Preacher

14 August 2005, 19:34

5 stars

bookFor a long time I avoided this series1. Don’t know why—looked odd, I guess. What an idiot.

Once I’d read the last page, I had to sit still, be quiet and consider the story for at least 15 minutes… anything else would have been just not right. It’s one of the funniest, most profound, most enjoyable series I’ve read since the ever-incredible Watchmen by Alan Moore.

A quick overview. Jessie Custer is a small-town preacher. He’s suffering a crisis of faith when an entity named Genesis—the fruit of a union between an angel and a demon—violently merges with him, killing his entire congregation. He finds that he has Genesis’ memories and some of its power, including the Word of God… anyone who hears and understands Jessie must obey. Along with his lost love Tulip O’Hare and his new best friend, the Irish vampire Cassidy, Jessie embarks on a quest to—quite literally—find God and get some answers.

It’s odd, y’know. The content is adult—blasphemous, depraved, disgusting, black as Severin’s cloak2. But it’s also hugely character- and story-driven. The odd, broken, twisted, fucked-up characters are supplemented by believable dialogue, huge storylines, laugh-out-loud funny graphic sequences and incredible pathos. Oh, and very effective drawings by, for the most part, Steve Dillon. And fantastic covers by Glenn Fabry.

The writer is Garth Ennis, one of the “new wave” of British writers (Irish, actually), and his stories are professional, accomplished, fascinating, compelling, entertaining, violent, confronting, irreverent and just plain fun. Ennis is the one who, for me, really made the John Constantine: Hellblazer character actually work rather than just piquing my interest. Ennis is a story-teller par excellence.

Thing is, people think graphic novels are just kid’s stuff, on a par with Mickey Mouse or Looney Tunes. Preacher is nowhere near that. It has horrible depravity, explicit violence and yet interesting questions about the nature of God. There’s also a strong thread about relationships and betrayal.

Give it a go if you don’t mind having basic and accepted (in Western society) notions questioned. You’ll certainly never forget it.

1 Again, kudos to my local library system for making stacks of graphic novels available.

2 Severin, protagonist of the incredible Book of the New Sun series by Gene Wolfe, wears a cloak of fuligin, the colour blacker than black.

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