There's a lot of history that comes along with Texas, and a lot of pride comes along with being
a Texan. Sometimes, the size and scope of these stories and people exceed beyond reality. In Preacher: Gone To Texas, that scope is focused on the life of a small town "holy man" who's world was flipped faster than a poker table in a John Wayne movie. It's a down-home tall-tale that takes place somewhere familiar. Hell, you've probably driven through there, even if it was at 3 a.m and you were too sleepy to notice.
When I first heard about a comic about a Preacher with holy powers, I was skeptical. In fact, I didn't even want to read it. I thought it was going to be a Billy Graham funded King James Version of a comic book. Mistake. BIG MISTAKE.
I guess the story should start at the beginning: Genesis. Heaven is, of course, controlled by God. Within heaven, there are two races of angels. One branch of angels called the Seraphi are the muscle. You might imagine them as the ones with the wings and swords. In a freak instance of existence, a Seraphi falls in love with a demon. These two worlds were never meant to collide. But hey, this is love. Nothing makes sense. They have a child. Now, this child is pure good mixed with pure evil, an entirely new idea, makes it stronger than both who created it. Heaven jails the entity, from which it escapes easily, and rockets himself towards Earth in search of a soul. It finds one in a certain Jesse Custer, a man losing faith in God. Now that's the basis of this story. That isn't even scratching the surface as to what this story even BEGINS to tackle.
Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon are the masterminds behind Preacher: Gone to Texas. They've created a new legend with so many twists and turns it's hard to give his universe justice in so many words. It's part Western, part Love story, part Vampire tale, part Buddy Cop, with enough booze and cigarettes to make Hank Williams jealous. It's the gravel in your guts, and spit in your eye. It's the rattlesnake in your sleeping bag, and the sucker-punch in an old saloon. With Preacher: Gone to Texas, Garth Ennis' series has broken a beer bottle across the back of morality's head, and it doesn't look like morality is getting up anytime soon.
Recent Comments