PREACHER SALVATION (Vertigo)
Written by Garth Ennis, drawn by Steve Dillon
Collects Preacher #41-50
If you’re so inclined to check out my previous Preacher reviews, I wrote about the first three volumes here, skipped 4 and covered 5 and 6 here. If you haven’t read those posts, you should know that Preacher’s one of my all-time favorite comics, I first discovered it while interning for Wizard and am reading the whole series for the third time. Volume 6 was probably my least favorite of the group, though it’s still better than a lot of comics and this book is my absolute favorite. Salvation picks up with Jesse trying to figure out what to do with his life now that his girlfriend Tulip is with his best mate Cassidy. He finds his way to a small Texas town called Salvation where he meets a few people from his pasts, makes a few friends, becomes sherrif and makes a huge enemy in a small business man named Odin Quincannon (who seems modeled after Ross Perot). Jesse doesn’t take kindly to Odin’s workers tearing through his new town, so he kicks ass, takes names and locks as many of them up as he can.

Man, I love this book. It reminds me of one of my all time favorite movies, Road House. While thinking about that, I realized that, while I might not like classic westerns like The Searchers, I do like movies set in modern times that use western themes. Both Road House and Salvation are about upstanding men rolling into a new town and trying to make things right, all of which sounds very western to me. I also love how absolutely abominable Quincannon is as a villain. The dude’s not only a vile racist, but he also has “sex” with a giant woman made out of various kinds of meat. Ennis really went overboard this time around, but it’s a welcome change after all the intensity of the previous volume and the end of the book, which is fast approaching.

PREACHER: ALL HELL’S A-COMING (Vertigo)
Written by Garth Ennis, drawn by Steve Dillon and John McCrea
Collects Preacher #51-58, Preacher: Tall In The Saddle
All Hell’s A-Coming is a rollercoaster of a volume. Yes, we get to see Jesse and Tulip reunited and get to learn more about Tulip’s past, but we also learn about how big of a bastard Cassidy really was as a homeless woman who used to know him back in the day regales Jesse with stories. I remember the first time I read these books, something about Cassidy’s jackassness didn’t click in my head. I guess it’s a trick of the writing and the character that Ennis created that he not only worked his charms on Jesse for a while, but me too. This time around though, it became very clear that Cassidy is not a good person to be friends with. He might not intend to leave a path of destruction in his wake, but boy, does he. Tulip getting a clear head one morning and leaving Cassidy actually goes to show how badass of a character she is, something that’s reinforced in the aforementioned flashbacks to her childhood.

This collection also starts what will become something of a theme in the waning issues of the book where Ennis gives secondary and tertiery characters a kind of send off. This issue shows us Jesse giving Bob and Freddy, Sexual Investigators a ride and also their send off from the series (he also gives Elvis a ride, which is kind of cool). The story also reintroduces Tulip and Jesse’s friend Amy who gets her swan song while bringing Herr Starr back into the fray and heaping even more degrading embarrassment on the character (after defeating his non-Jesse nemesis, a dog eats his junk).  The Tall In The Saddle one-shot is included at the end of this collection, which is nice because it not only gives us a look at Tulip and Jesse’s earlier days as outlaws, but also works to give Jesse a chance to talk about horses and show the old dynamic between them and Amy. It’s a nice little story that I actually read after finishing the final volume because I wanted to keep going with the finale. Past Ennis collaborator John McCrea comes in for the art chores on this one and actually does a pretty good job mimicking Dillon’s style, which is good for visual continuity, but kind of bad because I love how he drew Hitman and would have loved to see that version of his art in this book.

PREACHER: ALAMO (Vertigo)
Written by Garth Ennis, drawn by Steve Dillon
Collects Preacher #59-66
Oh man, what a finale. I kind of wish I had been paying attention when this book came to a conclusion because I’m curious what people thought of the ending. It’s not your traditional “main good guy faces off against his opponent” ending. Instead, uh SPOILERS I guess, Jesse and Cassidy beat the shit out of each other before Jesse gets shot and killed. But, hey, that’s not the actual ending because Jesse’s actually a pretty good strategist and has some damn good luck on his side. There’s a lot of planning and scheming to go along with the bigger action scenes (the fight, plus Tulip wrecking shop on some dudes). Like a true good guy, Jesse does his best to finish his mission and make right by as many people as possible before literally SPOILER AGAIN riding off into the sunset with his girl AND partner Tulip.

The first time I read Preacher, I was blown away not only by the solid storytelling and ridiculously good characterization, but also because I didn’t know that comics like this existed. I had read some other Vertigo books, but I hadn’t really experienced such a complete story told over 66 issues (plus some one-shots). Ennis has never been better than in Preacher. He’s maybe been more shocking in The Boys, a book I just can’t get into, but being shocking only really works the first time around (though I do admit the meat woman stuck in my head and I was weirdly looking forward to seeing it again, especially after all the in-story build up to what’s in that cold storage warehouse). Another rad aspect of the book is that pretty much everyone gets an ending. I’m not just talking about our leads, but Herr Starr, The Saint of Killers, Arseface, Featherstone, Hoover, Lori, John Wayne, the town of Salvation, Genesis and, of course, God. You might not get the God vs. Preacher finale you were thinking would take place, but the actual ending makes a heck of a lot more sense when you think about what all the characters have gone through and experienced. I think not going with the more obvious kind of ending was pretty brave on Ennis’ part. I can’t wait to read Preacher again in the near future, which puts it on an equal playing field with favorites of mine like The Perks Of Being A Wallflower, The Usual Suspects, Halloween and other Best Of The Best honorees.