Jesse Custer was a down-and-out preacher struggling to spread the good word in Annville, Texas when a catastrophic supernatural incident flattened his church, killed his entire congregation and left Custer himself possessed by an ambiguously demonic creature known as Genesis. As the product of an unnatural and unauthorised relationship between an angel and a demon, Genesis is effectively an infant being comprised of both good and evil and so has the potential to be even more powerful than God. As a result of his bonding with Genesis, Jesse Custer therefore finds himself being arguably the most powerful living creature in the whole of existence. Despite having questioned his faith, Custer is a man with a strong moral sense of right and wrong and so, bolstered by his newfound powers and ability to command the obedience of those who hear his words, embarks on a journey across America in search of a fugitive God in order to make him answer for the sufferings of His creation. Custer is aided on this mission of truly Biblical proportions by his old girlfriend Tulip O’Hare and his most loyal friend, a hard drinking Irish vampire named Cassidy.

Preacher Bk. 2 collects issues 13 – 26 of Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon’s award-winning Vertigo series and features a new introduction by original Preacher editor Steve Moore.

The first story arc contained in Preacher Bk. 2 is “Hunters” and is made up of issues 13 – 17 of the Preacher comic series. Jesse Custer and Tulip O’Hare travel to San Francisco where they catch up with Cassidy. Cassidy is drowning his grief over the death of his ex-girlfriend in pint after pint until, seemingly inevitably, he and Custer get involved in a bar room brawl. Fleeing the scene, Custer and Cassidy hide out at the apartment that used to belong to Cassidy’s ex-girlfriend and discover that the lady had been involved in some major drug dealing. Angry that the drugs she was hiding may have played a part in her death, Cassidy determines to track down the people that she was working for and make them pay. Custer goes along for the ride. There is a hell of a lot going on in San Francisco that particular evening and Custer and Cassidy soon become entangled with a pair of sexual investigators, an orgy loving aesthete named Jesus de Sade [you really don’t want to be an armadillo in his presence] and a shady organisation known as the Grail. The Grail, represented in America by one-eyed German megalomaniac Herr Starr, is an immensely powerful religious organisation that wants to use Custer’s new powers to bring about the apocalypse.

Issues 18 – 26 of Preacher combine to form “Proud Americans”. Here Custer and Tulip travel to France to infiltrate the Grail’s heavily-guarded headquarters and rescue Cassidy. Masquerading as Custer, Cassidy was captured by Herr Starr and, his vampiric nature having became apparent, is being sadistically tortured by a Grail solider by the name of Frankie the Eunuch. Unfortunately, Custer isn’t the only one hoping to crash the Grail’s party: the Saint of Killers is also in the neighbourhood and a bloodbath quickly ensues. Back in America, Cassidy tells Custer his life story: from his fighting for Irish independence to his encounter with the bog hag who turned him into a vampire to his lengthy love affair with New York City.

The Preacher series itself is a wonderful example of just how good comics can be, combining as it does epic storytelling and emotive visuals, while Preacher Bk. 2 is a fantastically produced hardback graphic novel collecting two of the series’ most compelling story arcs. With Preacher Garth Ennis has crafted a deliciously outrageous story that may well be brimming with violence and decidedly sacrilegious themes but which still has some serious heart and superb humour. While it must be acknowledged that Preacher is not a series for younger readers [let me be blunt, there’s rather a lot of bonking], it is a must for all serious comic aficionados and tfor hose who enjoy crazy, cultish literary escapades. Preacher Bk. 2 contains excellent reproductions of all of Steve Dillon’s original cover art for the collected issues while the comic panels themselves are expertly rendered. Dillon’s realistic drawing and colouring approach emphasises the strong emotions of the principle characters and adds disturbing clarity to the extreme violence that they frequently become involved in. Right up there with Watchmen, Sandman and Hellblazer, Preacher is an amazing comic series and Preacher Bk. 2 is a great volume that collects two engrossing story arcs.

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