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Preacher (Comic Book): Difference between revisions
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The book enthusiastically denies the Christian concept of a loving God, satirizes various aspects of modern living and throws in a few good fistfights and explosions along the way. Highly recommended for splatterhounds and fans of [[Quentin Tarantino]]; not recommended for the religious... or at least, not the religious and easily offended. It was published by [[Vertigo Comics]]. The series lasted for 66 regular issues, running from April, 1995 to October, 2000. There were also a number of specials and a 4-issue mini-series featuring the Saint of Killers.
{{tropelist}}
* [[Action Girl]] - Tulip, although it's clear that Jesse would [[In
▲* [[Action Girl]] - Tulip, although it's clear that Jesse would [[In Harms Way|rather she wasn't]].
* [[Ancient Conspiracy]]: The Grail.
* [[Anything That Moves]]: T.C. - though, in all honesty, even the "moves" part seems to be negotiable.
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** Dunno about that, heroic characters lose arms and eyes in the course of the story too...
** Pretty heavily [[Averted|averted]] by Cassidy, who is subjected to a number of wounds that are by no means pretty, {{spoiler|particularly when he is being tortured in Masada}}.
* [[Big Screwed
* [[Black and Gray Morality]]: Even God's a prick.
* [[Black Best Friend]]: "Space" to John Custer, and arguably Cindy to Jesse in ''Salvation''.
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* [[Bottomless Magazines]]: The Saint of Killers' revolvers. They were forged by [[Satan]] to have their hammers never fall on empty chambers. To be precise, when the [[Grim Reaper|Angel of Death]] gave up his position [[Start of Darkness|to the Saint]], he also gave up his sword. Satan melted it down and reforged it into two Walker Colt revolvers which [[Shur Fine Guns|never misfire]], [[Improbable Aiming Skills|never miss]], [[Instant Death Bullet|always inflict a deadly wound]], and never need reloading.
* [[Broken Pedestal]]: Subverted with Jody.
* [[Brother
{{quote| '''Starr''': ''Son of man or son of God, you can't fuck your sister and expect much good to come of it.''}}
* [[Bungled Suicide]]: Arseface's origin story.
* [[Butt Monkey]]: Hoover and Arseface get their fair share, but Herr Starr really takes the cake. {{spoiler|At the time of his death, this is the sum total of his injuries (deep breath:) one of his eyes is blind, one of his ears was shot off, a scar was carved over his head making it look like a gigantic penis, cannibals ate his leg and a rottweiler bit off his genitals. [[Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking|Oh, and he's bald and has a harsh voice, too. Since childhood.]] He ''literally'' becomes this when he is anally raped by Bill Glover.}}
** Joe the bartender also counts, but he's still an optimist. Mistaken (partially his own fault) for a serial pedophile and medically castrated as a result? Check. Inability to sexually satisfy his wife, leading to divorce? Check. Wife winning all the money he got from the state to compensate for destroying his balls? Check.
** Detective John Tool, "the unluckiest cop in the world"
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* [[Captured Super Entity]]: The Grail has a captured angel that they use for information in "Crusaders".
* [[Car Fu]]: Cassidy drives a pickup into the Saint in the first volume, [[Nigh Invulnerable|to no effect]].
* [[Cluster F
** Lampshaded ''hilariously'' with Saddam Hopper, because he's fucking ''lousy'' at it (Even using the [[Seven Dirty Words]]).
{{quote| "We get done with this, I'm goin' back to workin' for the Cubans. At least they know how to fuckin' swear..."}}
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* [[Corrupt Church]]: The Grail
* [[Corrupt Hick]]: Odin Quincannon in "Salvation". Also known as the Meat King, he is a corrupt hick who operates an inhumane meat plant, orders the death of a local sheriff, is a card-carrying member of the Ku Klux Klan, tries to blow up a nearby village with napalm, employs a Hitler fetishist as his PA and repeatedly has sex with a giant female figure made out of sides of ham. Seriously. He was so corrupt his fellow Klansmen started wondering if he was taking the whole racism thing a bit too far.
** The L'Angelles are a [[Big Screwed
* [[Council of Angels]]: In "Gone to Texas"
* [[Covers Always Lie]]: If you're new to the series, the cover of the very first issue might give you the impression the Jesse is the antagonist of the series, or possibly a [[Villain Protagonist]], rather than [[The Hero]]. Hell, the first issue's cover is the page image for [[Sinister Minister]]!
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** One somewhat egregious example is a line in Starr's [[Start of Darkness]] where he mentions 'having joined the Wehrmacht to try to bring order to the world'. Germany's armed forces have not been referred to as 'Wehrmacht' since 1945 (and Starr is explicitly stated to be a post-war child), and Germans would be highly unlikely to confuse 'Wehrmacht' with the correct 'Bundeswehr' in conversation [[World War II|for reasons that should be all too obvious]].
*** To be precise, it is explicitly stated that Starr's father was a British serviceman serving in the British occupation force in post-war Germany, thereby making Starr Anglo-German. Presumably this makes him bilingual in German and English, thereby explaining his fluency in the latter. It is also implied to be the reason he was bullied by the other children.
* [[Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?|Did You Just Shoot The Devil In The Face]]: He ''did''.
** Did You Just Shoot {{spoiler|''God''}} In The Face: '''[[Badass|He did]]'''.
* [[Dirty Communists]]: Given that the series is set in the late 90s, it's not a straight example. However, it is stated clearly that the Russians should still be feared - simply because others can use what that country taught its people to to their advantage. Exhibit A, Eisenstein's interrogation of a crippled witness, riding on painkillers.
{{quote| '''Eisenstein''': ''A Spetsnaz unit was invited on a N.A.T.O special forces exercise in northern Norway. But the weather closed in faster than expected. The team was cut off. In their patronizing way, the Western military believed they had a lot to teach the Russians. They thought in terms of [[Crazy Prepared|method]]... when in fact it was a matter of [[I Did What I Had to Do|philosophy]]. Don't look round. It was forty degrees below zero. The four-man unit stumbled on an elderly couple stranded in their mountain cabin. They had food in their larder for another week. [[No Party Like a Donner Party|The blizzard lasted two.]] You can look now.''}}
** Eisenstein's Spetsnaz bodyguard is [[I'm a Humanitarian|eating the man's hand]]. The man then proceeds to tell Eisenstein everything he wants to know.
** Be careful, children... [[Dirty Communists]] [[Eats Babies]]... [[Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking|''And'']], as Jake warns Tulip, they "want to take away our guns".
** Not to mention Jesse's father's famous "Fuck Communism" lighter.
* [[Disproportionate Retribution]]: What happened to Hoover, who is made by the Word of God to count sand.
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* [[Earth Is Young]]: Straight Type C: [[The Bible]] is literal truth, and the reason we have reason to believe otherwise is that [[God Is Flawed|God is desperate to be loved]]: If our lives are [[Hell On Earth]] and we don't have any reason to believe that God even ''exists'' but ''still'' love him anyway, then our love is such a sweet ego-boost in His eyes.
* [[Eldritch Abomination]]: Genesis is described as such by the angels, including its own father.
* [[Et Tu, Brute?]]: As cited on the trope page:
{{quote| "Gets ya to fuckin' love him and then stabz ya inna back. Love him so much ya don't believe he did it. Blood all over ya. Big fuckin' knife in ya back. An' ya don't believe he did it. Maybe hez sick. Maybe it wasn't him. Just looked like him. Maybe he made a mistake." }}
** Later, in the climactic fight between them, Jesse goes all "[[Curb Stomp Battle|wrath of God]]"(Couldn't resist) on him:
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* [[Face Heel Revolving Door]]: {{spoiler|Cassidy.}} If we look at his history, he starts out as a pretty decent guy, then gradually becomes an amoral jerk, then when he meets {{spoiler|Jesse}} he tries to become a good guy again, but at some point goes back to being a jerk, until finally he is able to save absolve himself and become a good guy again, and (presumably) he stays that way after the story is over.
* [[Female Angel Male Demon]]: Inverted. Genesis is the offspring of a male angel and a female demon.
* [[French Jerk]]: [[Famous
* [[Funetik Aksent]]: Arguably, anyone from 'the South' is depected as having a stereotypical drawl to a lesser or greater extent, but particularly Arseface (Indecipherable) and the 'Sexual Investigators' [[Oop North|Bob Glover]].
** How did you miss Cassidy? JAYSIS!
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* [[God Is Evil]]
* [[God Is Flawed]]: It is eventually revealed that all of the world's problems are caused by being created by a guy who grew up in total solitude (because there wasn't any universe yet!) and thus developed what could be considered a narcissistic personality disorder as well as any number of related mental problems.
* [[Go
* [[Good Old Fisticuffs]]
* [[Good People Have Good Sex]]
* [[Good Scars, Evil Scars]]: Herr Starr's scar is ''evil'', especially since it makes him into a walking [[Gag Penis]].
** Plus his "star for Starr" scar is what turned him into a bald, gruff voiced calculating killer in the first place.
* [[Good Thing You Can Heal]]: Cassidy. He takes [[Losing Your Head|decapitation]] in stride. This is [[Blessed With Suck|used against him]] when Herr Starr, furious at the depth of his error in kidnapping Cassidy instead of Jesse, calls in his old friend [[Torture Technician|Frankie]] to continuously shoot him to near-death, then wait for him to heal, then repeat.
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* [[Groin Attack]]: Oh so very many. Male genitalia is destroyed in pretty much every possible fashion.
* [[The Grotesque]]: Arseface.
** Arseface [[Exactly What It Says On the Tin|has a hole in his face]] and is [[The Unintelligible]], and Lorrie Bobs is a girl who comes from a inbred family that has only one eye, and also a visual disorder that makes her see everything as something else. They both are magnificent subversions of this trope: These two hideous beings are the only two truly decent human beings [[Dysfunction Junction|in pretty much all the cast]],[[Earn Your Happy Ending|and the only ones who will achieve true love and happiness]] (Jessie and Tulip had a lot of [[Protagonist
* [[Guns Akimbo]]: It's not enough that the Saint's gun could [[Instant Death Bullet|kill in one perfectly accurate shot]]; he just ''has'' to have a pair of them too.
* [[The Gunslinger]]: Tulip
* [[Hand Cannon]]: Herr Starr's enormously oversized revolver fits the traditional model. Utterly overshadowed by a [[Infinity
* [[Happily
** This may be inspired by the real-life botched shotgun suicide of James Vance after hearing a subliminal message in a Judas Priest song.
* [[Have You Seen My God?]]: ''The'' key plot element.
* [[Heel Face Turn]]: {{spoiler|The Saint Of Killers.}}
** It certainly says something about the series that that character's decision to {{spoiler|kill God Almighty}} marks his [[Heel Face Turn]].
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* [[Law of Inverse Fertility]]: In the Salvation arc, Toby and nerver-seen girlfriend Turleen aren't even thinking of having a baby (Or much else, for that matter) when he tells Jodie that he thought she was pregnant because she'd missed her period. They're not worried, because it happened once before, last month. God, these two are such ''idiots''.
* [[Law of Inverse Recoil]]: Subverted in "Salvation". When Odin Quincannon fires a [[Hand Cannon|gun that's way too large for him]], the recoil [[Squick|breaks his wrist]]. Also a ''cute'' subversion with a very young Tulip driven backwards into a snowbank, with only mittens and boots left visible.
* [[Lawyer
* [[Like a Badass Out of Hell]]: The Saint of Killers, stopping only just long enough on the way out to {{spoiler|shoot Satan in the face for insulting him}}.
* [[Literal Genie]]: Jesse's choice of words with the Word of God sometimes has... unfortunate consequences. Like the time he told {{spoiler|Arseface's father to "go fuck yourself", which resulted in him tearing off his own penis and sodomizing himself with it.}}
* [[Love At First Sight]]: Tulip and Jesse. While Jesse was on a date with another girl. In a non-romantic sense, all of Tulip's father's apprehension about raising a daughter alone vanished the moment he saw his baby girl's face.
* [[Luke, I Am Your Father|Luke You Are My Mother]]
* [[Made of Plasticine]]: Human beings are ludicrously fragile in this series. Every bone broken will immediately sprout forth from the skin- even breaking someone's ''finger'' does this. Kicks to the chin can pop eyes out, punches to the throat are fatal, blood spurts from every single wound, etc.
* [[Madness Mantra]]: "DOOM cock, DOOM cock"
** "Smear the cheese, smear the cheese... Pluck the hairs, pluck the hairs... Say the name, say the name..."
* [[Magic
* [[Mook Lieutenant]]: Marseille.
* [[Moral Dissonance]]: Neither Jesse nor anyone else ever seems to consider that, for example, after his "bank robbery" the teller who gave him the money probably went to prison. For that matter, Jesse's supposedly high moral standards seem to clash with his constant criminality. And at no point does anyone criticize him for his [[Violence Really Is the Answer]] solution to ''everything''.
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* [[Not With the Safety On You Won't]]
* [[Odd Job Gods|Odd Job Saints]]: The Saint of Killers, the Angel of Death's replacement. Whenever you're about to kill someone, pray to him, he's the one pulling the trigger.
* [[One
* [[One Sided Arm Wrestling]]: Cassidy, soon after arriving in the US.
* [[Only Sane Man]]: Played with - Starr, for all his own issues, is fairly clearly this relative to the Grail in general.
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* [[Person of Mass Destruction]]: The Saint of Killers, which was realized far too late by an unfortunate tank battalion. How dangerous could a guy who looks like he walked out of a Western set be?
* [[The Power of Legacy]]: Deconstructed, then averted. When Jesse is hanging on to Cassidy from a plane, he tells Cassidy to tell Tulip he loves her, then orders him to let go. Cassidy then reveals himself by telling Tulip he couldn't hear what he said. But at the very end, Cassidy's goodbye letter explains to Tulip what Jesse had really told him.
* [[Precision F
{{quote| ''' {{spoiler|Hoover}} to Starr:''' Motherfucker. You evil, ''soulless, motherfucker''.}}
** And let's not forget the one that is visible [[In Space|from space]].
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*** And in the Salvation story arc, when Jesse locks up some of Quincannon's unruly workers.
* [[Rated M for Manly]]: Jesse, Jesse's dad, the Saint, Tulip's dad, Jody...
* [["The Reason You Suck" Speech]]: Jesse delivers a couple of these, including to {{spoiler|Cassidy.}}
** Right after his [[Happily
{{quote| ''Self-obsessed, whining little shit! Nobody cared? Nobody Cared? If you two did you this to yourselves, then YOU DIDN'T CARE NEITHER!''}}
* [[Redemption Failure]]: Since he's something of an [[Expy]] of [[Clint Eastwood]]'s characters, Saint of Killers' gets a backstory about his life as a retired outlaw and gunslinger. Things rapidly go awry in fashion very similar to what befalls Eastwood's character in ''Unforgiven''.
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** Also, "A star for Starr"
* [[Stay in The Kitchen]]: Probably '''the''' key source of conflict between Jesse and Tulip.
** Arguably, this isn't because Jesse's a sexist. Throughout the first volume, he's perfectly happy having a [[The Gunslinger|hot gunslinging chick]] as backup. ''Then he's forced to watch Jody blow her head to [[Pink Mist]].'' Afterwards, he's decided that "I don't care if she [[Screw This, I'm Outta Here|leaves me]], [[A Plague On Both Your Houses|curses my name for the rest of her life]], and [[Groin Attack|cuts off my balls]] before she leaves - [[I Want My Beloved to Be Happy|I can't watch her die again]] - and I'm [[The Only One]] who can [[Rage Against the Heavens|make God pay for fucking up the world]]."
* [[Straw Feminist]]: Lampshaded, with Martha Moore. Subverted with Jesse.
* [[Strawman Political]]: Ulysses Gett, a hilariously offensive conservative who wishes people would stop blaming American men for everything (Even when they have every right to!) and is openly critical of the feminists and liberals.
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{{quote| "Yeh know I was talkin' about fellas like Pearse, who go on about blood sacrifices, an' glory an' beauty in fightin'? Well they're the ones yeh fuckin' shoot first."}}
** A character who is clearly meant to be [[Neil Gaiman]] has a sheaf of rolled-up poetry forced down his throat by Cassidy. Later in the same arc, he is mentioned as having achieved great success as a writer by "blending genres".
*** That one's a bit ambiguous. While he certainly bears a strong physical resemblance to Gaiman, the poem that he reads has little in common with his writing style. And anyway, Gaiman writes very little poetry, as he has openly said that [[Self
** There are more than a few shots taken at the music industry, media commentators, media watchdogs, political correctness, psychiatrists and psychology buzzwords, liberal and conservative extremists, Goths, Anne Rice, racists, child molesters, self-loathing homophobes, hypocrites of every variety, in fact, it's hard to think of anyone who wasn't told to stick it where the sun doesn't shine at least once during this series. Except [[John Wayne]].
** And even the Duke spits some [[Self
* [[Tank Goodness]]: Subverted ''epically'' in the War In The Sun arc.
* [[Tell Me About My Father]]
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** {{spoiler|Jesse's conversation with Gunther/Siegfried is an allegory of a trial, with Jesse serving as prosecution and Gunther as defense. The key moral question is: if someone commits a horrible crime, can it be made up for by living a good life afterwards? Jesse's answer, "Some things can't ever be set right," shows that Ennis believes the answer to be "no". Gunther accepts the judgment and the death penalty.}}
* [[Token Motivational Nemesis]] - Grandma Marie L'Angelle. Also Jody, who claims to have been doing this intentionally ("Try'na toughen you up, boy").
* [[The Dog Bites Back]]: {{spoiler|Featherstone turns on Starr when she realizes how far gone he is. [[Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?|He just shoots her.]] This causes the same reaction from Hoover, with the same result.}}
* [[Throw the Dog A Bone]]: After being a [[Butt Monkey]] for most of the series, Arseface finds a place he can call home, a job, and a new love.
* [[To Hell and Back]]: The Saint's empowerment.
* [[Trampoline Tummy]]: Disgustingly subverted. The retarded kid who is the last surviving descendant of Jesus apparently amuses himself by taking flying leaps into the copious fat-rolls of the evil Cardinal who rules The Grail. Rather than bouncing hilariously off of it, however, it just makes the cardinal puke by the bucketload, which suits him fine since he's bulimic...
* [[Uh
* [[Undying Loyalty]]: The closest thing to a redeeming feature [[Complete Monster|Jody]] ever displays. He is genuinely upset that Miss Marie will die of old age soon and hates Jesse for giving her trouble.
* [[The Unintelligible]]: Arseface
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* [[War Is Hell]] / [[Armies Are Evil|Hate The War, Love The Soldier]]: Billy Baker, AKA "Space", a [[The Vietnam War|Vietnam Veteran]] who owes Jesse's father his life. He shows up in "Texas and the Spaceman" and "The Land of Bad Things" - both times he waxes poetic on the horrors of war and the humanity of solders. His closing words as he stands before the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_Veterans_Memorial Vietnam Veterans Memorial] simultaneously make you want to donate a million bucks to the [[Band of Brothers|VA]] and spit on every [[We Have Reserves|armchair general]] in existence.
{{quote| '''Billy Baker''': (addressing The Black Wall) ''[[Due to The Dead|So tell me somethin'. How come you shitheads never write?]]''}}
* [[Watering Down]]: Custer starts off his massive [["The Reason You Suck" Speech]] to the whole town by telling the bartender he can almost taste the beer through all the water.
* [[Weak but Skilled]]: Jesse is weak relative to Cassidy, but insanely skilled.
* [[We Have Reserves]]: How the Grail attempted to deal with the Saint.
* [["Well Done, Son" Guy]]: Subverted to hell and back with Jody's attempts to cast himself as this to Jesse. Even when he's a [[Vision Quest|hallucination]] he pulls this: "Git on about yore vision, boy"
* [[Wham Episode]]: ''War In The Sun.''
* [[What Happened to The Mouse?]]: It's never explained what happened to Genesis after it's forced out of Custer's mind at the end. Nor what happened to the Angel of Death, the Saint's predecessor.
* [[What Have I Become?]]: Cassidy's reaction to becoming a vampire is actually pretty upbeat.
** It's implied near the end that the Saint of Killers is disgusted, if not outright horrified, at the atrocities he has committed since becoming [[The Grim Reaper|who he is]].
* [[What the Hell, Hero?]]: Frequent. When Jesse rashly or irresponsibly uses the Word, it often comes back to bite him in the ass. A big part of his [[Character Development]] comes from realizing that he can't just throw his weight around whenever he wants to.
* [[Who Names Their Kid "Dude"?]]: "So I got kind of a question. 'Proinsias'?"
** Also, for that matter, ''Tulip''?
*** Although that much was explained in her backstory ... as, to some extent was Cassidy's name.
**** Tulip's father was in psychological shock from the death of his wife and the disappointment of his child not being a son. All he could think of for a name was that his wife liked "flower names". So he went with the first flower that he could think of, which happened to be "Tulip".
*** Kind-of-lampshaded for Jody, by Jody, while chatting up Tommi.
* [[Will They or Won't They?]]: Jesse and Cindy. The story dances around the possibility of their coupling for some time. Keep in mind that at this point Tulip thinks Jesse is dead and Jesse thinks she's moved on to a relationship with Cassidy and is not sure that dropping in on her life again is fair.
* [[Written Sound Effect]]: Mostly averted.
* [[Younger Than They Look]]: Eisenstein has "looked over a hundred" since he was 12.
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[[Category:Vertigo Comics]]
[[Category:Preacher]]
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