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Garth Ennis, Five books in the �Preacher� series

Started April 29 � Finished May 1, 2004; 1,212 pages. Posted 12 May 2003

Do you realize it�s now May 11, and I just opened my first book for the month? Do you? HUH?!? I had another bout of sickness (impeccably timed to coincide with my final project, natch), I�ve been spending all my free time making the final edits for my damn book (which still isn�t finished — tomorrow night, I swear ...), and I�ve been getting everything ready for my graduation. (And I still need to figure out how and where to have a party. Suggestions, anyone?)

Anyway, I knew the number of books I had read for the month of May was pathetic. I also knew that I had five of these books in the Preacher series, and I didn�t want to have to summarize the plot over and over again.

So let�s get this over with. A Texas preacher, an Irish vampire, and a blonde walk into a bar...

And that�s about it. Well, not really. Lots of stuff happens along the way, and it all involves a lot of gunplay, some sophomoric humor, and some general blasphemy. But essentially, the plot revolves around the setup of what sounds like a really lame joke. Some of it is really good, but a lot of it is not so good.

The not-so-good parts come about whenever Ennis tries to add some humor in what is a very serious and dark book. This is where it reaches the sophomoric level, involving lots of toilet humor, vomiting, and a guy who keeps getting various appendages cut off of him in his feeble attempts to rule the world.

Ennis seems to want to have a mix of dark humor and serious subject matter, but he�s simply not skilled enough to have it both ways, and his humorous passages usually grind the story to a halt.

And while I�m not going to profess to any jingoistic tendencies, I couldn�t help but notice how many of his characters are inbred idiots. It should be noted that Ennis is a English bloke, and he seems to think everybody in the United States has relatives that sleep with corpses (or animals) and that 95 percent of us are drooling hicks. I was very close to becoming seriously offended — after all, it�s the English that have the horrible teeth. And then I had my recent excursion to the Midtown Safeway.

One of my roommates recently bounced a rent check, and henceforth, all of us are required to pay in cash. I went to the Wells Fargo inside the supermarket to cash a check one recent Saturday afternoon, only to find the line stretched the entire length of the store. But I had to cash the check that day, so I staked out my place in line.

Three people ahead of me in the line, there was an unshaven man who was at least seven feet tall. He wore ill-fitting eyeglasses with lenses that would have made a coke bottle jealous. Every two minutes, he would reach to push them back onto the bridge of his nose. He had to do this, you see, because as he stood in line he slowly rocked back and forth from one foot to the other, his mouth wide open, tongue flashing about.

I watched as he did his mini-version of headbanging, his sweeps back and forth becoming more pronounced. Within five minutes, his gentle swaying became full-fledged rocking out, despite the fact that he wasn�t listening to music (unless you count the Captain and Tenille playing over the supermarket�s Muzak system). His head bobbed up and down violently as he rocked, until he seemed in danger of smashing his forehead on his kneecap. Finally, the little old lady standing behind him using a metal cane to support herself spoke up, saying, �Relax, honey.�

The man went back to a gentle sway.

Meanwhile, the woman turned to face me. �He'th juth nervouth,� she said, spitting her words through a very pronounced lisp. �Keeping him in one thpot makes him antthy. Don�t worry about him. Huh.� I nodded my head and looked out the side door as the rain fell. Meanwhile, the man was back to full-fledged headbanging.

Three fat Latino children gathered around the guy to watch him as he did sit-ups while standing up. The man didn�t notice. One of the kids put his finger up his own nose, keeping it there. Meanwhile, the man was swaying so violently that one foot would leave the ground as he rocked.

�Honey, juth relax.�

He went back into a gentle sway.

The woman turned to face me again. �Would you watch my thuff? Huh? I wanna thee if they have a baferoom.� She stumbled away on her cane before I could ask what I should do with her son, who had now turned to face the metal bar holding charcoal, his swaying again becoming more pronounced. With each step, his head came closer to the metal shelving.

The kid with the finger in his nose finally removed it, only to stick his hand down the back of his pants. I realized why he'd had his finger up his nose when a thick light-green trail of snot slowly descended to his upper lip. He didn�t seem to mind.

The woman slowly walked back to her spot in line, but failed to verbally stop the guy who was now a mere inch from smacking his head on the bar when he went into his downswing. Finally, another patron further up in the line called out to the man.

�Hey, buddy, you want to watch out or you're gonna hit your head on that bar,� he said.

The guy stopped swaying and noticed the bar. �Oh, wow,� he said, speaking for the first time. �I�m sure lucky I didn�t hit that! I could have hurt myself!�

�You sure could have,� the other guy said. �I feel for you man, I was diagnosed mentally ill as well, they got me on Ativan right now...�

�I�m taking Ativans as well!�

The two of them compared medications, both of them listing four or five different forms of drugs that they were on. The kid put his finger back into his nose while the other two children stared vacantly, breathing through their mouths, waiting for the headbanging show to start again. The woman once again turned to strike up a conversation with me.

�I wath on the buth yetherday, and thith lady asked me for 85 centh to take the buth. The buth doethen�t take 85 centh. I bet that lady wanted money to buy drugth, huh? Because people thill buy drugth, huh? I uthed to get drugth, but I don�t do drugth anymore. But if thith lady is gonna buy drugth, then why thould I pay for them? I�d rather buy drugth for mythelf! Huh? HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

The supermarket had turned into Safeway For The Damned.

Rocking man continued to readjust his glasses as he went back to headbanging, but failed to notice that his pants had begun to fall southward.

I watched as an egg-shaped woman hit her 11-year-old, 160-pound child over the head with a bundle of celery.

Fingerboy�s hand had once again retreated down the back of his pants.

A man who looked to be at least 700 years old would throw his iron walker violently out in front of him, then slowly drag his body toward the walker with his forearms, his lower torso limp.

The headbanger finally got his turn, and thanked the woman in front of me for her help, making me finally realize that they weren�t related.

I got my cash and sprinted out of the supermarket, nearly screaming as I narrowly avoided the guy in the Salvation Army uniform who had outstretched his arm to block my path.

Okay, Mr. Ennis, perhaps you have a point. But you git bastards still have bad teeth.


Rating: Worth working in a used bookstore and getting for cheap.

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