Customer Reviews

Preacher: Gone to Texas

5 star:		(88)
4 star:		(16)
3 star:		(11)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is an extremely difficult review for me to write. I'm an evangelical Christian, and, hard to believe as I'm sure it seems to a lot of people, I still think it's the best (and only) way. Preacher was going to be the enemy for a long time - that strange, pretentious book about a man of the cloth taking on God. And then I read Gone to Texas. And the next day, I read Until the End of the World. And the next day, I read Proud Americans. In case the pattern had escaped you, I had a very hard time putting these down. More to the point, I did not put them down, and have just finished Alamo. Did the book shake my faith? No. It made me think a great deal, and a great deal harder about things that had not previouly occurred to me. Was I offended by it? Sure. Find me someone who wasn't. Did I love every single page? You bet. The book has so much going for it that I probably won't be able to fit it in here - Ennis and Dillon did every single issue - that's NEVER been done before, as far as I know. You can start with Gone to Texas, and finish up at Alamo with a clear understanding of how each of them became better at what they do. It was smart without being pretentious, which put it head and shoulders above most of DC's Vertigo line - anyone can read it, anyone can understand it. Most importantly to me, though, the characters were as real as you or me. Ennis peppers the story with horrific violence and some incredibly disturbed images, but I wouldn't have batted an eyelash if I hadn't known that it was Tulip at gunpoint, or Jesse hanging out of the plane. No matter what the characters go through or do to each other, you still love them - Cassidy is one of the most well-written and complex characters to ever grace the pages of a comic book, and Jesse, in the midst of all the incredibly debauchery, is one of the most moral. For those reasons, I enjoyed the slower stories more; Salvation is at the top of my list, followed closely by All Hell's A-Comin. And let's not forget the humor - there were times when I was laughing so hard I couldn't turn the page. Give it a shot. It's new, it's innovative, and someone thought about it. That alone should be worth the prive of admission. You'll like it, and if you don't like it, you'll read it anyway.

My God, this is sick! It's also funny as hell, even though I still feel slightly disturbed that I actually laughed at some of the things that happen.

"Preacher: Gone to Texas," is the first of the trade paperback collections of the comics series. I haven't read any of the others, so I really have no idea what happens later, but after reading this first volume, I plan to buy the next ones in the very near future, and continue to not believe I'm laughing. This stuff is addictive.

From what I can tell so far, "Preacher" is the story of preacher Jesse Custer, his ex-girlfriend Tulip, and Cassidy, an Irish vampire. At some point, an angel and a demon had a child named Genesis. Genesis was a new idea, as powerful as God Almighty; it has escaped its heavenly prison and bonded with Jesse. Now Jesse, a moral person despite his many flaws, is searching for God. He plans to ask some serious questions.

"Gone to Texas" falls roughly into two parts. First there's the introduction, where we meet the three main characters, and others, such as the Saint of Killers. Then the three hitchhike to New York City, where they start looking for God and get involved in a serial murder case.

There are times when the gore and cursing get too thick, so they're tiresome instead of funny; that's why I'm not giving this five stars. Still, "Preacher" is one of the best comics I've read in a while, and I'm looking forward to the next collected volumes.

***SPOILERS AHEAD!!!***

"Preacher" is brilliant and frustrating at the same time. The completely oddball plot involving conspiracies, angels, demons, vampires, possession, and a search for an absconded Yahweh certainly is an entertaining and occasionally stimulating mix of elements, and the three main characters are appealing, deep, and well written. The problems come from Garth Ennis' laziness as a scripter. First, unlike Neal Gaiman, who writes deep complex plots that reflect his erudition and research, Ennis is inclined to just sort of fake his way along and allude to theological and mythological concepts with which he has little familiarity and no motivation to learn more. So we have a story written about a renegade preacher, ancient secret conspiracies, and the politics of Heaven and Hell that is at times cartoonishly simple and at other times obtusely complex. The ultimate effect is not convincing, and the reader soon learns that the plot for any given installment of the series depends more on Ennis' moods than on any coherent storytelling impetus or overarching plotting. Think of it as the "Twin Peaks" of graphic novels, with the creator making stuff up as he goes along. The series is both choppy and ultimately unsatisfying as a result. We have the feeling that a lot of this stuff won't be tied up cogently, and sure enough, a lot of it isn't when all is said and done.

The other big problem with Ennis is his need to pay homage to pop junk culture. The violence, sex, profanity, and generally unpleasant vileness is often chucked into the series for no other point than to stroke the jaded cynicism of "extreme" media fans and to horrify the prudish. We see endless scenes of massacre, torture, and mutilation, which all has its place in art (and comics!) but the gratuitous sense of "let's throw it all on the wall and see how it splatters" is childish and ultimately counterproductive to provoking the supposedly "mature" audience for the series. Beyond the nastiness, we also have the even more serious flaw of most everyone in the world besides our three main protagonists being shallowly dull, vastly unpleasant, or both of the above.

These flaws are readily apparent in the first volume of the series "Gone to Texas". The endless Saint of Killers massacres grow tedious in the extreme. The general tendencies towards bloody slaughter of numerous minor characters makes you feel like you are reading the graphic novelization of some lesser Hollywood action flick. Gunshot wounds are lovingly portrayed as is the peeling off a man's face, the ripping out of some other guy's throat, gay BDSM sex, and our heroine's hand being nailed to a dashboard by a knife. There is little point to all of this other than to "test the limits" of adult graphic novels, and part of being adult of course is avoiding useless and gratuitous acting out. I have a hunch that most chronological adults will find all of this boring and pointless by the end of even this first installment...

Our cast of supporting characters in Volume One is equally wretched. We have the hard as steel redneck Sheriff, his hideously disfigured suicide surviving son, a homophobic Dirty Harry clone with a predictable Dark Secret, his buffoonish incompetent partner, and a serial killer who starts killing folks after he discovers he just enjoys getting away with murder after a traffic hit and run accident. These characters are mostly dull, and their presence in the storyline is either tedious filler (the killer and the cops) or just a misguided attempt at being edgy which just ends up feeling mean-spirited (Arseface). Mocking failed teenage suicides surely cannot be perceived as innovative entertainment.

These tendencies seen here are just writ large in the rest of the series. The supporting cast is no asset being mainly cartoonish stereotypes of idiocy or Pure Eeeevillll, the plot meanders into filler misadventures and pointless "origin" stories, and every perverse and bloody scene the writer and artist can imagine gets written in without any concern for precision, plotting, or subtlety. As a result, this series goes on for way too long, and could easily have lost a third (or more) of its volumes and ended up feeling tighter and better as a result. After paying more than $100 (even at discount) and reading through maybe 1800 pages, you end up with a messy and indulgent hodgepodge of mainly forgettable characters, gratuitous splatter movie set pieces, a bunch of interesting though mainly undeveloped ideas, and more than a few loose ends and unfulfilled expectations.

To me, this seems like a bad deal. If you purchase the Sandman series, you will spend as much and read as many pages but will be introduced to challenging ideas, fascinating characters, and truly mature plotting and thematic development. Ultimately, Preacher will appeal mainly to juvenile male readers who like gross-outs and who do not mind the lazy shortcuts taken in character and plotting by Ennis.

Strengths? Dillon's art is generally good, though his women characters tend to look alike. The series has a certain dark sense of humor that is fun at moments. And mainly our three main characters are likeable and engaging. It's a shame they don't have better scripting to guide them and a real world to interact with...

"Preacher" is like an imaginative B movie that starts off well but then eventually falls victim to its director's immature smarminess, love of gross-outs, and devotion to genre tropes that we've all seen before. The gratuitous efforts at offensiveness, general mono-dimensionality of the cast, and stale efforts at Christian baiting suggests that this is really not meant for adults at all. Like such magazines as Maxim or Heavy Metal, this is really meant for adolescents of all ages who giggle at gunshot wounds, nudity, and profanity. "Preacher" perhaps aspired to be more originally and certainly pretends to be both serious and profound drama at times, but the weight of the evidence is very much against such claims of portentous relevance. This is popcorn for the brain, and kind of stale corn at that.

I had a friend who had told me for years that I had to read Preacher, because it was one of the best comics he had ever read. I always just shrugged and said "Yeah, someday I will." So I finally got around to buying a copy of 'Gone to Texas' and I was simply blown away. I've always considered my self to be a comic book fan, not a hardcore collector of any sort, but a fan. When I began reading Preacher I could not bring myself to stop. So day after day I went to the local comic shop, picked up the next volume, and read it cover to cover. It is simply the best comic I have ever had the pleasure of reading. I wish I could forget all of it, just to read it and experience it all again. When I got to the last page, I felt a sense of completion but more of sadness, because I'd finished it. Immediately I began searching for more of Ennis and Dillon's work, and I've never, ever, done that before. I couldn't even name more than a handful of other comic book writers, but these two guys know how to do what everyone else in the business strives to do everyday: Get an idea across and get you to love it. But enough of my ranting, if you've read all the way through this review, then you're obviously interested, so do yourself a favor and get a copy of 'Gone to Texas', you won't regret it.

Garth Ennis, Preacher: Gone to Texas (DC Comics, 1996)

I wonder if the person who put this in the "youth services" section of my local library ever got fired? After all, right on the back, it says "suggested for mature readers." Someone must have missed a memo about what "mature" means.

Gone to Texas is the beginning of the Preacher saga, which involves the title character, whose church went up in flames while the whole town was inside; his ex-girlfriend Tulip, whom he ran out on five years ago for reasons we don't know; and Cassidy, a drifter who rescued Tulip from a bad situation. The plot twists come fast and thick, so it's pretty much impossible to tell you what goes on, but the basis of the story (or the framework from which Ennis created this delightfully twisted tale) is that Jesse, the preacher, is suffering a major crisis of faith, and needs to find his way back to God. Over the course of the story, however, Jesse realizes that his crisis of faith isn't all internal, and that finding his way back to God may take a little more doing than he originally thought it would. Oh, and did I mention he's being stalked by a killer not of this earth, and talks to John Wayne? Didn't think so.

Even if the artwork wasn't top-notch, the simple weirdness of the story, and the way Ennis twists it, would make reading this like staring at a particularly gruesome car accident (and the quote is especially appropriate here; Ennis' way of bending cliches and Biblical references to make completely new things out of them should be putting the reader very much in mind of Clive Barker's early short stories). But the artwork is top-notch, indeed, and the two combine to make for a particularly compelling read. You will find yourself wanting to read this in one sitting. And take my advice-- that's not something you want to do if your library system doesn't happen to have the next book in the series. Now I have to wait for it to show up in my mailbox... **** ½

This is it-- the grittiest, nastiest, darkest comic book ever to be mainstreamed. This book is not for anyone who is still impressionable enough to let a book drive them to suicide. If you read this, and make it through the second book in the series, you will basically be smearing filthy engine oil onto your soul. And what a trip. This first book isn't AS intense as the rest of the series, but it is only a matter of degrees.

Fortunately, there are few purile satisfactions. You won't read this book and find titilating sexual imagery, or satisfying violence, etc. You'll find disturbing sexual imagery, and violence that just leaves you feeling ragged and ill. These aren't the kind of quirky-fun horrors you'll get from Neil Gaiman's Sandman series or a Stephen King novel... these are the kind of images that will really bother you, disturb you, sicken you.

Now that I've said all of these negative things, I need to say that this series is boundlessly creative, well written, and maybe, just maybe, there is a hint of moral philosophy between the pages. It is perhaps forgivable to show us horrors if you show us the human soul at the same time.

I haven't made up my mind. Garbage in, garbage out, after all. But this isn't garbage... it's simply a discussion OF garbage. And not the garbage out in the world, but the garbage inside yourself as you find yourself reading "Preacher" with delight. You can see the garbage inside you as you flip the pages. And now you have to decide what to do with it.

The entire Preacher saga, in my opinion, is simply one of the greatest stories ever told. It is so much more than what you think it is when you start reading it. It's not so much a story of religion and one man's literal search for God as it is a story of honor and friendship. About being a real man and admitting your mistakes and shortcomings. About respect for women. About treating your lady as a lady should be treated, but not being so macho as to not let her back you up when you're in trouble. But most importantly, this story is about the redemption of the characters involved. As they searched for God, their redemption was found in each other rather than a blessing from a deity.

I like this book a lot, but it's part of a larger arc and that larger arc really starts to sag a few books later. What we find here isn't too uncommon in serialized stories like comics or television shows that actually have a long narrative planned in advance, and that's that the stage setting proves to be much more fun than the resolution. I can't say when it gets really bad but it does and it seems to do so over a long period of time. Or possibly Ennis' whole schtick and his characters, never quite as fresh as those of Gaiman to whom he owes a large and obvious debt, get tiring after awhile. You probably won't go wrong with this one, but I wouldn't suggest buying all the books at once.

I've just started reading comic books and I must say that this is one of the ones that taught me the most. Alan Moore taught me about government, Neil Gaiman taught me some strange truths but Preacher gave me the most scary look at myself that I've ever had.

I never thought that something so gruesome, so grisly, could be funny but it's hilarious. It showed me a much darker side of myself that I didn't know existed.

The art is brilliant, the story is brilliant. But it's also dark, twisted, violent and extremely scary. Not for the faint-hearted.

I'm in the right demographic for action/violent books and movies, and I tend to enjoy them. Mixing in religious themes usually adds to my enjoyment. So this book looked like a sure thing to me. However, there were things in here that disturbed me enough to not want to read the next book in the series. I'm giving it four stars because there isn't anything wrong with the story. It just isn't to my taste.

I didn't get the sense that this book takes violence seriously enough. That's not a big deal when you're talking about entertainment that doesn't really take anything seriously. A Steven Seagal movie, for instance, can include hundreds of meaningless deaths. No big deal. But this book has a moral message, so I was paying attention to how it portrayed violence and its consequences. Part of the book's message, apparently, is that it is OK for the "hero" to force someone to rip off a piece of his own anatomy, as long as that someone is a racist. The "heroes" even joke about it later. I also had trouble with some of the details of the serial killer plot and the killer's actions. Just too graphic for me.

All in all, my state of mind is better without reading this series. Others might not mind the violence. "Preacher: Gone to Texas" is well written and drawn. Obviously, the writer and artist are talented.