Legion World Forums LEGION COMPANION Dr. Gym'll's Cultural Rarities What was so great about Preacher?

I'm astonished by the number of excellent opinions regarding Preacher, from a wide variety of comic readers. I got v.1 out of the library and was basically grossed out. Interesting concept, but I don't see what the fuss was about.

Preacher fans! Spread your gospel!

Wish I could count myself among them but I, too, don't get it. Both Caroline and myself really wanted to like the series and picked up the first two trades through our book club. Neither one of us bothered even finishing the first one.

Was it something that got better later in the series or am I just missing the boat altogether?

I keep meaning to reply to this, and I will once I"m not posting on the fly from work

I was a huge Preacher fan. Still am.

I can see if someone doesn't appreciate the gore/dark humor, but if you can get past that, it's phenomenal.

So... What can I say? Great stories, characters and art. To me, its so self-evidently classic that I it's hard to know where to begin... it's like trying to 'sell' LOTR or Star Wars.

I'm curious, Cramer, Scott... do you like any other Garth Ennis stories?

I honestly can't recall following a Garth Ennis written series.

The name is certainly familiar, but I couldn't recall what else he had written, so I checked this bibliography:

http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/authors/Garth_Ennis.htm

Guess I just don't go for his kind of story - Judge Dredd, Hellblazer never caught my fancy. I was quite surprised to see him listed for a Fables novel (Animal Farm - with Willingham).; it seems to be quite a break from his other work.

That's got to be wrong; I just looked through my ANIMAL FARM TPB, and there's no mention of Ennis in the credits. The cover pictured isn't even the cover for the paperback; it's teh original cover for FABLES #8. Chalk it up to an error by whoever created that site.

I'd agree with that. Some of the issues and one-shots, like the one featuring the brothers, go a bit too far in the gross-out dept. and aren't worth the time.

I wouldn't say it's like selling an LOTR - to me, it's more like trying to explain the appeal of the Western. Or the better Sam Peckinpah films.

I guess my point wasn't so much ot compare works as to say that either you get it or you don't, and if you don't appreciate its genre in the first place, I don't know what to say.

I picked up Preacher for a few issues, but then dropped it--I thought it definitely got worse as the series progressed--and haven't enjoyed Punisher or Ennis' minis. I was pretty fond of his Hellblazer work. But I loved Hitman.

I think the difference for me was the lack of self-assurance in the Hitman protagonists. I don't like almost any of Ennis' characters--I find them pretty repellent as people--but the guys in Hitman didn't like themselves very much, so they were sympathetic. And they dreamed about fulfilling Ennis' beloved Hard Manly Man archetype, while never actually having the courage/stupidity to actually go the distance.

In almost everything else I've read by Ennis, the protagonists seem to be 100% Hard Manly Men, perfect unflappable avatars of violence, yet apparently expected to be sympathetic by virtue of the truckload of moral commentary that comes with them. Or else they ought to be Hard Manly Men but are shamefully failing to conquer their inner sissy in various ways, and are justly punished for this. To me it feels like Ayn Rand channeling John Wayne, if that makes any sense, and it leaves me cold.

Obviously Preacher or Punisher fans will disagree, and I didn't jump on the thread to get you in a fighting mood--just to say that there are those of us who enjoy some Ennis but particularly dislike Preacher. My wife feels much the same way...she enjoyed Hitman but Preacher irritated her beyond measure. Maybe it's just because we're limp-wristed Berkeley bleeding-heart types.

I am really getting into Preacher.

The first trade struck me as way too gory. but I was curious what was going to happen next. This book dosn't seem like something I would like at all ... yet I just read trade number 2 and found it very funny. I laughed several times.

... and I'm interested in where the mystery is going with this one. trade number 2 had more action than trade number 1, and it seems like the book is finding it's legs.

Actually, it's no more gory than Walking Dead. Sometimes Walking Dead is a bit much for me too though.

I think number 3 will either be the trade where I finish it and say "that was good, I've had enough" or "I'm a fan and I'm going to read the all"

Preacher is perhaps my favorite series of all time. Certainly a major contender.

It's hard for me to put into words why. I've reread the whole thing a ton of times.

Trade #3 is so good, Peebs that I bet you'll be hooked. I won't get into details so as not to spoil. But it has perhaps the best 'camraderie moment' ever in comics.

And then the series takes a major left turn out of nowhere and you realize it was about something else--something much more powerful--all along.

It has my favorite ending ever in comics.

It could make me laugh so hard one moment, then be totally disgusted the next...and then make me tear up like a little baby not soon after.

I got both brothers and my sister hooked on it years ago. We pass around the Preacher and Sandman trades continually, and have for years. (And now Scalped has joined that short list).

Oh, and iirc, you just met Jodie and TC. Thats some f'ed up stuff! Few characters make me hate them more than Jodie.

I loved Preacher, but it definitely felt like Ennis was sometimes just pushing boundaries to see how far the editors and readership would let him go. Those were by far the weakest moments of the series. Overall, it's a startling and amazing exploration of the loss and nature of faith. And yeah, one of the greatest endings ever.

I loved Preacher as well. What it always comes down to me is if you take away all the gross-outs, you're still left with some of the most memorable characters I've ever read in a comic book. Garth excels at making them very 3-dimesional, and Preacher remains his opus for that.

As for the ending....spoiler-free, I wasn't terribly satisfied with it. I think Ennis' other big work, Hitman, ended just perfectly. Preacher? Well, it felt like Garth might have not gone as far as he should have.

Nonetheless, Preacher remains Garth's quintessential opus.

Also loved Hitman in a big way, and loved it's ending too. Another masterpiece in it's own way.

Lardy is dead on as to one of the major reasons why Preacher works in terms of depth of character. The Jesse / Tulip romance is one of the best ever in terms of it's sheer depth; the complicated struggles and how they'd be overcome because of a true, genuine connection is realistic yet also pure romance.

Yeah. As over-the-top as it was with all its violence, gross-outs, blasphemy and potty humor, it's really those characters that make you love it. You wouldn't give two shits about how it ended if you didn't care about them.

That said, Preacher's still not for everybody. It's not for the easily offended, for sure. Hell, I think there were a few things in the series that even offended me! His The Boys is the same way. Ennis starts off both series with huge bombast, but when he really settles in, you really start caring.

I wonder if Cramer's tastes have evolved since she opened this topic so that maybe she would like it better.

I never followed Hitman until its end, alas.

PB, the Proud Americans TPB was were it really hit its stride. Both the character-focused bookends and the interior story arc.

Yes, Ennis was pushing boundaries of what he could get away with, but it worked. And at the end of the day he had a collection of rich characters that surpass anything gratuitous.

Went by the CBS ...


Proud Americans - check
Ancient History - check


Rainy day - check
Procrastination - check

There's a lot of Preacher love in this thread. I can't wait to see what you're all talking about.

I ate through the finale of Preacher this weekend.

It left me wondering "what does that mean?" not many comic books leave me inspired to wonder about their meaning ... or to want to understand it more.


even the best books I usually get it pretty easily but Preacher has me curious about what more I could get out of it on a second and/or slower read through.


now I want to reread it to catch all the layers of meaning throughout the series, and see how it led up to the conclusions of the final story arc.

There's a lot of 'there' there.

I followed Preacher through about the first 1/3 of the run. Liked the concept and the building of the friendship between Cassidy and Jesse & the romance between Jesse and Tulip.

But I found that I had to be in certain mood to read it. It was dark, gritty, violent, and gory, not something I wanted to read every day.

So after Jesse went home to find his grandmother(?), I needed to take a break from it and never quite made it back.

Absolute favorite character however was Saint of Killers. Twisted idea yet so wicked.

Re Preacher and Hitman, I just enjoyed them for the sheer mind-blowing craziness that went on in them. Ennis took some interesting ideas and just went on a major high of exploration. Like... wow.

PB, I followed Preacher from the get-go back in the day, and I can still reread it and gain new insights. There indeed is a lot of 'there' in there.

I've reread it at least a half dozen times from start to finish and I always get something new at least once in every trade.

One of my favorite moments upon mulitple rereads: earlier in the series we meet the guy in Southwest who is blasting massive sized letters into the landscape so that from space you can read "FUCK YOU". A bit farther down the line, at the perfect moment when Jesse basically regains his perspective and will to 'fight back' against all the various antagonistic forces, the scene suddenly shifts back to this guy, as some astronauts from space see the "FUCK YOU" and are totally enraged by it. They are shown saying "some bastard wrote FUCK YOU into the landscape! Can you believe it?!" And then we see the guy cheering, jumping up and down.

It's ridiculous to the extreme--and hilarious beyond measure. But there's something kind of powerful about that moment. That was that guy's life work and it comes off as a smashing success. And its also the epitome of fighting back against authority and taking a stand. Which is a major theme of what Ennis is saying about the USA and the western genre in general.

It's a great example of Ennis' talent of taking something so outrageous / gross / hilarious and turning into something that is actually quite moving.

My wife likes Zippo lighters, even though she doesn't smoke. Kind of a fascination with her dad's small collection of them.

Anyway, I keep telling her she needs to get one that says "Fuck Communism!" I get a blank look because she never read Preacher.