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Preacher: The Alamo (#59-65) "And so the great affair is over There has been this sense, throughout the run of Preacher, that many of the characters, including Jesse Custer himself, were on the road in search of some kind of redemption -- in the case of Jesse, that revolved, to some extent, around tracking down God, who had gone AWOL, and getting some questions answered (and convincing God to go with the responsibility thing, too, maybe.) Along the way we got to find out about Jesse, his soul-mate Tulip, Irish vampire Cassidy, the world that Jesse hailed from, and the world he became embroiled in. In the seven-part "The Alamo", all of this was to be brought to a head and the story resolved once and for all. Except ... that isn't the way it worked out. Sure, Arseface got his story resolved (and happily, even) and Cassidy came to an end that was thuddingly predictable. However, unless Ennis has something spectacular in mind for the actual final issue, this series is likely to go out leaving a bit of a sour taste in the mouths of readers, especially considering the apparent final fate of Jesse, the "what the hell?!" moment with Genesis, and the general head-bashing, gut-shooting approach to storytelling. While #64 demonstrated beyond argument that Ennis knows how to tell a story and work character, #65 more readily demonstrates Raymond Chandler's adage that "whenever one gets stuck, throw a body through the skylight." I admit that I was hoping for more from this final arc, but instead feel as though Ennis spent a lot of time building up to nothing more than a predictable anticlimax that leaves just about everybody dead, and some of the main story points utterly unanswered. Unfortunately, it does nothing at all to dispel the feeling that Ennis has been vamping 'til ready since the "Salvation" arc -- and somehow never managed to be quite ready. ©2000 by Steven E. McDonald |
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