PREACHER

Preacher follows a gang of three washed-up misfits that have all been dealt cruel hands by fate. First there’s Jesse Custer, a vulgar, foul-mouthed yet all-around upstanding and gentlemanly preacher living a dull life in a small Texas town called Annville. He wears the mantle of a preacher while exuding the aura of a gritty, spaghetti western antihero. He spends more time praying to John Wayne and channeling Clint Eastwood than he ever spends seeking guidance from God.

Things take a major turn for Jesse when he accidentally gets possessed by the spirit of a supernatural entity called Genesis, the cursed child born out of the forbidden fornication between an angel and a demon. The entity contains the essence of absolute goodness and absolute evil, fusing together with Jesse’s soul and granting him unimaginable power. Now a force to be reckoned with, Jesse makes himself quite a few dangerous enemies and he doesn’t plan to let his newfound powers go to waste. He has a bone to pick with the scum of the earth and plans to use his powers to make amends with his past trauma and regrets. Most of all, he has it out for God more than anyone else for allowing all the chaos and evil in the world to spiral out of control in the first place. He goes on a journey to find God and give him a piece of his mind.

Along his journey, Jesse reunites with his ex-girlfriend Tulip and befriends an Irish, vampire junky named Cassidy. Tulip is a hotheaded gunslinger that was raised by her tough-as-nails yet affectionate, sharpshooting father who taught her how to hunt, stand on her own two feet and take no nonsense from anybody. She’s a wild tomboy with a lot of heart and has quite a bit of catching up to do with Jesse after he abandoned her for unknown reasons at the peak of their relationship.

After hearing Jesse’s story about fusing with Genesis and going on a mission to find God with his newfound powers, Cassidy happily joins the preacher on his quest while Tulip works on patching things up with Jesse after learning of the dark secrets behind his sudden disappearance. Cassidy also has some demons of his own to work out as he battles with alcoholism, drug addiction and a wavering moral compass on top of never being able to walk around in broad daylight because of the curse of vampirism placed on him as a young boy. Despite their numerous imperfections, the three come together in hopes of finding God. Not in the metaphorical sense, but to kick his ass for abandoning his throne in heaven, neglecting his duties and letting humanity drown in the cesspool he created with his own hands. The three outlaws seek to set things right through very unsavory means.

Jesse, Tulip and Cassidy encounter some incredibly disturbed villains along the way, including Jesse’s own family of backwater devils that include a tyrannical religious grandmother obsessed with maintaining pure bloodlines, a violent psychopath that brutally murdered anything Jesse dared to love as a child, and a crazed hillbilly with a fetish for farm animals. Then there’s a secret religious order akin to the Illuminati called The Grail, which includes the outrageous Klaus Starr whose violent antics along with his obsession of trying to use Jesse’s powers to fulfill his own plans usually end up leaving him with a few missing limbs and making a mockery of himself. There’s even a KKK loonie that built himself a giant sex doll made out of the severed, bloody body parts of butchered livestock. The violence is so outrageously gruesome that it somehow manages to be equally horrendous and hilarious. A lot of the dark and shocking moments in this series are delivered with heavy undertones of black comedy, making you laugh, cringe and gag all at the same time. It’s a wild ride that pulls no punches, and the scares are absurdly creative if nothing else.

The three protagonists have a lot of depth to them, every villain is a wicked bastard and the side characters all have their own heartwarming struggles to overcome. The most notable minor character that I was rooting for from beginning to end was a mentally disabled boy nicknamed Assface. The boy idolized Kurt Cobain to an unhealthy degree and unfortunately, he thought that following in his idol’s footsteps by blowing his head off with a gun would earn himself the love and admiration he always wanted. After his failed suicide attempt, he’s left with a gaping hole that continuously oozes fluid from his now deformed face, which earned him the nickname Assface. Instead of letting his deformity bring him down, he goes on his own personal journey of self-discovery and finding comfort and acceptance through rock music. This is just one of many touching tales throughout the series.

Preacher is outrageous, shocking, and it isn’t afraid of offending anybody with its sharp-edged humor, but it also captures the personal flaws and imperfections that every single person carries. The action is spectacular, the characters are heroic and monstrous in equal measure, and you can never prepare yourself for whatever bizarre travesties it will throw at you next. Stephen King even cited Preacher as being a big inspiration behind his surreal fantasy masterpiece The Dark Tower, and it’s not hard to see how. It’s the perfect blend of gritty western, dark fantasy, shock humor and over the top horror-fueled action sequences. It’ll definitely send you through an unforgettable trip through the wild west.