So here we go!

Through the Nineties – the three part creative team of Garth Ennis (words), Steve Dillon (internal art) and Glen Fabry (cover art) created Preacher – the tale of a Texas Priest with the same initials as Jesus merged with an entity that was one part demon and one part angel embarking on a mission to find and kill God. Why? Because in the world of Preacher – it seems a lot like God is just an SOB who abandoned his creation.

The book was spectacular because it had it all - a character driven supernatural-western-thriller full of emotion, laughs and energy.

The Characters – even the small characters – were well written and never dull. Everyone had a story to tell – from Tulip the gun-toting feminist ex-girlfriend, to Cassidy – the Irish Vampire Bastard best-friend, to the sorry bartender who appears in one issue long enough to tell the tale of how he'd been chemically castrated by accident.

The book could make you laugh until you cried, but there was a deliberate and perfect balance between the hilarious and the tragically serious – between the filthy and the romantic – or the silly and the smart. You found yourself so caught up in the world of Preacher that you couldn't stop reading – even though there are only nine books and you don't want it to end.

And when it's over, you were so f'n satisfying that you knew that can't end there.

So where do you go once it's done? Personally I tried Ennis's run on Hellblazer. I was working my way through the series anyway- and it was good. It hit on many similar themes to Preacher – even an entity born of a demon and an angel – and in parts it even had exactly the same creative team. I recommend it, but it seemed to me that Garth aimed for something more tragic and serious in his early Hellblazer run than he had in Preacher, so tonallyi t's just different; and though I hate to sound disrespectful of a writer (hell, a whole team) that I admire, it wasn't as good. Still good, but Ennis has done better.

Now I will say - I preferred Ennis's second run on Hellblazer – collected in the trade paperback Son of Man. This time, Ennis just played it for sick laughs, and I laughed all the way through. In terms of humor, it was close to Preacher, but once again, Preacher just had that little bit more depth. I felt similarly about his Authority books for Wildstorm. Sick humor (in a good way), fun characters – a good laugh.

Insofar as Ennis's work goes, I've settled on the conclusion that he's never matched Preacher. I'm not saying that's a bad thing – Preacher was phenomenal and if you're going to peak somewhere, there's nowhere better to peak than with one of the best series to ever hit the racks.

No, he never matched it - but I found the closest thing to it in the place I least expected to find it – Marvel Knights Punisher.

I'd avoided Punisher for a long time – in spite of Ennis's long run on the character - because in the past I've found him to be a character that only sometimes works. Other writers have tried everything to make him more interesting over the years, from making him into a mob boss (what?), to turning him into some kind of gun-toting bible-zombie (don't ask), to most recently having him don a bizarre jumpsuit and start calling himself Captain America (…).

In fact, prior to last week – though I've seen the Punisher tear his way across numerous Marvel titles with occasionally pleasing results – I had only ever picked up one actual issue of the Punisher that I'd been thrilled with – a first issue I picked up eight years ago… although for some reason I never continued to read the series.

Little did I know at the time that the writer and artist would end up being two of my favorites – because the issue in question was issue #1 of Ennis and Dillon's Marvel Knights run.

Now technically, Marvel Knights isn't an adult imprint, so when I started to read it again I was expecting toned down Ennis writing. What I got was anything but. The characters can't swear, but whenever a hardened gangster says "motherlovin'", you know just what he really means. Otherwise? Same ol' sadistic Ennis. Body parts go missing, blood goes flying, people get eaten… it's a free-for-all and anything goes.

Sure, certain elements are recycled from Preacher – such as a new comic-relief in the form of Detective Soap, the 'unluckiest cop in the world' (where alternatively, in Preacher, we saw the likewise incredibly unlucky Detective Tool) and en elderly female villain (like Jesse's Grandmother) who shares Herr Starr's tendency to incur drastic physical injuries. Though I was unsure about these similarities to begin with, after a little while I realised that it didn't matter. Sure, the themes are similar but they're executed in fresh and exciting ways; besides, right from the get-go, it appears that Ennis intended this book to be nothing other than an entertaining read.

This wasn't a book about the Punisher's character development, or attempt to become a better man – in fact, it was anything but. He's as unchanging as a rock throughout the arc – and that's what the Punisher is really about. This is why all the gimmicks they throw at him don't stick – because being anything but the Punisher goes fundamentally against the character's core – and fans will reject this. As Ennis writes, the Punisher 'sees the world in very black and white terms: solving his problems with utter finality. This is Ennis's formula for writing him and never waivers on this.

So unlike Preacher, the main character in Ennis's Punisher is not a beacon of moral stability. He's a tough soldier who insanely follows his homemade rules of conduct. You can't really condone what he does – but for as long as you're reading it, it's fun to pretend that it's okay.

Like Preacher, however – Marvel Knights Punisher has a diverse line-up of characters, from the sad, to the funny, to the heroic, to the pathetic – and it's really these characters who wander in and out of the Punisher's world that make the book worth reading. I'm a huge fan of the unlucky, perpetually self-deprecating loser Detective Soap – more unlucky than Oedipus – and infinitely funnier… Then there's Joan the Mouse, a small, nervous woman who lives in the Punisher's building – she's just a sad little woman living an unhappy little life and you find yourself hoping the best for her… Ma Gnucci – probably the world's unluckiest crime-boss – though definitely one of the hardest to kill… Sid, the gangster whose only real passion involves scuba diving around Brooklyn in a hunt for the elusive Giant Squid – and many, many more.

As if to affirm that it's an in-continuity book, there are various guest appearances of characters like Daredevil, Wolverine, Spider-Man and Elektra (there's at least one more, but I don't want to give away the surprise) – and generally, as if to still distance the book from other Marvel comics, something terrible tends to happen to these guest stars whenever they arrive on the scene.

As for the book's art, Dillon may not be all about style or flair – but he captures the subtle nuances of emotion in Garth's witty writing. It's shown in the faces of his characters – a Dillon specialty. I can't flick through an issue of Punisher drawn by Steve Dillon and not know when a character is saying something stupid before I even read what's in the speech-bubble. In fact, if I have to read page after page of characters just sitting around and talking- tested in one or two issues of both Punisher and Preacher with successful results- there's no better artist for the job than Dillon. If the goal of creating comics is about obtaining the perfect marriage between words and pictures Ennis and Dillon have nailed it.

Unfortunately, though he pencilled most of it - Dillon was on and off the book at certain times and instead there were various competent stand-ins to replace him (for instance, Transmetropolitan and Boys artist Darick Robertson).

The thing that struck me within the first few issues was that there had been this hilarious Marvel book on the racks for all those years without me hearing much about it. Occasionally a book like Ultimate Spider-Man or Astonishing X-Men will throw a funny line or issue at you – and I discovered Warren Ellis's Nextwave when everybody else did – but when it comes to comics it's still often rare to find a book that doesn't take itself very seriously.

Okay, so maybe it's not as good as Preacher – but honestly – it nicely fills the void left by Preacher better than anything else I've tried and I highly recommend it.

If you were wondering where you can find the Marvel Knights Ennis run, probably the easiest way to get all of it is to purchase the Marvel Omnibus (which is how I read it - birthday present) - but it's also available broken down in multiple trade paperback format.

Fans of Preacher who are feeling lost might also want to consider the following titles; Transmetropolitan, The Boys, Hellblazer: Son of Man, The Filth, Y: The Last Man and Wanted.

BTW- Haunted Tank also just revamped under the Vertigo imprint and I must say: it's very good.

Friday, December 31, 2008

Welcome To Shibuya-Cho