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Ennis, Garth – Preacher Book 9: Alamo

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Preacher Book 9: Alamo

There was one thing that bugged me about this series, right up until the very last issue: how the hell are they going to finish this? Take a great story, ruin the ending, and the story doesn’t seem like it’s that great anymore. I remember going to see L.A. Confidential a few years ago, absolutely loved the whole thing, then had to swallow one of the main characters getting shot in the fucking head and still saving his partner. It ruined the whole thing. Granted, since then I’ve thought that I was too hard on it, that maybe it really wasn’t as bad as all that, maybe there was a way that he could have survived that bullet without totally destroying the credibility of the movie. Preacher was kind of the same way. I felt a bit cheated by the ending. Not quite to the same extent, but cheated nonetheless. I’ll tell why exactly in the spoiler section because, hey, spoilers don’t get much bigger than that, right?

The book tries to wrap up all of the loose ends and does a pretty damned good job of it. Arseface, Starr (or what’s left of him, mentally and physically), Saint of Killers, God, Cassidy, Jesse… they all have something that they desperately want. Are they all going to get it? Are any of them? Would they want it if they could have it? This book was tough as hell to read when it came out. I really envy anybody who just finds it now. When it came out, there was a delay of a couple of months between the last two issues, and if you knew how the second to last issue ended, well, you’d wonder how I was still sane. Couldn’t imagine how they could fix everything then, but they pulled it off. I’ve mentioned this at least twice already, but it bears repeating at the end of this wrap-up: this is one of the better series ever done. I felt like I had gorged on candy at times, maybe because I don’t read anything else at all that’s color regularly (hah! I’m so much more obscure than you! Indie rules!), I don’t know. Listen, I’m going to talk plenty about this in the spoilers section because there are still some things I don’t get. All I have to say about this right now is that I really don’t see how it could have ended any other way, and that’s a pretty big compliment.

If you find out, like me, that Garth Ennis is good, I have a warning for you: it seems to me that he’s only good when he’s paired with Steve Dillon, like he is on Preacher. He’s somewhere between OK and god-awful otherwise. Anyway, if you read all the Preacher stuff and find out that you love it and want more, here’s what else he’s done with Steve Dillon.

Ennis, Garth – Preacher Book 8: All Hell’s A-Coming

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Preacher Book 8: All Hell’s A-Coming

If anyone tries to tell you that not a lot happens in this book, well, punch them in the nose. We finally get the backstory on Tulip (just when I thought he forgot all about that), we get the real story of Cassidy, and Starr has to deal with a threat from within the Grail. Combine that with Jesse coming back to find Tulip and meeting everyone who thought he was dead and, well, you have one of the better books in the series. Quiet, but absolutely essential reading.

The only dark spot in the book is the inclusion of the special Tall in the Saddle. Just not a good story. I was really excited to read this too, because I didn’t know anything at all about it until I got the trade for this storyline. I just missed it when it came out, apparently. I could have easily gone the rest of my life without reading it and wouldn’t have felt like I was missing a damned thing in the story. That’s one thing you can say about the other specials, good or bad: they told you something that you needed to know. The story of Arseface, Saint of Killer, Starr, Cassidy finally meeting another vampire… all of those were things that might not have fit directly into the tight structure of the story, but they were important to all of the characters. Sure, you could just say “And Saint of Killers went to hell and the place froze over” and move on with your story, but it’s necessary to see exactly what happened down there. This story was a total waste of time. A tale of Jesse, Tulip and Amy from back when they were younger and happy, this is basically about a bunch of horse thieves. I don’t know, maybe Ennis thought that that was the quintessential western story or something. It’s still not a terrible story by any stretch, but it’s average at best and does nothing to develop any of the characters. Amy, at least, could use some fleshing out, and we really don’t get it here.

So, is this book worth getting? Well, didn’t I tell you a second ago that this was one of the better books in the series? I’m sticking by that. Honestly though, I’d say that you could safely skip the last story. Unless you’re an absolute Ennis/Dillon junkie, that is.

Ennis, Garth – Preacher Book 7: Salvation

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Preacher Book 7: Salvation

How the hell can you have a Preacher book without Cassidy or Tulip? Good question. This is a good story, no doubt about that, but with the exception with the issue right before the end, you could pretty much skip this entirely and go on to the next book. Let me sum it up for you: Jesse is basically a shell of a man, operating without a purpose, since he saw Cassidy and Tulip together. He wanders into his hometown, becomes the sheriff and has to take on the corrupt local rich man. Has a few adventures along the way, makes a few new friends and sees somebody that he never thought he’d see again. He finally gets his shit together and leaves to continue his quest. Get all that? Then you can skip most of this book. If your main concern is the main storyline, that is. That goes nowhere in this book. If you’re just a fan of the Ennis/Dillon team and can’t get enough of them, then I won’t have to convince you to get this.

The issue before the last one in the book finally tells just what happened to Jesse when he fell out of that plane. I don’t want to say too much about it now because maybe this point got cleared up before the end of the series and I missed it, but why… OK, listen. I’m going to have a section on this page called “Spoilers“. In that section I’m going to talk about all the series that I’m going to be reading, and I’m going to say everything that happens in them. I’ll talk all about my problem with that issue in that part, along with everything else I’m reluctant to give away here. Needless to say, I didn’t buy it, and that’s a problem with something as important as that. A damned good issue though, and enough happens there to make this essential to your Preacher experience. Or go out and find #49 and ignore this if you’re too poor to get them all right now. The last part of the book is with Spaceman, the friend of Jesse’s Dad from Vietnam, telling another story of his past. I guess it shows what Jesse is trying to live up to, but it could have just as easily been a special or something and certainly wasn’t essential reading. I’m reading this stuff critically for the first time now. I jumped on this series at #49, so I was too wrapped up in what was happening to be too critical of it. Now that I’m looking at the whole damned thing under a microscope, I’m wondering how my opinion is going to change. I’ll keep you posted…

Ennis, Garth – Preacher Book 6: War in the Sun

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Preacher Book 6: War in the Sun

Well, here it is. The only good Preacher Special that Steve Dillon didn’t draw. Finally, some backstory on one of the most pitiable villains ever, Starr. Maybe that’s not the impression that you’re supposed to get from the guy, but with all the shit that he goes through in this series, how can you not? The first story shows his rise through the ranks as a member of The Grail and how he got those scars on his face. Maybe not essential reading, but every little bit helps with this guy. Why did he rebel against The Grail and what made him who he was?

The majority of the book is from the “War in the Sun” story. Jesse had the bright idea that he was going to go out into the desert, take some peyote and get in touch with Genesis. Starr had heard him talking about this before, so he was well aware of it when Jesse finally hit an Indian reservation. He called in a few favors and had the army there to help him just in case the Saint of Killers showed up again, and almost everybody was on hand for this one. I think they should have left the last issue of this volume out and saved it for the next book, the reasons for which should be obvious if you read it. If you’re just buying these things in the future and the book ends an issue earlier, well, you’re going to rush right out to get the next one. With the way this one ends, well, you… once again, not giving anything away.

How is this one? It’s the one I was most looking forward to (except for the very last one), and I can’t remember why that was. The actual battle was huge, of course, but it was over pretty quickly. Cassidy continues his slide into complete and total worthlessness. The key scenes with this one were the bit on the plane after the battle and Jesse’s reaction after his “reunion” with Cassidy and Tulip. The bit with Arseface at the end seemed almost totally useless to me, as it was just randomly thrown in the story to fill space and didn’t go anywhere. All in all though, it was a good book. Definitely a high point before the series takes a bit of a breather with the next book, so enjoy the plot progressing while you can.

Ennis, Garth – Preacher Book 5: Dixie Fried

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Preacher Book 5: Dixie Fried

When I was looking ahead at reading series again, this was another one of those books that I wasn’t all that excited about. Why? Honestly, it’s because I know what’s coming next, and it’s just pure action candy. With all the stuff I read these days, you’d think I’d be able to look forward to a whole hell of a lot of character development too, and I have to say that this might be the best book in the series. It has the Cassidy: Blood and Whiskey special (which is by far the best of the specials, and I liked the Saint of Killers one more than a little bit) and also is chock full of hints about what Cassidy really is. You don’t get to see those bits in the first few books. Oh sure, his friend in the first book is a… I’m not supposed to be giving anything away, right? Anyway, it’s obvious that his friends aren’t much, but this is the first chance we get to see that some of them actively loath him. Why? What has he done that’s so bad? We still don’t see, but we do get a whole lot of hints.

The book itself is mostly about Jesse and his quest to try to get in touch with Genesis and what method he’s going to use to do it. We get some great lines on shrinks and psychology in general and he ends up deciding to use voodoo. The goth gang from the Cassidy special comes back to find him, and hilarity ensues. Or maybe bloodshed, I get those two mixed up. Have I raved about Steve Dillon yet? Man, I take that guy for granted until I see somebody else try to draw this story. I don’t know a thing about what he draws in the backgrounds, I’m sure it’s just fine. The thing that always stops me is his expressiveness with the faces of all these people. Cassidy when Tulip is telling him what she really thinks of him, Jesse when Cassidy overprotects him at a bar… Hell, nobody else in the world can draw Arseface. Glenn Fabry comes close with the covers, but he doesn’t quite get it right. Even if I think that this might be the best book in the series (and I have a few more left), don’t buy this one first. You need to see Cassidy as he can be before you see him as he really is…

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.

Ennis, Garth – Preacher Book 3: Proud Americans

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Preacher Book 3: Proud Americans

Ah, now here’s a fucking book. It starts off with a tale about Jesse’s father, and I guess you could call it “filler”. Maybe they missed a deadline or something, but it’s still head and shoulders above most of the crap that’s in other comics regularly. Then there’s the bulk of the book, which involves Jesse storming the headquarters of The Grail to get his friend Cassidy back, and pretty much everybody is in this one: Saint of Killers, Starr, the father of Genesis, the Messiah, even God. More questions are asked than answered, obviously, as this is still pretty early on in the series. Oh, and it ends with the tale, finally, of how Cassidy became a vampire and some of what he’s done with his life. Told through his rather rose-colored memory, as we learn later in the series, but I digress. If you’ve still got your doubts about this series and you read this book and somehow don’t like it, then stop right now. It gets better, but this is a fine example of what this series can be like at its best. It sounds silly when you put it next to all the violence done in this book, but this series is really all about commitment and friendship. And pride in a lot of ways, but the main point of this series is not the violence. It might be a tough argument to make with a pile of bodies ten high in front of the Saint of Killers, but I’m standing by it.

Ennis, Garth – Preacher Book 2: Until the End of the World

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Preacher Book 2: Until the End of the World

Maybe I’m just not cut out for the reviewing business, because more than anything else I want to do this so I can get to Book 3. OK, what was this one about. We finally get the whole story on Jesse and how he became the man that he is, and why he “ran out” on Tulip years ago. We get at least part of the backstory on Tulip, or at least why she was a hired killer when we saw her at the start of the book. And we get to see Starr, who went through more horrible shit in this series than anybody else by far. This seemed to be kind of a haphazardly thrown together collection. Sure, it was a series of issues in a row and it was linear. But the story ended rather abruptly, as opposed to the usual smooth ending that is in most of these books. Still, the first half of the book was fucking incredible. Getting to meet Granma, Jody and T.C. (and getting to see the shit Jesse had to put up with as he was growing up) was more than worth the price of admission, even if the whole thing was kind of a mess.

If I had to criticize anything about Garth Ennis, it would be his tendency to write characters into his stories just so there will be all kinds of crazy shit going on. Or maybe he was using it to let Jesse go on about buzzwords and PC bullshit, I don’t know. But it seems to me that he often throws in characters like Jesus De Sade because he wants to throw in titillating (and completely useless to the story) scenes. Turns out that the story did have a point, but that was mostly because Starr and his crew wandered onto their trail while looking for… someone who did something bad to Starr. Listen, I’m still torn about this reviewing thing, so I’m going to need some feedback on this: should I review everything about these books, thereby ruining at least a few surprises for the people who haven’t read this yet, or should I continue on with my half-assed “summaries” of these stories? Anyway, why second-guess the writer? I would have done things differently I guess, but I didn’t write the story and I don’t work for DC. If he thought that he needed Jesus De Sade in the book, then more power to him. He seems to know what he’s doing most of the time. If you already bought the first book, I won’t need to say anything to convince you to get this one. If you haven’t bought it yet, what are you waiting for? Unless you really hate all things from the big companies with an unreasoning fire, then this book is a fucking blast.

Ennis, Garth – Preacher Book 1: Gone to Texas

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Preacher Book 1: Gone to Texas

It should say something about how much I love this series when you stop to think that I could have reread any series first for review purposes, and I chose this one. Cerebus, Sandman, Love and Rockets, the Big Books, Concrete, Hate, Sin City… I’m looking forward to rereading each and every one of them (some more than others… Cerebus, for example, I haven’t read since I reread the whole thing when it hit 200. That was five years ago), but this one is just the most fun that you can get out of a comic series. I said in my first half-assed review for the second book that you should start with that one, going back to this one when you get into the series. Let me take this opportunity to say that I was completely wrong. True, he wasn’t completely on his game yet. The series starts, for example, with the three main characters (Jesse Custer (Preacher), Tulip and Cassidy) sitting in a diner, talking about how they got there. They go to flashbacks for a little while, then I guess the story just took on a life of its own because he abandoned the “flashback” idea completely. This books introduces Saint of Killers, Arseface, and mention pretty much everybody you need to know for the rest of the series… except Starr.

What’s this book about? Well, Jesse is preaching to an unusually full church (the reason for that is funny enough that you should read it for yourself) when the entity known as Genesis enters the church and his body, and the resulting explosion kills everybody else there. The rest of the book is spent establishing who everyone is, with plenty of secrets being left out. It’s established right away that he’s looking for God, and not in the spiritual sense. It’s great to read this whole thing already knowing what happens too. I’m not going to ruin a damned thing, don’t worry, but even the things that didn’t seem to make a whole lot of sense in the end really do. The characters were leading down that path every step of the way. Joe R. Lansdale says in his introduction that the book is intelligent without being intellectual, and that can be taken in a good or a bad way. It’s accessible to everybody, and I believe it was one of the better selling Vertigo books when it was out. It’s hard to believe and it rarely ever happens, but a book can sell really well and still be fantastic. I think a lot of people bought this book for the shock value, and there is a little bit of that. There’s usually at least a panel or two per issue that some dorks probably look for to point at as being the coolest thing about it. They’re missing the point, but their money probably means that Garth Ennis has his pick of projects from now on, so it wasn’t all bad.

The rest of the book is tough to review, because I remember how great it was for me to discover all this stuff. OK, how about this. A secret is discovered about Cassidy that you can actually read on the back of the book (which is one of the main reasons I try not to read the back of any book), not that the secret is all that surprising. Tulip was a hired killer at the start of the book, but we still don’t know why. Why was Jesse a Preacher at all, and why did he leave Tulip 5 years ago? Who is his Granma, and why is he so scared of her? How was it that he saw his Dad killed in front of him when he was a child? What role is Arseface going to play in this, if any? And can Jesse hope to find God when Saint of Killers has been sent to kill him? If any of this intrigues you, read the series. It really is one of the best things I’ve ever read. Not the most intellectual, and I’m sure I’m not going to be able to walk into a coffee shop and talk about this in the same way that I would talk about, say, Jimmy Corrigan, and that’s fine, because the books shouldn’t be compared. They’re both seminal works in their own right. I’m just afraid that people are going to try to copy this series in the same way that they tried to copy Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns, and they’re going to miss the point completely just like they did back then.