PREACHER: DIXIE FRIED (Vertigo)
Written by Garth Ennis, drawn by Steve Dillon
Collects Preacher #27-33, Preacher Special: Cassidy – Blood & Whiskey
EXPECT SPOILERS AHEAD After reading through the first three volumes of Preacher, I skipped the fourth because it collects most of the one-shots and minis related to the book. Usually, I read them in order, but this time I decided to just stick with the issues and whatever extras might be included in those collections. The Blood & Whiskey issue shows Cassidy meeting his first ever fellow vampire a few years before meeting Jesse and Tulip. This guy’s a complete wanker–to use Cassidy’s colorful language–who plays up on the whole Interview With A Vampire style. It seems like it might be a throw away one-shot, but it comes back into play later on this issues.

The other early comics reunite Jesse and Tulip, remember, he left her in France before going off to get Cass back. Arseface also shows back up wanting vengeance against Jesse for his father’s death but instead gets turned into a pop star. The book ends with Jesse trying to find out what Genesis knows by meeting with a witch doctor acquaintance of Cassidy’s who asks a snake god to get inside Jesse so he can ask it questions about Genesis. While that’s going on, the dead vampire from the one shot’s former acolytes show up for their revenge.

Most importantly though as far as the overarching story goes, Cassidy professes his out-of-nowhere love for Tulip which skeeves her out as you might expect. Tulip also finds out from the witch doctor that Cassidy tends to leave chaos in his wake, even if he doesn’t mean to. Overall this is a solid trade, it’s not one of my favorites–the I do love Blood & Whiskey and the voodoo stuff–but it’s also not my least favorite. There’s a lot of important steps and moments that help us get towards the end, but it gets a little–wait for it–preachy. Not in the way that anyone’s up on a soap box telling you what to think, but sometimes Jesse and company go on these long monologues about political correctness or psychobabble that make the book feel a little dated. It gets worse in the next volume though.

PREACHER: WAR IN THE SUN (Vertigo)
Written by Garth Ennis, drawn by Steve Dillon and Peter Snejbjerg
Collects Preacher #34-40, Preacher Special: One Man’s War
War In The Sun is my least favorite Preacher trade. It’s not awful and a bad Preacher trade is still better than the best of some other books. My problem with it is that it feels kind of like filler and it seems to have more of the preachy stuff I mentioned above than any of the other volumes. But like I said, it’s still a good read. The one-shot explains Herr Starr’s history, which is good because he plays a big part in this book, going so far as to requisition a whole tank division of the United States Military through his Grail connections and using them to attack the Saint of Killers while he tries to separate Tulip from Jesse. He figures that if he has Tulip he can control Jesse. It’s probably a pretty good bet, but things go to shit and Starr gets out by having a nuke dropped on everyone. Jesse, Tulip and Cassidy are in a plane, but Jesse’s falling out and Cass him, but Jesse uses The Word to get Cass to drop him so he doesn’t burn to death thus setting up one of the most heartbreaking things in the book: Tulip and Cassidy shacking up in a haze of drug and drink. It’s unclear if Cass is completely manipulating her or if Tulip wanted to loose herself in these things, but the moment when Jesse sees Cass lay a kiss on her literally knocks him on the ground and me too, even though I’ve read this three times and knew it was coming.

Maybe it’s the sadness that makes me not like this book as much. It’s kind of the Empire of the series with everything ending on a pretty down note. Even Herr Starr has to deal with cannibals trying to eat him which kind of makes me feel bad for him (I’m a sucker for a guy whose leg gets cut off and eaten while the other one is chained to a wall in a old mine, I guess). However, all the business in the desert with Herr Starr, the Army and the Saint is tight and crazy.

Even after writing all this, I feel like I’m being too hard on this collection. It’s funny how that works out. The next trade has traditionally been my favorite, so I’m excited to check it out again and see if it still holds that spot.