Preacher: Gone to Texas [Paperback]

Although writer Garth Ennis was no stranger to conceptualizing some of comics’ darkest and most disturbing, yet unbelievably hilarious moments before he started this saga, ‘Preacher’ was the book cemented his reputation for these things. With the help of Steve Dillon’s renderings, Ennis proves himself the master of the kinda blood & guts that’d make the likes of Paul Verhoeven & Quentin Tarantino queasy, yet mixed with an amazingly dark & sick sense of humor that helps… um… lighten the tone a bit. His rep for creating some of the freakiest and whacked-out supporting characters also began here, with the introduction of Arse-Face, the hideously disfigured teenage son of an overbearing podunk town sheriff. Another great character intro’d here is the Saint of Killers, an indestructible, immortal killing machine, sent by God’s angels to deal with the reverend and his Deity-seeking quest. You can see more of his weirder & deadlier side characters in ‘Hitman’, ‘The Rifle Brigade’, and ‘The Punisher: Welcome Back, Frank’, all of which I recommend as well.

There’s a whole lot more I could say about this ‘Preacher Vol. 1: Gone To Texas’, but I think you get the idea. And besides, I don’t want to give too much of the story away. If what I’ve written above has swayed you, feel free to check it out!

‘Late

I started out skeptical. Take Cassidy: an Irish vampire. It felt pretty thrown together, but before long you're loving the guy for being such a reliable jerk. The craziest things happen in Preacher, but in the end all you can do is laugh your head off and turn the page.

Not that it's all smiles, of course. The sheer amount of flesh-rending gunshot wounds in the entire Preacher series is staggering. And pitting God Almighty as the antagonist is a pretty damn brave thing to do - we may live in a fairly liberal western world, but surely some things people still don't suffer to be taken lightly. Be warned, Jesse Custer is not strictly a moral man, and some may find offense in the comic's easily dispensed violence and unforgiving treatment of 'bad folks' (until they remember that it is, after all, just a comic, that is).

Preacher is a fresh take on the mythology of America, strong plot, surprises for even the most cynical among us, one-liners and panels that make you burst out laughing ("Paulie, you sure you're not just ****ed in the head?"), strong characters (Tulip must be one of the toughest chicks ever seen in comic books), and no compromises. Pick up Gone To Texas and be assured that every issue after it is at least as good as the last.