Preacher is an incredible series. The premise of the story, God shirks his job and the world is on its own, perfectly parallels the emotional states of the characters (big surprise): people who all feel lost or abandoned, without a rudder to guide them. Sounds like a pretty classic "God is dead" dillemna, to me.
The full roster of characters starts to get very long, but Jesse and Cassaday are really the core. Through the story, both them find the things that they didn't have that left them without direction. Jesse is between worlds. In one, a real man is guided by the same values as John Wayne, and in the other, a real man reads Feminist theory. Only by accepting some of his own (ellegedly) feminine emotions (i.e., by learning to cry) does he find his own direction.
Cassaday is bereft of humanity, a psychological state symbolically represented by the fact that he's a vampire. He has the odd ability to screw up the lives of everyone around him. It's always someone else's responsibility to pull him out of the pile of shit he builds more himself, but it's always his fault for burrying himself in that pile of shit to begin with. Deep down, he doesn't think much of himself and covers it with an equal measure of sarcasm and bravado. Only when he honestly asks for forgiveness, instead of just grovelling to fulfill his own vision of his lack of self-worth, does he finally break out of his emotionally destructive behaviour. He begs that his friend, a 'preacher' not less, forgive him his sins and help him to over come them.
There are some real thematic problems with the story, but they mostly reflect the rudderlessness of the story itself, so they're oddly appropriate. A major theme of the series is the question "what does it mean to be a 'man'?" The narrative answers that question in many different, often conflicting, ways. Often, the answer is "Fart jokes and violence," the stereotypical masculinity we see in the West. Just as often, though, the answer is "maturity and sophistication," which includes a healthy dose of what I'd label Feminist thinking.
Preacher is a complex book that presents extremely difficult questions and then takes a stab at answering them. The answers aren't always right on the money, but I have to give Ennis credit for even asking them, especially in a medium with a very specific readership (guys in their 20s, for the most part) that is also linked to a genre that is typically extremely narrow in its gendered and political content (superheroes). Preacher's flaws make it more interesting than if it presented a simple, universal answer to the questions it asks.
Posted by orion at April 27, 2005 4:45 PM