[My third comic book review for the Leader, this one is from
March 23, 1999. I’m about to discover something horrible about my reviews,
which I will tell you about when we get there. In fact, I might not need to
explain. It’s pretty obvious what my problem was.]
It has taken 49 issues, but Jesse Custer, the main character
of Preacher, has finally found God. Writer Garth Ennis and artist Steve Dillon
pull no punches in the latest issue, entitled “First Contact.”
About a year ago, Jesse set out to chew peyote in Monument Valley to see if he could track down God
(which has been his goal since issue four). Now, after a series of battles
including tanks, the Saint of Killers, a nuke, a little guy who looks like Ross
Perot and enjoys having sex with meat statues, and a stint as a small town
sheriff facing off against the evils of Big Business, he finally takes the
drugs and leads us through a series of hallucinations that proves just how
imaginative a writer Ennis is. Only one other hallucination sequence has
outdone this, and that was the issue-long Arseface delusion (#40), which was
extremely imaginative.
Not only this, but Dillon’s artwork is surreal. TC looks as
twisted and demented as ever, and Gran’ma looks utterly revolting (even before
she turns into a snake). It was extremely funny to see the leech with Irish
vampire Cassidy’s head, and Tulip looks so much like a hooker it’s disturbing.
The undercurrent to the content, though, is rich with character.
Jesse constantly denies that he sees Cass as a leech and Tulip as a slut, but
it is oh so obvious that he is lying through his teeth. For all of his John
Wayne attitude, he certainly seems not to be “shootin’ straight.”
The story and the art compliment each other nicely. In this one
scene, Ennis portrays the God of the Christian Bible as contradictory. One
moment, He’s a beautiful male model emanating glorious yellow light, peaceful
and forgiving; the next, He’s a power-driven raving lunatic, boiling with red
light. He even sucks Jesse’s left eyeball out in a fit of rage! Yes, Ennis is a
die-hard atheist—anyone who read “True Faith” will attest to that.
Jesse Custer finally knows what he needs to find God, and
he’s got a new inner strength. He’s been doing only what he needs to do and
nothing more for a while now, but now he’s got the twinkle back in his eye, and
his confident grin is back in place. It’s been a long time since Preacher felt
this good.
Not that the last few issues were bad. They had some
excellent storytelling in them—storytelling that proves Garth Ennis doesn’t
always have to blow stuff up or shoot people down or what not. He captures the
quiet moments nicely. Jesse lost himself for a while, and now that he has found
himself, he’s raring to rip, and you better pray you don’t get in his way. This
is something Preacher fans have been waiting a long time for.
This is the beginning of the end for Preacher, my friends,
and it looks like Garth Ennis is going to give us one hell of a ride.
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