Preacher Vol 1 Review

"The way I hear it there's two good places you can look for God: in church or at the bottom of a bottle." - Reverend Jesse Custer

Comics are cool but I am more interested in the gritty and dark hardboiled graphic novels. I could list the popular reads such as Sin City and Watchmen, but recently I've come across the most insane and ghoulishly clever graphic novel Preacher. For believers and nonbelievers alike, don't let the title throw you off. It is not what you're expecting. You hear the title and you figure it may be some kind of hyper religious propaganda or a jolly spiritualistic journey. No way in hell. I don't know if it's cool for me to review this already as I've only read the first of nine volumes, but this one is just too cool for me to ignore.

Just so you're familiar with the story so far, I will elaborate. Preacher tells the tale of Jesse Custer, a faithless minister in a small Texas town who accidentally bonds with a mystical force with questionable holiness. This force is Genesis, the spawn of a the forbidden mating of an Angel and a Demon, whose power may surpass that of God. The bonding of Custer and Genesis in turn kills nearly everyone in town. He soon joins up with two companions: Tulip O'Hare, Jesse's ex girlfriend who may now be a hitwoman and Cassidy, a grungy Irish vampire. Their course is set when they are told by nervous lower class Angels that God has lost faith in his own design and has exiled himself somewhere on Earth and so they set out to find him and make him own up to his responsibilities. And that's the story so far right there. Intrigued or not, you should still check it out.

Preacher is graced with fantastic writing and artwork, both essential components to any comic related work. This is written by Garth Ennis, a British man. According to the forward, his take on American speech, culture, and geography is very much interpretive (reminding me somewhat of Sergio Leone's interpretive take on American Old West in The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly). That's very interesting. The whole thing is interesting.

I honestly don't think that any other graphic novel I've read has been as graphic as this, not even Sin City. This book could give Scorsese and Tarantino a run for their money in the departments of violence and language. Also their just some out of nowhere things in this book that make you cringe and laugh at once. The main instance being Jesse's misuse of his power, The Word of God, on one homicidal cop: "Go fuck yourself". Yeah, I'll let your imagination do the rest. But graphic level aside, the story is really inventive and intriguing. It's probably one of the most intriguing stories I've ever read and this is only the beginning. With arcs and characters that kind of grow on you no matter how unsavory (well maybe). Speaking of characters, Preacher already has a wealth. Of course their is the protagonist, Jesse Custer. It's surprising he'd be a preacher seeing as how his cynicism and bad ass personality give every hint to the contrary. Even his ex lover Tulip can't figure out why he became one. Tulip herself is mysterious and alluring but this time around she wasn't given much dimension besides ridiculing our two boys and blowing the jaw off of some gangster. To be fair she doesn't quite know how to take any of this. Cassidy makes for the vicious comic relief. In a time when girls oggle over pretty boy and creature of the sparkling day Edward Cullen, I am proud to have a vampiric vampire in my realm of fiction. Cassidy is over a hundred years old, wears sleaveless jean jackets and wayfarers, and empties six packs faster than throats. That's what I'm talking about. Other characters arise too, such as the invincible Eastwood-esque grim reaper The Saint of Killers and Arseface, the vengeful son of one of Jesse's unfortunate enemies who destroyed his face while trying to kill himself as a tribute to Kurt Cobain. God this book is great.

I will continue reading and, when I'm done with the whole thing, I will try to give a more summarized review of the series itself. In the meantime, read Preacher Vol 1: Gone To Texas. I just thought it was my kind of kickass, explosive, riotous, spiritually fascinating look and read.

This has been a modest book review from Your Modest Guru. Thanks for reading.