Ennis, Garth – Preacher Book 4: Ancient History

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Preacher Book 4: Ancient History

I wasn’t sure what I was going to think of this one coming in. I liked it at the time, but I was severely annoyed that it disrupted the narrative as much as it did. As I’m reading these about three per day for these reviews, the narrative isn’t disrupted much, leaving the book to stand or fall on its own. And… eh. It’s OK. The Saint of Killers four part story is good. Pure western all the way, and I don’t want to spoil a single part of his trip to hell because it’s pure genius. The story is stopped from being great by the sudden and inexplicable change in artists for the third issue. DC seems to have problems like this from time to time. They knew that they had a successful series, and they knew that these books would probably have a long shelf life. And yet instead of taking their time and getting everything done right, they had to rush this series out, so we’re left with a story that is a lot more of a mess visually than it needs to be. Honestly, I thought Steve Pugh was doing a pretty good job until I saw how much better Carlos Ezquerra did. Part 4 of the story looked rushed as hell too. If they had any sense they’d release another version of this that had solid art from the same person all the way through, since these books are going to be around for the forseeable future.

As for the other two stories, I could take them or leave them. The Story of You-Know-Who (apparently they couldn’t say “Arseface” on the cover of the book, or maybe they didn’t want to) was mediocre to bad up until the last page, but I just loved the ending. Not that I’m going to give anything away, of course. The story tells about how shitty his life was, and why he tried to kill himself. A touchy subject to make fun of, and it just wasn’t all that well done. Good Old Boys (a story of Jody and T.C. from before they were killed) was meant to be over the top and goofy, but instead fell kind of flat in my mind. It had its moments, as all of his books do, but overall it was just a pointless book meant to capitalize on the Preacher craze. The Saint of Killers told an origin that needed telling, Arseface had a story that kind of needed to be told, and that other one should have just been left in the idea bin. Do you need to buy this book? If only for the Saint of Killers story, yes. I thought originally that you could wait until you read the whole series and then go back to this one. I’ll let you know when I finish the whole thing again, but I think it might help to know throughout the whole thing about his trip to hell. If I can find a better, quieter place in the storyline where this might have fit, I’ll let you know.