Preacher #53

[history79]

Trigger Warning for Misogyny/Sexism

Comments

[drexer]

Oh common!

8 hours, that's for how long espanolbot managed to improve the Garth Ennis ratio before something was brought up...

This does remind me that I still need to read Preacher though.

[drtechnobabel]

I want to say that's a new record, but I doubt that's actually true.

[beyondthefringe]

This really is why we can't have nice things, isn't it.

[chrys]

Uh, seriously? Is there any sort of context that would make this less awful?

[skemono]

Nope.

[alicemacher]

I won't bother to give context for or justify this particular scene. All I'll say is that, having read through all of Preacher twice, the second time years after the first...I do think it's a fine series, worth reading if you can get past the...Ennis being Ennis.

Yes, there's an underlying "macho" current to it, an androcentric and heteronormative bias. Yes, Ennis (as elsewhere) indulges in gratuitous gore, scatological content and other visual unpleasantness. Yes, the story goes off on too many digressions before finally resolving the ongoing plot and subplots. And yes, Dillon's faces all look the bloody same.

But despite all this, I think Ennis succeeded in doing what he wanted to do with this story: creating a modern-day, deconstructionist western, while also sticking it to the traditional, hate-filled, patriarchal conception of the divine that many Americans still worship. And for every scene that's cringeworthy (intentionally or otherwise), there's one that is so full of deep characterization, heartfelt dialogue and compassion for the human condition that it moves me to tears.

Too bad so much of Ennis's later work lacks any hint of what's in that last sentence.

[chrys]

Thank you for your post. People keep praising and recommending his work, especially Preacher, but the panels I see and the issues I've read (of other titles he wrote) are so terrible, it always left me wondering what people were seeing. So really, thanks for a post that doesn't gloss over "flaws" but points out what people might like about it.

[alicemacher]

You're welcome. ^_^ Yeah, Preacher is an acquired taste if ever there were one. I never recommend it to others without warning them, to the extent I can do so without spoilers, that it's often disturbing.

[filthysize]

It does make me wonder why every Preacher post I see here are the juvenile humor scenes. I suppose they're more concise. A lot of Ennis' sappy/emotional scenes tend to have really long build ups that make the payoff satisfying.

[dragontail]

Can I just say "thank you"? That is quite honestly the best and most enlightened explanation of both the good and bad of Preacher (a series I adore and am oft ashamed of, for the very reasons you've outlined) I've ever read.

Thank you.

[alicemacher]

You're welcome. *blush*

And I know the feeling; with all the hatedom for Frank Miller's work, by now having extended retroactively to the beginning of his career, I'm sometimes embarassed to admit I like The Dark Knight Returns and Year One, even as I wholly agree with the consensus on his later work.

[halloweenjack]

I'd split the difference. TDKR is another title that doesn't seem nearly as impressive upon re-reading; it's usually compared to Watchmen, but it's a lot sloppier than that book, even though it's a lot shorter. (You could level the opposite criticism at Watchmen, of course: that it's so tightly plotted and written that it's airless.) The first chapter/issue is pretty good, but the rest of it is a combination of a comics version of Dirty Harry/Death Wish, some bits cribbed from American Flagg! that set up some admittedly impressive splash pages, and an ending in which the child of privilege is somehow more legit than the undocumented immigrant (who, for all of his kowtowing to not!Reagan, saves millions of people from being nuked at the risk of his own life).

Year One, on the other hand, is a much tighter and better story. Maybe it's because Miller is not only called upon to do nothing to write the story, but can actually be bothered to do so (contrast with ASBAR), or maybe Mazzucchelli just inspired him enough, but it hangs together much better, as does his Marvel story with Mazzucchelli, Daredevil: Born Again, which isn't strictly speaking the same thing as B:YO, but similarly recasts the hero in a simpler and more effective mode. (Both stories are also not kind to their significant female characters--Catwoman is recast as a prostitute (which she also is, at least as a madame, in TDKR) and Karen Page as a porn actress--but this is Frank Miller, after all.) Both B:YO and D:BA are books that I can still read with pleasure.

[thatnickguy]

Yup. Despite that I'll admit some of its more controversial parts have not aged very well, I still enjoy the series because of exactly what you said here.

Someone tried to call Jesse a misogynist, which I disagreed with. He doesn't openly hate women - quite the opposite, since he pretty much worships Tulip and his mother. I think he could be called misanthropic, though, because he does still carry a VERY old fashioned idea about women and being overly protective about them.

[md84]

One of his biggest flaws, along with his inability to cry, is his overprotectiveness of Tulip and women in general. And to be fair, both are rooted in some pretty deep-seated trauma, courtesy of his awful grandma and her henchmen Jody and T.C. It's not until the last few pages of the entire series that he finally gets over these flaws.

[halloweenjack]

I very much beg to differ; I think it's aged quite badly. It was much more worth the time back in the late nineties, when comics were still suffering from the successes and excesses of the Image founders; Ennis (and Warren Ellis) were much more welcome in bringing work of some substance to a medium that had seemingly forgotten the importance of good writing. Now, though... it may have a great deal to do with Ennis returning to his favorite tropes again and again, but I find very little of worth in it now, and a lot of really problematic stuff.

The only thing that still works for me is Cassidy. There's something compelling about the story of a vampire who at first seems really attractive in the roguish, devil-may-care sort of way--avoiding the ghoul/glitterpire axis more or less entirely--but who on closer examination comes off as the ultimate user, fucking up people's lives and skating away because there aren't any permanent consequences to their actions. Which is not to say that I like every aspect to his story (in particular, the Les Enfants du Sang storyline seemed gratuitously dickish toward goths), but the core of it is solid.

[alicemacher]

Cassidy's arc was interesting and could possibly have been a series on its own.

("in particular, the Les Enfants du Sang storyline seemed gratuitously dickish toward goths")

It could be read that way, but I think the primary targets of satire there were Anne Rice's vampire novels.

[halloweenjack]

I think the primary targets of satire there were Anne Rice's vampire novels.

That's what I thought at first, although Rice or any identifiable stand-in is oddly absent. (The other vampire in the one-shot has obviously read her books.) But Les Enfants come in for their share of (unearned) abuse, specifically, and they're the villains in the arc of the regular book that takes place in/near New Orleans. (They become less pathetic in the latter story simply because Ennis makes Jesse carry the idiot ball, i.e. he simply forgets that he has The Word for no particular reason.) Ennis has never been particularly kind to characters that represent groups that he thinks are posers--think of Hacken from Hitman or Robbie Brooks, the teen wannabe magician who puts Constantine's niece in danger--but the treatment of Les Enfants struck me as pretty gratuitous, even at the first read-through.