Preacher #1

I'm pretty sure I get it, so before you teach me a verbal lesson, let's just acknowledge up front I'm pretty sure I get what Mr. Ennis was about. Considering I'm in the opposite camp of his intended audience, one may initially suspect my disapprobation comes from a misguided (one may say "naive") experience of Life. It is fair to admit my experience of life has been almost wholly different from this: not that "normal" life consists of vampires, serial killers, inbreeding, and angel-demon babies. I think it's safe to assume most of our "real" lives have not including a lot of those elements.

I'm a big fan of ideas - even if they don't agree with my own view of the world, I'm certainly willing to engage them, analyze them, discuss them, and then, if necessary, refute them without doing so in a hate-filled, bigoted sort of fashion. (I know, I sound like a swell guy.) So despite my personal worldview and religious background, I'm quite willing to read a story about the repercussions of God taking a vacation and an angel-demon baby wreaking havoc on the world. So I didn't not like it because of its "blasphemy" (in fact, its attempt at blasphemy was fairly trivial, I thought - I've certainly seen worse than that).

My disapprobation came in its extensive profanity (and "extensive" is an understatement) and its seeming wandering away from the cosmic conflicts by the end of this first collection. True, I didn't like the graphic violence - that's definitely not my cup of tea. But I thought the continuous (not continual) salty language just struck me as poor writing. Maybe that's how people talk in the "real world," but it doesn't do anything for the story or the characters. It would be a much more engaging story if it was written without that. Groucho's comments about how easy it is to be a comedian with swearing apply to this situation as well. Clearly I'm in the minority in this matter, but there it is. I think it would be a smarter series without the profanity. I won't be crushed if you prove me wrong.

The other aspect I didn't like, the sidetracking from the main cosmic conflicts involved, just was somewhat irksome. It started out like Mr. Ennis was going to create a whole new cosmogony, a whole slew of supernatural characters for a supernatural thriller with an interesting sort of protagonist who may have had faith, lost it in a pretty mighty way, and is looking for an explanation from God about the whole deal ... and then suddenly we are just in a couple of X-Files knockoff stories. I certainly am a fan of learning characters' backstories - but this just seemed to happen a bit too soon. I wasn't offended by Grandma's version of Christianity - I understand people can think that way. That's fine. But what happened to the story? It just seemed to get sidetracked a bit sooner than I would have liked. Again, that's me, I'm sure I'm wrong.

I'll probably keep going, against just to see where Mr. Ennis takes the story and see how it all comes together. No, I don't feel like I'm being magnanimous when I say that, but I am just trying to convey despite its failings, the potential ideas may make for an engaging story (even if it wholly conflicts with my personal vision of life).