I read this series on the recommendation of my thesis supervisor, Doug Barbour. He and I seem to have the same taste (which is damn lucky, because he's the only comics nut in the department aside from me).
The series, written by Garth Ennis and pencilled by Steve Dillon, is not for the faint of heart. It's wierd. Really, really wierd. The basic premise is that a pure life-force escapes from Heaven and joins with a seriously screwed up Texan preacher, Jesse Custer, whose past is so far beyond checkered that the board is pretty much black. I won't go deep into the plot. Suffice it to say that there's an Irish vampire and a sharp-shooting, would be assassin girlfriend, and those are some of the more normal characters.
The aspect of the series that really intrigues me is its conception of masculinity. To backtrack for a second, "masculinities" has become a hot subject in lit. studies in the last few years. It started in post-colonialism, basically seeking to answer the question "What happens to men's conception of themselves as men when they live in cultures that were colonised?" It's spread out since then and become a viable subject area. So if someone asks you why there should be 'feminism' when there's not 'masculanism,' then tell him that there is, now!
Anyway, this series is, itself, a fascinating study of masculinity. The protagonist is an obviously intelligent and, we find out mid-way through the series, surprisingly well-read man. He's read feminist theories that most people outside of academia have never heard of. This is a comic-book that references Judith Butler. Trouble is, he was raised in rural Texas and has to fight ingrained sexist, homophobic, and macho attitudes the entire time.
What results is Ennis', I believe sincere, attempt to accurately represent the internal struggle of the intelligent man who, never the less, has prejudices that he can't quite control. The series involves a creature so dangerous that he shot Satan in the face, coke-snorting angels, and a fist-fight with God himself, so the logistic climax, the culmination of the central conflict, is Biblical in proportion. But to me, the emotional climaxes are much more importan in terms of what the series actually does conceptually. The ultimate culmination of Custer's character involves him learning to have and accept his own emotional responses without shame or embarassement.
For all that, one of the lessons demonstrated in this series is that, much like in movies were anyone who knows martial arts beats anyone who doesn't, the character with the most testosterone always wins. Spending too much time tending to your hair, or bothering to shave, or preferring wine to beer guarantees defeat in Ennis' world. This explain how Custer is able to actually look God in the eye and tell him to fuck off. Custer is, somehow, more masculine. This dominance of macho is such a strong motif that it needed an equally strong narrative element to account for it. I don't like to fault a writer for he or she didn't write, but in this case I see Ennis clearly trying to do a particular thing, perform a certain symbolic act, but not managing to fully play out his own themes.
As an attempt to demonstrate that there are a lot of men who want to be part of the solution rather than part of the problem, but aren't sure how to do that, the series works, beautifully. If Jesse's emotional climax doesn't bring tears to your eyes, then you're a cold, heartless bastard. However, the series is not without its own gender-related problems. It enacts the very prejudices it rails against. Whether this is on purpose or not is up for grabs, but in the end it doesn't quite account for all of its own ideological movements. It's a fascinating series, worth the read, and worth thinking about, but not entirely without ideological flaws.
Posted by orion at July 14, 2004 4:24 PM