Written by Garth Ennis Art by Steve Dillon Cover by Glenn Fabry A new edition of the classic collection featuring the landmark PREACHER #1-7! Jesse Custer begins a violent and riotous journey across the country joined by his girlfriend Tulip and the hard-drinking Irish vampire Cassidy.
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Amazon.com Review
Here's a book guaranteed to offend a bunch of people, not only because of its profuse profanity and graphic violence, but because it's the epitome of iconoclasm. Like a brutal accident, you can't watch but you can't turn away. The story follows an ex-preacher man, Jesse, who has become disgusted with God's abandoning of His responsibilities. So Jesse starts off into the wilds of Texas with his hitman girlfriend and new best friend (a vampire) to find God so that he can give Him a piece of his mind. Despite its superficial perversity, this book contains what may be the most moral character in mainstream comics. A cult hit in the making. Fans of Quentin Tarantino take note.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
223 of 240 people found the following review helpful
By Sam Thursday
Format:Paperback
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.
20 of 21 people found the following review helpful
By Diana Nier
Format:Paperback
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.
35 of 42 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
***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.
"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.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Make it a show!
I have read the entire series and it was amazing!!! This series is an AMC hit just waiting to happen!!!
Published 21 days ago by David Minor Jr.
4.0 out of 5 stars
Great book
If you love Garth Ennis and question religion, you'll like it! Good story and artwork from Steve Dillon, great job!
Published 1 month ago by Max Dayton M
5.0 out of 5 stars
Loved it! Can't Wait to get Vol. 2
After reading all the reviews about how good this book was I decided to take the plunge and by it. I say plunged because I've never been a comic book fan in all my 29 years. Read more
Published 2 months ago by Leo
5.0 out of 5 stars
Absolutely fantastic!
This was such an awesome read. I couldn't put it down and when I'd finished the first thing I did was order the next 4 in the series. Read more
Published 2 months ago by James
5.0 out of 5 stars
5 Star; Ennis & Dillon are Magic
It's amazing to me how people with the same vision seem to find each other and come together and make great things. Read more
Published 2 months ago by MoPop
4.0 out of 5 stars
bought as a gift
I had read the series before I did like it. bought the set for a good friend who also really liked the series.
Published 5 months ago by DB9
5.0 out of 5 stars
like nothing you've read before!
Fully torqued madness! The whole series is fantastic! I only read them with my pants off and my roller skates on! Booooooosh!Preacher Vol. 1: Gone to Texas
Published 7 months ago by BatSlapTheBale
5.0 out of 5 stars
A modern classic.
It's a guilty pleasure to read something so wrong it's right. Preacher lives out a life that we could never dream or dare to dream of. Great pace, character and comedy.
Published 12 months ago by Henry.
4.0 out of 5 stars
Wonderful
Dark humor. Not the best or favorite of comic books for me but it deffiently has its niche. An enjoyable read. i have volumes 1-9. nuff said
Published 14 months ago by The Lords Hand (core gamer)
5.0 out of 5 stars
Bound to offend the majority
This will offend you. It offended me in several ways that I didn't even know it could. However, the point is to get people thinking about religion. Read more
Published 16 months ago by Kaeia
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