I pretty much checked out of the comic book scene in the early 90’s. This owes as much to Rob Leifeld’s inexplicable success during that decade and the absurd glut of mutant “X” titles as it does to my adolescent discovery of “real” literature.
This is too bad for me, because I missed out on some great stuff back then. I’ve started to play catch up thanks to collected trade paperbacks, most recently Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon’s brilliant Preacher series.
To briefly summarize the plot, a celestial accident occurs in Heaven, which wipes out small town Texas preacher Jesse Custer’s entire parish and grants him some serious powers thanks to an immature, yet supremely powerful, being called Genesis which inhabits him and grants him the Word, i.e. a power that allows him to make anyone do anything he says whenever he feels like it.
With his newfound power, his gal Tulip, and an Irish vampire named Cassidy, Jesse decides to track down God, who has checked out of the day-to-day oversight of His creation, get face to face with him, and hold him accountable for all the evils of the world.
What ensues is terrific drama, action, violence, gore, hilarity, and a cast of characters that includes God, the Devil, inbred hillbillies, the ultimate badass Saint of Killers, a pathetic Kurt Cobain wannabe who goes by the name “Arseface”, and John fucking Wayne.
I can’t recommend this book enough.
Incidentally, while reading it I thought to myself “what an amazing cable series this would make”. Sure enough, it was in development for HBO a few years ago, but was ultimately scrapped. Too bad, because the Arseface makeup tests are tremendous:
