"Blood & Whiskey" has a script by Garth Ennis (obviously) and illustrations of Steve Dillon. This episode is packed with everything you love in Preacher. The reader follows Cassidy at its first meeting (and perhaps the only) with another vampire in San Francisco. Garth Ennis has chosen to give this vampire, a personality modeled on that of Lestat (The Vampire Lestat) Ann Rice. The gap between Cassidy and gothic junk is to be enjoyed without moderation. This episode involves violence, black humor and manly camaraderie in a story that advances the overall story.
And then the story is resumed in the present time: the 3 main characters find themselves in New York City. Tulip plays with handcuffs and with Jesse Custer. Cassidy plays with Tulip and with his old acquaintances. On the advice of Cassidy, the trio decided to go to New Orleans to meet a voodoo priest could help to hack Custer memories of Genesis (the entity that has taken up residence in his psyche). No luck, during his previous visit to this city, Cassidy has not only friends. Meanwhile, Herr Starr summarizes the events of Volume 3 to Mrs. Featherstone and tries to camouflage the scar that has left him Jesse Custer.
Garth Ennis has many things to say and to explain these episodes and consequently the action decreases in intensity over the first 3 volumes. Ennis directs his script to the deepening of relations between the three main characters: Jesse Custer, Tulip O'Hare and Proinsias Cassidy. Tulip proves that it is capable of defending herself. The foundations of friendship between Custer and Cassidy are developed and analyzed. And Cassidy approaches Tulip taking first degree Custer promise to love until the end of time. These individuals are gaining psychological depth and emotional intensity: the reader rediscovers and questions the underlying motives of each other. Ennis reveals unexpected emotional aspects. He even dares to question the nature and basis of the friendship between Jesse and Cassidy. Similarly, he gently hit the machismo and virility of the 2 buddies with feminist assertiveness Tulip. But all this frankly to the detriment of the action.
And these scenes stand out especially since Steve Dillon is not the most talented designer to make visually interesting scenes of dialogues. On the one hand there is still light in the decorations that degrade from box to box to reach the level of 2 or 3 lines, then to completely disappear during 1 or 2 pages. Fortunately he always knows both draw faces with subtle facial expressions. It inserts some successful visual gags. The pathological liar and gothic vampire looks like a cross between Morpheus and Neil Gaiman. Death is not far behind but she undergoes a physical transformation that makes it even less credible. And paying attention to secondary characters, the reader sees passing the mantle Shade (straight out of Shade, the Changing Man. The American Scream v 1). The horrific elements always present as effectively, whether the face of Arseface, mutilation suffered by Cassidy or body parts ordnance by shots fired by Tulip.
Obviously, this tome is indispensable in Series 9 that make up the entire series Preacher. It is clear that this volume is a lower level of quality to others because its creators have not been able to manage the mass of information and psychological profiles in a manner adapted to comics. Still, the result is read with pleasure and the reader will appreciate taking risks Ennis and Dillon who are not content to be reused the same sequences as in previous volumes. They take their history into a clear direction and they deepen the psychology of their characters to make them more credible to us. Clearly, Jesse, Tulip and Cassidy are not heroes, but the main characters. And suddenly, the reader more easily share their views and includes their relationship can only escalate. All is not what it seems and the result is explosive in Preacher: War in the Sun.
