jesse points out that there are some people who are innocents who’ve just made dumb choices. That everyone deserves a second chance to make things right. Those two concepts are often at odds in this series, but Jesse does his best to differentiate between those who have true evil in them, and those who have accidentally turned down the wrong path.
If that sounds as if Jesse is passing judgment, it should. His quest is all about demanding answers and holding one being responsible for his actions. Through Jesse’s search, the ways of God become known to man. And God is found severely lacking.
Ennis’ interpretation of Christianity raises some interesting questions about the Lord’s motivations. Having been raised Catholic myself, Jesse’s summary analysis echoed many of my own responses to the God I’m supposed to believe in. The dichotomy between a loving creator and a world constantly torn asunder by hatred is not easily reconciled, and the truth Jesse reveals comes perilously close to some thoughts I’ve entertained in the past. Sharing these notions with the writer made me appreciate the series all the more.
Despite the blood and gore, the disappointment and tears, Preacher does end on a high note. Returning to those notions of second chances and the wonders America can provide, Garth Ennis allows hope to remain. Instead of tying it up in faith, he lets it reside in the perpetuity of the American ideal. As Jesse Custer’s daddy said: “Don’t take no shit off fools…an’ you judge a person by what’s in ‘em, not how they look. An’ you do the right thing. You gotta be one of the good guys, son: ‘cause there’s way too many of the bad.”
Not a bad credo to live by.
"I was told when I grew up I could be anything I wanted: a fireman, a policeman, a doctor--even President, it seemed. And for the first time in the history of mankind, something new, called an astronaut. But like so many kids brought up on a steady diet of Westerns, I always wanted to be the avenging cowboy hero--that lone voice in the wilderness, fighting corruption and evil wherever I found it, and standing for freedom, truth and justice. And in my heart of hearts I still track the remnants of that dream wherever I go, in my endless ride into the setting sun."
Bill Hicks, Revelations
That said, this series isn’t for everyone. Like others have stated, Preacher can be downright offensive. But then again, have you lived on this planet? Life is offensive. We deal with hatred and ignorance on a daily basis; Ennis uses these examples to drive home Jesse’s goals and to showcase his desire for something better for the America he adores.
And boy, does he love America. The notion that this country is great, that a person can achieve anything he wants should he only put his mind to it, is repeated throughout the series--not only by Jesse, but also by Cassidy. Jesse takes it to new heights, however, because of his fixation on the cowboy mentality. He’s the type of man who does his best to right the wrongs he encounters. He perpetuates the image of the honorable cowboy and shows that the myth can still exist in our modern-day world.
There are other themes running strong in Preacher. Personal revenge is a biggie since it motivates every single character at some point, driving them toward irrational actions that don’t often turn out for the best. Softening the blow of that is the concept of second chances. Jesse points out that there are some people who are innocents who’ve just made dumb choices. That everyone deserves a second chance to make things right. Those two concepts are often at odds in this series, but Jesse does his best to differentiate between those who have true evil in them, and those who have accidentally turned down the wrong path.
If that sounds as if Jesse is passing judgment, it should. His quest is all about demanding answers and holding one being responsible for his actions. Through Jesse’s search, the ways of God become known to man. And God is found severely lacking.
Ennis’ interpretation of Christianity raises some interesting questions about the Lord’s motivations. Having been raised Catholic myself, Jesse’s summary analysis echoed many of my own responses to the God I’m supposed to believe in. The dichotomy between a loving creator and a world constantly torn asunder by hatred is not easily reconciled, and the truth Jesse reveals comes perilously close to some thoughts I’ve entertained in the past. Sharing these notions with the writer made me appreciate the series all the more.
Despite the blood and gore, the disappointment and tears, Preacher does end on a high note. Returning to those notions of second chances and the wonders America can provide, Garth Ennis allows hope to remain. Instead of tying it up in faith, he lets it reside in the perpetuity of the American ideal. As Jesse Custer’s daddy said: “Don’t take no shit off fools…an’ you judge a person by what’s in ‘em, not how they look. An’ you do the right thing. You gotta be one of the good guys, son: ‘cause there’s way too many of the bad.”
Not a bad credo to live by.
"I was told when I grew up I could be anything I wanted: a fireman, a policeman, a doctor--even President, it seemed. And for the first time in the history of mankind, something new, called an astronaut. But like so many kids brought up on a steady diet of Westerns, I always wanted to be the avenging cowboy hero--that lone voice in the wilderness, fighting corruption and evil wherever I found it, and standing for freedom, truth and justice. And in my heart of hearts I still track the remnants of that dream wherever I go, in my endless ride into the setting sun."
Bill Hicks, Revelations
August 21, 2015
The question above the screen where you put in your review says: "What did you think?" Well, what can I say? It's the last volume in this great otherworldly, in every sense of the word, story.
I have a couple of moments in this volume that stand out for me: Agent Hoover finally gets himself to curse, Jesse and Cassidy get into one last barfight, Jesse remembering his father's wise advice when he says goodbye to the Duke.
The second half of the story is just... You know the story is coming to an end and Garth Ennis doesn't rush it, he knows just how to end a great story like this. How to tie up all the loose ends, answer all the questions and deliver a beautiful ending to a beautifully written story.
The last stand in front of the Alamo between Jesse and Cassidy is heartwrenching and how it ends up between Jesse and Tulip... I won't spoil it for you guys. I like what they used as the last panel of the book.
To put it simply:
I'll love this story until the End of the World...
I have a couple of moments in this volume that stand out for me: Agent Hoover finally gets himself to curse, Jesse and Cassidy get into one last barfight, Jesse remembering his father's wise advice when he says goodbye to the Duke.
The second half of the story is just... You know the story is coming to an end and Garth Ennis doesn't rush it, he knows just how to end a great story like this. How to tie up all the loose ends, answer all the questions and deliver a beautiful ending to a beautifully written story.
The last stand in front of the Alamo between Jesse and Cassidy is heartwrenching and how it ends up between Jesse and Tulip... I won't spoil it for you guys. I like what they used as the last panel of the book.
To put it simply:
I'll love this story until the End of the World...
September 14, 2023
Visto con ojos actuales, la serie puede llegar a disgustar en más de un sentido. Han pasado más de veinte años y ahora el sueño americano, motivo destacado de este cómic, causa más rechazo que ilusión. Los personajes son tan —pero tan— yanquis, tan planos, que en ocasiones resultan ridículos. Y, además, nunca queda claro a dónde quiere llevarnos Garth Ennis.
Y, sin embargo, esta gamberrada, mezcla de western hipervitaminado y pataleta noventera, es divertidísima. Violento, descarado, desacomplejado y ofensivo, casi se muestra como un paradigma de su propia época, en la que el inconformismo se tomaba con ironía y mala leche (los Simpson de los 90, el primer Tarantino).
Un guion con altibajos, pero de una imaginación y libertad absolutas, un dibujo efectivo y unas portadas hiperrealistas (para enmarcarlas) son los pilares donde descansa esta obra, que ya ha sido elevada al Olimpo de la historia del cómic.
Quizá no sea para tanto, pero es irrepetible.
Y, sin embargo, esta gamberrada, mezcla de western hipervitaminado y pataleta noventera, es divertidísima. Violento, descarado, desacomplejado y ofensivo, casi se muestra como un paradigma de su propia época, en la que el inconformismo se tomaba con ironía y mala leche (los Simpson de los 90, el primer Tarantino).
Un guion con altibajos, pero de una imaginación y libertad absolutas, un dibujo efectivo y unas portadas hiperrealistas (para enmarcarlas) son los pilares donde descansa esta obra, que ya ha sido elevada al Olimpo de la historia del cómic.
Quizá no sea para tanto, pero es irrepetible.
September 27, 2018
I absolutely hated to see this series end. And while I'm sure there would have been some money in bringing the series back, Garth Ennis has stuck to his guns and left things as they were meant to be.
We get to see the final outcomes for all of the cast: Jesse, Tulip, Cassady, Arseface, Herr Starr, the Saint of Killers, even God.
While I say I hate to see the series end, truthfully it was the perfect length. Long enough to tell a good story but not so long it dragged or got bogged down. That's not an easy feat, but Ennis and Dillon and the crew pulled it off. Let me call attention to Glenn Fabry, whose painted covers were perfect for the series.
This series was crude at times and probably offensive to many, but underneath it all was a great story with very memorable characters. Highest recommendation.
We get to see the final outcomes for all of the cast: Jesse, Tulip, Cassady, Arseface, Herr Starr, the Saint of Killers, even God.
While I say I hate to see the series end, truthfully it was the perfect length. Long enough to tell a good story but not so long it dragged or got bogged down. That's not an easy feat, but Ennis and Dillon and the crew pulled it off. Let me call attention to Glenn Fabry, whose painted covers were perfect for the series.
This series was crude at times and probably offensive to many, but underneath it all was a great story with very memorable characters. Highest recommendation.
June 17, 2010
So, I've read the whole "Preacher" series over the last few months.
The Pros:
-Steve Dillon's artwork, especially the facial expressions he draws. He is able to convey far more emotion than virtually any superhero-style comic artist, and his character actually look like humans. He doesn't really do anything interesting with form--he's not an experimental comic artist--but he does what he does very well.
-The relationships between the characters, and especially how they change over time.
-The anti-religious narrative is pretty risque for a comic.
The Cons:
-Preacher is about as chauvinistic as it gets. The character of Tulip might be meant to be some sort of strong, feminist character, but she ends up reinforcing the idea that the only "cool" women are the ones that act like men, but like to have a lot of sex.
-It's also patriotic to the point of being jingoistic. Considering the creators are European, I guess this might be satire, but it doesn't read like it.
-Virtually every "villain" is given a sexual identity outside of the heterosexual norm, while Jesse Custer and Tulip's heterosexual romance is held up as an ideal. The comic ends up reinforcing heteronormativity, while devaluing and ridiculing all other practices.
The Pros:
-Steve Dillon's artwork, especially the facial expressions he draws. He is able to convey far more emotion than virtually any superhero-style comic artist, and his character actually look like humans. He doesn't really do anything interesting with form--he's not an experimental comic artist--but he does what he does very well.
-The relationships between the characters, and especially how they change over time.
-The anti-religious narrative is pretty risque for a comic.
The Cons:
-Preacher is about as chauvinistic as it gets. The character of Tulip might be meant to be some sort of strong, feminist character, but she ends up reinforcing the idea that the only "cool" women are the ones that act like men, but like to have a lot of sex.
-It's also patriotic to the point of being jingoistic. Considering the creators are European, I guess this might be satire, but it doesn't read like it.
-Virtually every "villain" is given a sexual identity outside of the heterosexual norm, while Jesse Custer and Tulip's heterosexual romance is held up as an ideal. The comic ends up reinforcing heteronormativity, while devaluing and ridiculing all other practices.
March 3, 2019
The Preacher series are the most brilliant comics ever written. If fact, it's some of the best fiction ever written, irrespective of the format. All nine books are masterpieces. It is a little hard to review this book for the common reader. All I can really say is if you haven't read the rest of this series than you should not be starting with this one. Go back and get Gone To Texas first. Then read through the rest of it and come back for Alamo. For those of you who have read the whole series so far, it's even more pointless to review it.
This series rested on a premise: God exists, but He quit his post, and the Reverend Jesse Custer wanted to bring him to accounts. Somewhere along the line, we come to learn the drive of desperation, the fear of loneliness, the selfishness of the lonely, and that all children eventually. Or are we talking about Rev. Jesse Custer, who, like his mother, outgrew the confines of solitary and hateful Angelville? Or Cassidy, who screws up every meaningful friendship he ever had. Or Tulip when she thought the love of her life was gone. Even the Saint of Killers does what he does out of selfish rage and needful purpose.
Overall, Preacher rocks and is a comic book worthy of praise.
This series rested on a premise: God exists, but He quit his post, and the Reverend Jesse Custer wanted to bring him to accounts. Somewhere along the line, we come to learn the drive of desperation, the fear of loneliness, the selfishness of the lonely, and that all children eventually. Or are we talking about Rev. Jesse Custer, who, like his mother, outgrew the confines of solitary and hateful Angelville? Or Cassidy, who screws up every meaningful friendship he ever had. Or Tulip when she thought the love of her life was gone. Even the Saint of Killers does what he does out of selfish rage and needful purpose.
Overall, Preacher rocks and is a comic book worthy of praise.
May 4, 2020
Muhteşem. Bu cildin tek bir sayfası, paneli bile kötü değil. Preacher, ifade özgürlüğünün nelere kadir olabileceğini gösteren müthiş, fırlama, gönül telinizi titretecek bir macera. Kesinlikle tavsiye ediyorum.
July 10, 2016
The grand finale. Jesse and Cassidy face off in front of the Alamo while Starr runs his endgame.
I still have a few complaints. The Grail just isn't the all-powerful organization it's supposed to be. Preacher continues to suffer from Cassidy's being rewritten as a useless backstabbing asshole. Tulip's interpretation of "I don't want you to fight the lethal shadow organization" as "you're a silly girl who can't take care of herself" is a blatant strawman and Jesse should be calling her on it.
And yet what a sendoff. Ennis paces everything perfectly, the fight and the aftermath, the setup and the epilogue. Every character gets a suitable resolution. There's even a wonderfully rendered sunset for riding off into.
Preacher deserves every bit of its acclaim.
Plot points:
I still have a few complaints. The Grail just isn't the all-powerful organization it's supposed to be. Preacher continues to suffer from Cassidy's being rewritten as a useless backstabbing asshole. Tulip's interpretation of "I don't want you to fight the lethal shadow organization" as "you're a silly girl who can't take care of herself" is a blatant strawman and Jesse should be calling her on it.
And yet what a sendoff. Ennis paces everything perfectly, the fight and the aftermath, the setup and the epilogue. Every character gets a suitable resolution. There's even a wonderfully rendered sunset for riding off into.
Preacher deserves every bit of its acclaim.
Plot points:
February 28, 2012
That ending was just perfect. Honestly.
January 4, 2019
A disappointing ending to a good series.
March 16, 2023
The finale of Preacher may work as the conclusion to the Cassidy-Tulip-Custer storyline built all the way back since Dixie Fried, but the finale showcases a few of the persistent issues with this series that were a constant from day 1 and even before then, if you read any of Garth's run on "Hellblazer".
The first issue is the fact that Jesse Custer abandons Tulip once again, like he did in "Proud Americans", because of his continuous fear of having her die on him again, which has been a constant since his involuntary return to Angelville. He even drugs her to do so, because he's kind of a dick, as has been established in earlier volumes.
This is just one of many moments of Jesse being an out and out prick, yet Garth really wants to excuse his actions, when this has been the way he's been acting all along. Custer will gladly wreck your bar because he'll take any chance to start a bar fight, even if it's over something as trivial as the other patrons wanting to watch the game and NOT reruns of then sixty year old Laurel and Hardy shorts. He'll gladly ruin your life and send you to prison with massive debts because he'll use his Word of God ability to make a cashier hand him over ten thousand dollars, likely having the woman spend years in jail for theft and or emblezzlement, but that doesn't matter cause Jesse wants to spend time at a nice hotel and get drunk on Jack Daniels. He'll throw a hissy fit because someone uses the word "partner" outside of a cop show to reffer to their significant other.
And, despite his own deep psychological trauma from seeing his father get shot in front of him, he will brush aside when the son of Sherif Root, who killed himself when Custer's careless and non literally intended use of the Word made Root castrate himself and worse, comes looking for revenge. He won't even properly apologise, telling the kid whose father shot himself IN FRONT OF HIM that, basically, your dad was a prick so, I kinda didn't do anything THAT bad. And sure, Sherif Root was a racist abusive monster but dear lord, Jesse is done apologising to his son SOOOO fast and just considers himself forgiven almost immediately.
Second, we have the absolute garbage dumpster fire of poor writting that is The Saint of Killers. Now, Garth may adore westerns and cowboys to the degree he writes John Wayne into the series as Jesse's persistent traumatic delusion just to have him there, but oh lord did he absolutely overdo it with the Saint.
He is so massively, insanely and unrealistically overpowered that Garth can only top him not even flinching as a literal nuke exploded ontop of him in a previous volume with him *killing God himself in one shot*. The Saint is, ultimately, a boring character, because he's absolutely and completely unstoppable and invincible and that is just not a fun character to follow around. Sure it makes it tense if he's the antagonist for a moment, but you soon realise the author will have to keep coming up with extremely far fetched solutions to keep him from killing the entire main cast. The fact he switches sides, kind of, is one thing, but....there's just nothing much to him. He wants revenge, he's literally unstoppable even by the creator of the Universe, and then it's over. If there is literally no way this guy can lose, it's kind of boring to even have him around, as the second Jesse is in his good graces, or what counts like good graces with him, it's basically the end for God and co.
Third, Garth displays an absolute lack of an interest in the supernatural beyond making it a punchline, so his Heaven, Hell, God, etc. are all vague, barely defined concepts, without the slightest hint of world building or anything clever, unique or more than surface level deep. He doesn't care about the things he could do with this in Preacher, where he doesn't have to be held at least somewhat within the confines of DC's broader canon. Instead, he's basically over and done with putting any thought into the premise after issue 7, out of 66.
You can see it in how he has no actual plans for where God is hiding on Earth or what he is doing, or where he takes the potentially intriguing series long villain group in the form of the Grail, and after two shootouts with Jesse Custer, the milennial world wide apocalyptic conspiracy in charge of every single Goverment on Earth is reduced to a handful of storm troopers and a one eyed castrated German being irate at everyone, proving the line "The Grail was always more than just Masada" was an utter lie as, in actuality, taking out Masada wiped out 90 % of the Grail's military force, we are later told.
If you look at his Hellblazer, you see he is only really interested in mocking the supernatural, or being VERY basic with it, like when he made himself a Devil to outdevil the Devil by having HIS "completely new and original character" be the Devil *before* Lucifer aka the cannonical Devil in the DC universe at the time. And The First of the Fallen was a boring, one dimensional stock devil that had nothing to him, and whose only job was to make it so Hellblazer would now use him as the antagonist on a frequent basis instead of the array of different demons and entities that filled this role before his creation.
The absolute worst copout is Jesse's letter to Tulip in the final issue, where he admits he couldn't catch God, not in several lifetimes. When I read that over a decade ago, I remember thinking: Then what was the point of this series ? The entire concept was that Jesse was going to look for God, physically, and confront him about the mess the world is.
But....that never really happened, did it ? After trying to find god ONCE in the second half of the first volume, and getting scammed and nearly killed for their trouble by a serial killer, Jesse Custer abandoned his quest in anything but name in favour of a string of sidequests and diversions, be it being kidnapped by his psychopathic grandma, saving Cass from the Grail, going to a Voodoo expert to find out about Genesis and unlock the stuff it knows about the Saint, getting shot at by Starr in a desert, then having Jesse play Sherif in a small American Town, finding out leads to Cassidy's backstory and all the messed up stuff he conventiently omitted from his life's story and then confronting Cassidy before the Alamo and getting shot at by Starr and his men.
Jesse, despite repeatedly saying that he was definitely going to hunt down God, never actually did anything to do so. Instead the series' focal point was now Cassidy's disloyalty and pursuit of Tulip, with the occasional glimpse of Starr being mad at having lost yet another body part. The series became a vehicle for Garth to idolise Westerns and America to a sycophantic degree, to the point he has ELVIS show up in an issue to declare America "the greatest country that ever was and ever will be". Oh and having Jesse be a sensitive prick about completely normal words like "partner" and other such regular speech, seemingly to deal with Garth's own weird personal pet peeves, and who could forget that one time Jesse called in to a radio show with two poets arguing, just to have BOTH admit that they don't want to make poetry, but actually all they want is "cock" ? Did someone from the fiction industry tell Garth comic writting isn't "real" writting at some point, to provoke this kind of "deep" response I wonder.
This is all because Garth didn't actually want to explore anything related to God and what he was up to. Hence the fact that any "big reveal" related to God in this series after the first volume is really poor and not worth the fanfare. First, it takes Jesse more than a volume to figure out that God sent the storm to divert McReady and his gang from their trail and make them collide with The Saint, ensuring his family would die and that he would go to Hell and become the replacement for the tired, worn out Angel of Death. But, even at the time, I remember thinking to myself:"And this is news....how ?" All these people KNOW God exists, and they know he's in charge of everything. So...how is the fact that when a thing happened, it was because God wanted it to happen, any kind of surprise AT ALL ? As a tangentially related aside, the fact God actually ensured the Saint's gun could kill EVEN HIMSELF is yet another instance of poor writting on Garth's part, because there is zero reason given for why that was necessary at all. Or why God couldn't just stop time like he was shown being capable of doing to avoid the Saint.
The second is the absolute horseradish of a reason for why God created Genesis in the first place. He apparently wanted the love of something *even stronger than himself*, and that is literally the only reason. Nevermind the fact he hightailed it out of heaven the literal INSTANT it was born, how was he going to get something that lacks a will or a mind of it's own by definition to love him ?
Another annoying thing is, Jesse only met Starr ONCE during the entire series, in the third volume. After that, while Starr was trying to orchestrate his doom, Jesse never laid eyes on the man. In fact, Tulip only met him twice, once as a hostage for about ten seconds and then when she killed him. For the closest thing to a series long antagonist, we almost never see him and the protagonists in the same room at the same time.
So, final thoughts for this novella length diatribe ? The series failed to live up to expectations for me, because the scope kept getting smaller and smaller, until eventually all we were left with was an interpersonal story of love and hatred, but the grand, epic conceit that was the basis of the entire series from day 1 ? That was left behind, so we can have wacky hillbilly cannibals and can beat up klansmen in a small no name town in the middle of nowhere. Which in and of itself is not a bad concept....but the original idea was much better and sadly, Garth didn't actually care to do anything with it.
The first issue is the fact that Jesse Custer abandons Tulip once again, like he did in "Proud Americans", because of his continuous fear of having her die on him again, which has been a constant since his involuntary return to Angelville. He even drugs her to do so, because he's kind of a dick, as has been established in earlier volumes.
This is just one of many moments of Jesse being an out and out prick, yet Garth really wants to excuse his actions, when this has been the way he's been acting all along. Custer will gladly wreck your bar because he'll take any chance to start a bar fight, even if it's over something as trivial as the other patrons wanting to watch the game and NOT reruns of then sixty year old Laurel and Hardy shorts. He'll gladly ruin your life and send you to prison with massive debts because he'll use his Word of God ability to make a cashier hand him over ten thousand dollars, likely having the woman spend years in jail for theft and or emblezzlement, but that doesn't matter cause Jesse wants to spend time at a nice hotel and get drunk on Jack Daniels. He'll throw a hissy fit because someone uses the word "partner" outside of a cop show to reffer to their significant other.
And, despite his own deep psychological trauma from seeing his father get shot in front of him, he will brush aside when the son of Sherif Root, who killed himself when Custer's careless and non literally intended use of the Word made Root castrate himself and worse, comes looking for revenge. He won't even properly apologise, telling the kid whose father shot himself IN FRONT OF HIM that, basically, your dad was a prick so, I kinda didn't do anything THAT bad. And sure, Sherif Root was a racist abusive monster but dear lord, Jesse is done apologising to his son SOOOO fast and just considers himself forgiven almost immediately.
Second, we have the absolute garbage dumpster fire of poor writting that is The Saint of Killers. Now, Garth may adore westerns and cowboys to the degree he writes John Wayne into the series as Jesse's persistent traumatic delusion just to have him there, but oh lord did he absolutely overdo it with the Saint.
He is so massively, insanely and unrealistically overpowered that Garth can only top him not even flinching as a literal nuke exploded ontop of him in a previous volume with him *killing God himself in one shot*. The Saint is, ultimately, a boring character, because he's absolutely and completely unstoppable and invincible and that is just not a fun character to follow around. Sure it makes it tense if he's the antagonist for a moment, but you soon realise the author will have to keep coming up with extremely far fetched solutions to keep him from killing the entire main cast. The fact he switches sides, kind of, is one thing, but....there's just nothing much to him. He wants revenge, he's literally unstoppable even by the creator of the Universe, and then it's over. If there is literally no way this guy can lose, it's kind of boring to even have him around, as the second Jesse is in his good graces, or what counts like good graces with him, it's basically the end for God and co.
Third, Garth displays an absolute lack of an interest in the supernatural beyond making it a punchline, so his Heaven, Hell, God, etc. are all vague, barely defined concepts, without the slightest hint of world building or anything clever, unique or more than surface level deep. He doesn't care about the things he could do with this in Preacher, where he doesn't have to be held at least somewhat within the confines of DC's broader canon. Instead, he's basically over and done with putting any thought into the premise after issue 7, out of 66.
You can see it in how he has no actual plans for where God is hiding on Earth or what he is doing, or where he takes the potentially intriguing series long villain group in the form of the Grail, and after two shootouts with Jesse Custer, the milennial world wide apocalyptic conspiracy in charge of every single Goverment on Earth is reduced to a handful of storm troopers and a one eyed castrated German being irate at everyone, proving the line "The Grail was always more than just Masada" was an utter lie as, in actuality, taking out Masada wiped out 90 % of the Grail's military force, we are later told.
If you look at his Hellblazer, you see he is only really interested in mocking the supernatural, or being VERY basic with it, like when he made himself a Devil to outdevil the Devil by having HIS "completely new and original character" be the Devil *before* Lucifer aka the cannonical Devil in the DC universe at the time. And The First of the Fallen was a boring, one dimensional stock devil that had nothing to him, and whose only job was to make it so Hellblazer would now use him as the antagonist on a frequent basis instead of the array of different demons and entities that filled this role before his creation.
The absolute worst copout is Jesse's letter to Tulip in the final issue, where he admits he couldn't catch God, not in several lifetimes. When I read that over a decade ago, I remember thinking: Then what was the point of this series ? The entire concept was that Jesse was going to look for God, physically, and confront him about the mess the world is.
But....that never really happened, did it ? After trying to find god ONCE in the second half of the first volume, and getting scammed and nearly killed for their trouble by a serial killer, Jesse Custer abandoned his quest in anything but name in favour of a string of sidequests and diversions, be it being kidnapped by his psychopathic grandma, saving Cass from the Grail, going to a Voodoo expert to find out about Genesis and unlock the stuff it knows about the Saint, getting shot at by Starr in a desert, then having Jesse play Sherif in a small American Town, finding out leads to Cassidy's backstory and all the messed up stuff he conventiently omitted from his life's story and then confronting Cassidy before the Alamo and getting shot at by Starr and his men.
Jesse, despite repeatedly saying that he was definitely going to hunt down God, never actually did anything to do so. Instead the series' focal point was now Cassidy's disloyalty and pursuit of Tulip, with the occasional glimpse of Starr being mad at having lost yet another body part. The series became a vehicle for Garth to idolise Westerns and America to a sycophantic degree, to the point he has ELVIS show up in an issue to declare America "the greatest country that ever was and ever will be". Oh and having Jesse be a sensitive prick about completely normal words like "partner" and other such regular speech, seemingly to deal with Garth's own weird personal pet peeves, and who could forget that one time Jesse called in to a radio show with two poets arguing, just to have BOTH admit that they don't want to make poetry, but actually all they want is "cock" ? Did someone from the fiction industry tell Garth comic writting isn't "real" writting at some point, to provoke this kind of "deep" response I wonder.
This is all because Garth didn't actually want to explore anything related to God and what he was up to. Hence the fact that any "big reveal" related to God in this series after the first volume is really poor and not worth the fanfare. First, it takes Jesse more than a volume to figure out that God sent the storm to divert McReady and his gang from their trail and make them collide with The Saint, ensuring his family would die and that he would go to Hell and become the replacement for the tired, worn out Angel of Death. But, even at the time, I remember thinking to myself:"And this is news....how ?" All these people KNOW God exists, and they know he's in charge of everything. So...how is the fact that when a thing happened, it was because God wanted it to happen, any kind of surprise AT ALL ? As a tangentially related aside, the fact God actually ensured the Saint's gun could kill EVEN HIMSELF is yet another instance of poor writting on Garth's part, because there is zero reason given for why that was necessary at all. Or why God couldn't just stop time like he was shown being capable of doing to avoid the Saint.
The second is the absolute horseradish of a reason for why God created Genesis in the first place. He apparently wanted the love of something *even stronger than himself*, and that is literally the only reason. Nevermind the fact he hightailed it out of heaven the literal INSTANT it was born, how was he going to get something that lacks a will or a mind of it's own by definition to love him ?
Another annoying thing is, Jesse only met Starr ONCE during the entire series, in the third volume. After that, while Starr was trying to orchestrate his doom, Jesse never laid eyes on the man. In fact, Tulip only met him twice, once as a hostage for about ten seconds and then when she killed him. For the closest thing to a series long antagonist, we almost never see him and the protagonists in the same room at the same time.
So, final thoughts for this novella length diatribe ? The series failed to live up to expectations for me, because the scope kept getting smaller and smaller, until eventually all we were left with was an interpersonal story of love and hatred, but the grand, epic conceit that was the basis of the entire series from day 1 ? That was left behind, so we can have wacky hillbilly cannibals and can beat up klansmen in a small no name town in the middle of nowhere. Which in and of itself is not a bad concept....but the original idea was much better and sadly, Garth didn't actually care to do anything with it.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 20, 2020
This is a review of the entire series.
Preacher follows a gang of three washed-up misfits that have all been dealt cruel hands by fate. First there’s Jesse Custer, a vulgar, foul-mouthed yet all-around upstanding and gentlemanly preacher living a dull life in a small Texas town called Annville. He wears the mantle of a preacher while exuding the aura of a gritty, spaghetti western antihero. He spends more time praying to John Wayne and channeling Clint Eastwood than he ever spends seeking guidance from God.
Things take a major turn for Jesse when he accidentally gets possessed by the spirit of a supernatural entity called Genesis, the cursed child born out of the forbidden fornication between an angel and a demon. The entity contains the essence of absolute goodness and absolute evil, fusing together with Jesse’s soul and granting him unimaginable power. Now a force to be reckoned with, Jesse makes himself quite a few dangerous enemies and he doesn’t plan to let his newfound powers go to waste. He has a bone to pick with the scum of the earth and plans to use his powers to make amends with his past trauma and regrets. Most of all, he has it out for God more than anyone else for allowing all the chaos and evil in the world to spiral out of control in the first place. He goes on a journey to find God and give him a piece of his mind.
Along his journey, Jesse reunites with his ex-girlfriend Tulip and befriends an Irish, vampire junky named Cassidy. Tulip is a hotheaded gunslinger that was raised by her tough-as-nails yet affectionate, sharpshooting father who taught her how to hunt, stand on her own two feet and take no nonsense from anybody. She’s a wild tomboy with a lot of heart and has quite a bit of catching up to do with Jesse after he abandoned her for unknown reasons at the peak of their relationship.
After hearing Jesse’s story about fusing with Genesis and going on a mission to find God with his newfound powers, Cassidy happily joins the preacher on his quest while Tulip works on patching things up with Jesse after learning of the dark secrets behind his sudden disappearance. Cassidy also has some demons of his own to work out as he battles with alcoholism, drug addiction and a wavering moral compass on top of never being able to walk around in broad daylight because of the curse of vampirism placed on him as a young boy. Despite their numerous imperfections, the three come together in hopes of finding God. Not in the metaphorical sense, but to kick his ass for abandoning his throne in heaven, neglecting his duties and letting humanity drown in the cesspool he created with his own hands. The three outlaws seek to set things right through very unsavory means.
Jesse, Tulip and Cassidy encounter some incredibly disturbed villains along the way, including Jesse’s own family of backwater devils that include a tyrannical religious grandmother obsessed with maintaining pure bloodlines, a violent psychopath that brutally murdered anything Jesse dared to love as a child, and a crazed hillbilly with a fetish for farm animals. Then there’s a secret religious order akin to the Illuminati called The Grail, which includes the outrageous Klaus Starr whose violent antics along with his obsession of trying to use Jesse’s powers to fulfill his own plans usually end up leaving him with a few missing limbs and making a mockery of himself. There’s even a KKK loonie that built himself a giant sex doll made out of the severed, bloody body parts of butchered livestock. The violence is so outrageously gruesome that it somehow manages to be equally horrendous and hilarious. A lot of the dark and shocking moments in this series are delivered with heavy undertones of black comedy, making you laugh, cringe and gag all at the same time. It’s a wild ride that pulls no punches, and the scares are absurdly creative if nothing else.
The three protagonists have a lot of depth to them, every villain is a wicked bastard and the side characters all have their own heartwarming struggles to overcome. The most notable minor character that I was rooting for from beginning to end was a mentally disabled boy nicknamed Assface. The boy idolized Kurt Cobain to an unhealthy degree and unfortunately, he thought that following in his idol’s footsteps by blowing his head off with a gun would earn himself the love and admiration he always wanted. After his failed suicide attempt, he’s left with a gaping hole that continuously oozes fluid from his now deformed face, which earned him the nickname Assface. Instead of letting his deformity bring him down, he goes on his own personal journey of self-discovery and finding comfort and acceptance through rock music. This is just one of many touching tales throughout the series.
Preacher is outrageous, shocking, and it isn’t afraid of offending anybody with its sharp-edged humor, but it also captures the personal flaws and imperfections that every single person carries. The action is spectacular, the characters are heroic and monstrous in equal measure, and you can never prepare yourself for whatever bizarre travesties it will throw at you next. Stephen King even cited Preacher as being a big inspiration behind his surreal fantasy masterpiece The Dark Tower, and it’s not hard to see how. It’s the perfect blend of gritty western, dark fantasy, shock humor and over the top horror-fueled action sequences. It’ll definitely send you through an unforgettable trip through the wild west.
***
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Preacher follows a gang of three washed-up misfits that have all been dealt cruel hands by fate. First there’s Jesse Custer, a vulgar, foul-mouthed yet all-around upstanding and gentlemanly preacher living a dull life in a small Texas town called Annville. He wears the mantle of a preacher while exuding the aura of a gritty, spaghetti western antihero. He spends more time praying to John Wayne and channeling Clint Eastwood than he ever spends seeking guidance from God.
Things take a major turn for Jesse when he accidentally gets possessed by the spirit of a supernatural entity called Genesis, the cursed child born out of the forbidden fornication between an angel and a demon. The entity contains the essence of absolute goodness and absolute evil, fusing together with Jesse’s soul and granting him unimaginable power. Now a force to be reckoned with, Jesse makes himself quite a few dangerous enemies and he doesn’t plan to let his newfound powers go to waste. He has a bone to pick with the scum of the earth and plans to use his powers to make amends with his past trauma and regrets. Most of all, he has it out for God more than anyone else for allowing all the chaos and evil in the world to spiral out of control in the first place. He goes on a journey to find God and give him a piece of his mind.
Along his journey, Jesse reunites with his ex-girlfriend Tulip and befriends an Irish, vampire junky named Cassidy. Tulip is a hotheaded gunslinger that was raised by her tough-as-nails yet affectionate, sharpshooting father who taught her how to hunt, stand on her own two feet and take no nonsense from anybody. She’s a wild tomboy with a lot of heart and has quite a bit of catching up to do with Jesse after he abandoned her for unknown reasons at the peak of their relationship.
After hearing Jesse’s story about fusing with Genesis and going on a mission to find God with his newfound powers, Cassidy happily joins the preacher on his quest while Tulip works on patching things up with Jesse after learning of the dark secrets behind his sudden disappearance. Cassidy also has some demons of his own to work out as he battles with alcoholism, drug addiction and a wavering moral compass on top of never being able to walk around in broad daylight because of the curse of vampirism placed on him as a young boy. Despite their numerous imperfections, the three come together in hopes of finding God. Not in the metaphorical sense, but to kick his ass for abandoning his throne in heaven, neglecting his duties and letting humanity drown in the cesspool he created with his own hands. The three outlaws seek to set things right through very unsavory means.
Jesse, Tulip and Cassidy encounter some incredibly disturbed villains along the way, including Jesse’s own family of backwater devils that include a tyrannical religious grandmother obsessed with maintaining pure bloodlines, a violent psychopath that brutally murdered anything Jesse dared to love as a child, and a crazed hillbilly with a fetish for farm animals. Then there’s a secret religious order akin to the Illuminati called The Grail, which includes the outrageous Klaus Starr whose violent antics along with his obsession of trying to use Jesse’s powers to fulfill his own plans usually end up leaving him with a few missing limbs and making a mockery of himself. There’s even a KKK loonie that built himself a giant sex doll made out of the severed, bloody body parts of butchered livestock. The violence is so outrageously gruesome that it somehow manages to be equally horrendous and hilarious. A lot of the dark and shocking moments in this series are delivered with heavy undertones of black comedy, making you laugh, cringe and gag all at the same time. It’s a wild ride that pulls no punches, and the scares are absurdly creative if nothing else.
The three protagonists have a lot of depth to them, every villain is a wicked bastard and the side characters all have their own heartwarming struggles to overcome. The most notable minor character that I was rooting for from beginning to end was a mentally disabled boy nicknamed Assface. The boy idolized Kurt Cobain to an unhealthy degree and unfortunately, he thought that following in his idol’s footsteps by blowing his head off with a gun would earn himself the love and admiration he always wanted. After his failed suicide attempt, he’s left with a gaping hole that continuously oozes fluid from his now deformed face, which earned him the nickname Assface. Instead of letting his deformity bring him down, he goes on his own personal journey of self-discovery and finding comfort and acceptance through rock music. This is just one of many touching tales throughout the series.
Preacher is outrageous, shocking, and it isn’t afraid of offending anybody with its sharp-edged humor, but it also captures the personal flaws and imperfections that every single person carries. The action is spectacular, the characters are heroic and monstrous in equal measure, and you can never prepare yourself for whatever bizarre travesties it will throw at you next. Stephen King even cited Preacher as being a big inspiration behind his surreal fantasy masterpiece The Dark Tower, and it’s not hard to see how. It’s the perfect blend of gritty western, dark fantasy, shock humor and over the top horror-fueled action sequences. It’ll definitely send you through an unforgettable trip through the wild west.
***
My Social Media
My YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCPPs...
My Instagram Account: https://www.instagram.com/michael_sor...
My Wattpad Account: https://www.wattpad.com/user/Michael-...
My Twitter Account: https://twitter.com/SorbelloHorror
My Facebook Account: https://www.facebook.com/michael.sorb...
May 15, 2018
Before I thought it was weird that I had no recollection of how this series ended but now I don't think it's weird at all because I obviously just blocked the whole thing out since it's so entirely anti-climactic. I guess this is probably a good series if you're into all the American dream cowboy bullshit Jesse is always spewing but I personally signed up because I thought we were gonna FIGHT GOD, and while I guess that technically DOES happen it's like such a side note / afterthought that I'm just sitting here like ??? I mean if you took all the actual plot relevant issues of this series and printed only those it would half half / a third of the length it actually is. It's an okay ending I guess which is why I still give it 3 stars but it could have been so much more and honestly it just makes me want to go read Lucifer again so something actually interesting will happen. [sigh]
March 8, 2021
Finished this and Wasteland by reading both the last two issues of both series back to back. Now with this series the premise was a bit off putting but I have it a chance and it's an ok series. At one point I wanted to like Garth Ennis' work but I don't care for him much as a writer. Steve Dillon's art was ok (I saw his art in another comic and it was good there) but all the faces besides distinct designs are the same. Also the ending was a little weird
March 25, 2017
I was going to review the whole series in this final volume of Preacher, but in the end this is a story that can resonate with different people in different ways. The praise for the writing is just deserved, but I would like to pay tribute to the artwork of Steve Dillon. His death last October, leaves a big hole in the comics world, and this series wouldn't have been nearly as memorable without the sublime simplicity of his art. RIP Steve.
April 25, 2020
I think I'm gonna cry.
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