Unconverted

Last time we were in KL, for the long weekend for Vesak Day, I bought the first two books in the Preacher series by Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon. I was looking for a nice meaty comics series in which I would be able to sink myself and feed my addiction to the genre. (In truth, it’s not a terribly strong addiction, but I associate holidays with the genre and rather miss not automatically being able to buy a new Sandman or the like.)

I’ve now read both of the books, Gone To Texas and Until The End Of The World, and doubt that I’ll be moving onto number three despite being left hanging at the end of number two. To some degree I did enjoy the books, that degree being that there was enough story to keep me interested. Unfortunately to get to the story you need to wade through lots of profanity, a tiresome obsession with violence, an equally tiresome fixation on sentimental bonding, and a sort of adolescent desire to keep shocking the reader. The problem is that this reader is beyond being shocked but not beyond getting tired of storytellers’ adolescent obsessions.

When gore and nastiness is done well, think Gaiman and Moore, I’m rather in favour of it. But the Preacher never comes close to those levels. Above all, it was the sentimentality of the series that bothered me, a sentimentality that manifested itself in the three central characters being allowed to get away with anything on the (implied) grounds that they possessed some sort of depth. Unfortunately they didn't.