Themes and Influences
Preacher draws on movies, particularly Westerns, for many of its stylistic elements. For example: an apparition of John Wayne is a recurring character and serves as a sort of spiritual guide or conscience for Custer; Monument Valley and The Alamo serve as backdrops to various legs of the journey; for a time, Jesse acts as the sheriff of a small town in Texas, and must protect the inhabitants from harm; the image of the Saint of Killers, a reformed bounty hunter-turned-killer-once-more in the tradition of Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven character, William Munny, is a nod to the classic Western notion of nemesis, straight and true and terrible.
The series also invokes ideas popularized by such books as Holy Blood, Holy Grail. As Massimo Introvigne of the Center for Studies on New Religion explains, Preacher was "among the popular comic book series which...focused interest on the subject." Within Preacher the claims that there is a still-viable bloodline descending from Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene similar to those in Holy Blood, Holy Grail are taken as true. Herr Starr reveals to Cassidy that Jesus had children, and did not die on the cross, but instead lived to middle-age, and was killed by a runaway offal cart. After his death the Grail guardians took away his offspring, who were forced to intermarry with one another in order to keep Jesus' divine power within the bloodline. For over 2000 years this intermarrying perpetuated an incestuous family tree culminating the last of the Jesus line, a mentally handicapped child, in whom the Grail guardians place their hopes.
The original plot and premise of Preacher was spun out of Ennis' run on Hellblazer, which postulated what would happen if an angel and a demon mated, and the spirit of their offspring ended up in a mortal man. Like many comics spun out of DC's 90's work, it incorporates the idea of the Christian God (Jahve) as the main antagonist of the series, serving as the creator who has left his creation. Other related comics include Swamp Thing and Sandman (and its spinoffs, like Lucifer).
Read more about this topic: Preacher (comics)
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