A fun new addiction
Apr. 19th, 2003 12:33 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
doyleYesterday I made a trip to Forbidden Planet down in the city centre to pick up the two Ultimate Spiderman volumes I'm missing. On a whim, figured I might as well try something I hadn't read, so I picked up the first trade paperback in a series called Preacher.
There are nine books in the Preacher series. Today I went back to the store and charged numbers 2 through 9 on my credit card, then came home and spent seven straight hours reading them. Then about fifteen minutes crying. I can't believe I haven't read this series before (but then I'm pretty new to comics - (doyle glares at![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
connorbeast for starting her down this treacherous path) and I only picked up volume one at all because I knew it had a vampire main character. I should put this behind a tag...
So the main character is a preacher called Jesse who gets possessed by this demonic/angelic entity called Genesis and decides to take on God. Weirdly, this isn't all that important to the story except that it gives Jesse the power to make anyone do anything he wants. There's a bunch of brilliantly written stuff with the bloodline of Christ and an ancient organisation called The Grail, but the focus of the story is on Jesse himself and his relationships with his girlfriend, Tulip, and his best friend, Cassidy. Cassidy is charming and loveable and an utter bastard. And also a vampire.
So Jesse finds out about Cassidy's past - that he was addicted to heroin for decades, and that he used women who were in love with him, beat them up and drank from them, and that he used to let men screw him for the money to get a fix.. Also that during a period when they thought Jesse was dead, Cassidy spent six months keeping Tulip so doped up that she had an affair with him. Unsurprisingly, Jesse calls him a monster and beats the shit out of him, to which Cass begs for help with a really nice speech about second chances. Jesse relents (because he loves this guy, and how much do I love that they actually use those words quite a lot of times?) and holds out his hand. And Cassidy knocks him on his ass and dusts himself in the sunrise. A second later Jesse is shot through the head by the Grail.
Next issue - the very last one - Jesse's back from the dead, and we see a flashback to what Cassidy did the night before their fight. He went to a church and bargained with God that he would keep Jesse busy long enough for Genesis to be destroyed and his friend to have a normal life... so long as his friend would have that life, no matter what. God kept his end of the bargain and brought Jesse back.
Cassidy leaves a letter behind that talks about how none of this was about taking down God - it was about saving him, Cassidy, and "isn't it funny how sometimes stories aren't about what you think". The whole series was never really about the Preacher at all, it was about this one guy's redemption.
Then, the last three pages - and we get to see Cassidy sitting on a hillside looking calm and at peace. He's been resurrected human, and this was the part where I burst into tears. Which is dumb, because I'm the kind of person who always skips to the end of the book, and I'd read the end of volume 9 before I started volume 2, and I still cried my heart out.
I want to marry Garth Ennis and have his evil, talented babies.
Thoughts on Magic Bullet to follow when my brain is up to speed again... (but needless to say: Wescon is canon. My god, it's so canon. Connor's in loooove...)
There are nine books in the Preacher series. Today I went back to the store and charged numbers 2 through 9 on my credit card, then came home and spent seven straight hours reading them. Then about fifteen minutes crying. I can't believe I haven't read this series before (but then I'm pretty new to comics - (doyle glares at
connorbeast for starting her down this treacherous path) and I only picked up volume one at all because I knew it had a vampire main character. I should put this behind a tag...So the main character is a preacher called Jesse who gets possessed by this demonic/angelic entity called Genesis and decides to take on God. Weirdly, this isn't all that important to the story except that it gives Jesse the power to make anyone do anything he wants. There's a bunch of brilliantly written stuff with the bloodline of Christ and an ancient organisation called The Grail, but the focus of the story is on Jesse himself and his relationships with his girlfriend, Tulip, and his best friend, Cassidy. Cassidy is charming and loveable and an utter bastard. And also a vampire.
So Jesse finds out about Cassidy's past - that he was addicted to heroin for decades, and that he used women who were in love with him, beat them up and drank from them, and that he used to let men screw him for the money to get a fix.. Also that during a period when they thought Jesse was dead, Cassidy spent six months keeping Tulip so doped up that she had an affair with him. Unsurprisingly, Jesse calls him a monster and beats the shit out of him, to which Cass begs for help with a really nice speech about second chances. Jesse relents (because he loves this guy, and how much do I love that they actually use those words quite a lot of times?) and holds out his hand. And Cassidy knocks him on his ass and dusts himself in the sunrise. A second later Jesse is shot through the head by the Grail.
Next issue - the very last one - Jesse's back from the dead, and we see a flashback to what Cassidy did the night before their fight. He went to a church and bargained with God that he would keep Jesse busy long enough for Genesis to be destroyed and his friend to have a normal life... so long as his friend would have that life, no matter what. God kept his end of the bargain and brought Jesse back.
Cassidy leaves a letter behind that talks about how none of this was about taking down God - it was about saving him, Cassidy, and "isn't it funny how sometimes stories aren't about what you think". The whole series was never really about the Preacher at all, it was about this one guy's redemption.
Then, the last three pages - and we get to see Cassidy sitting on a hillside looking calm and at peace. He's been resurrected human, and this was the part where I burst into tears. Which is dumb, because I'm the kind of person who always skips to the end of the book, and I'd read the end of volume 9 before I started volume 2, and I still cried my heart out.
I want to marry Garth Ennis and have his evil, talented babies.
Thoughts on Magic Bullet to follow when my brain is up to speed again... (but needless to say: Wescon is canon. My god, it's so canon. Connor's in loooove...)
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no subject
on 2003-04-18 04:45 pm (UTC)Anyway, glad you read. Glad you enjoyed.
Re:
on 2003-04-18 04:51 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2003-04-18 04:57 pm (UTC)Re:
on 2003-04-18 04:59 pm (UTC)Which, weirdly, made it really hard to get his voice in my head...
no subject
on 2003-04-18 05:02 pm (UTC)Being from the UK must put an interesting (or perhaps, not-so-interesting) twist on the whole "UK accents are sexy" thing.
Re:
on 2003-04-18 05:06 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2003-04-18 08:19 pm (UTC)You are a sick, sick woman. ;)
Re:
on 2003-04-19 05:07 am (UTC)no subject
on 2003-04-19 04:49 am (UTC)no subject
on 2003-04-19 05:10 am (UTC)no subject
on 2003-04-19 05:12 am (UTC)