“Hate” is probably too strong a word, but I’m not really a fan of Westerns. As I’ve already mentioned, there’s a lot of American culture that I am hugely into – but the whole John Wayne / John Ford / Clint Eastwood thing has never grabbed me at all, with the possible exception of Back to the Future III. But one man who does love Westerns is Garth Ennis – and for the duration of Preacher at least, he was able to win me around to his way of thinking.
Of course, Preacher isn’t just a Western – it’s a hell of a lot more besides. It takes in Opus Dei conspiracies, vampires, early twentieth century Irish politics, the Vietnam war, the Ku Klux Klan, incestuous Southern family dynasties, the world’s first “sex detective agency” and, er, “a fella with a face like an arse”. Nevertheless, if there’s one style – both aesthetic and storytelling – that defines the series more than any other, it’s Ennis’ beloved Western. Perhaps the reason I can get onboard with it is that the strongest point he takes from the genre is in the use of classic character tropes and dynamics (particularly between the three leads), and the specific “quest” nature of the tale. Westerns can be strong stories – and often deeply morally ambiguous tales, as in The Searchers, one of the few I’ve actually seen – and it’s this that Ennis draws from as much as the aesthetic.
Not that nods to the classics aren’t littered throughout, mind, whether it’s the hallucinated ghost of John Wayne being Jesse’s constant companion, the setting of a vast chunk of the story in and around Monument Valley, or the fact that the Saint of Killers is an Eastwood character. The heart of the series – and its lead character – is perhaps best exemplified in his final words of the series, when Tulip asks him what he always wanted to be. “Hell, girl,” he says, as they ride away on a horse, the city behind them in one panel, before turning the page to see them silhouetted against the sunset over a rocky desert ahead, “can’t you guess?”
Despite sitting so heavily in a genre that I’m largely indifferent to, I’ve got a lot of love for Preacher (in recent years, I’ve even warmed to the initially-disappointing Salvation arc). It’s partly because, as can be seen above, the story is so epic and all-encompassing – there really is a hell of a lot going on, and a lot that goes unresolved to boot (has there ever been a major plot thread as frustratingly anti-climactic as the emergence of Genesis when Jesse is (temporarily) killed in the penultimate issue?) Where the book really shines is in the set of supporting characters that Ennis comes up with – indeed, for a series that length, I’d say only Sandman has the edge on it for quality and depth of cast. From Cassidy – the ultimate flawed rogue “hero” – to Starr, from Hoover to Jody, just every character is memorable; and a significant number of them are given the sort of deep and involving backstories that many lesser writers simply wouldn’t bother with (so much so that the one-shot specials centred on Saint of Killers, Jody & TC and Arseface are among three of the best single issues of the entire run). It’s this reason that also makes it such an appealing series to go back and re-read – indeed, it’s probably right up there in terms of a comic I’ve done that most number of times with.
Interestingly, if I think the series has a major flaw, it’s in the lead character himself – and in fact, now that I look at it, I wonder if that does have something to do with the fact that he’s a hero archetype from a genre I’m not really into. There’s something that’s just too deliberately upright about him – he’s always got to be doing or saying the right thing (and yes, I’m aware there’s perhaps an irony in, as a Superman fan, criticising another comics character for being too perfect/goody-goody) and yet at the same time he’s actually in the wrong a fair amount of the time, and never really pulled up on it. I suspect that Ennis intends this as a deliberate character flaw in his otherwise perfect facade – it’s just that, for example, the hypocrisy of not giving Gunther a second chance – and literally hanging him the noose with which to hang himself – but then doing the opposite for Cassidy in response to almost exactly the same words does sort of rankle when he’s meant to be the “hero”, even if it’s supposed to rankle.
But then, the point about Preacher is that it’s a morally complex and deeply involving story – an attribute that, to be fair, is something else it draws from the better examples of its favoured genre. Nevertheless, although it would be a vastly different comic without those influences, I can say personally that it’s elsewhere that I find the elements that draw me back to it again and again.
