3 out of 5

Well, here we is: the maybe sorta kinda infamous Salvation arc, i.e. the Am-I-Still-Reading-Preacher?  How fitting that this story was a primary source for the questionable TV adaptation.

Flash-forward: Jesse, eye-patched, alone on dock save a new doggy pal, ready to continue his journey.  Flash-back: Jesse, eye-patched, pulls into the town of Salvation.  And for several issues, Ennis does a Walking Tall riff, swishing around all those Texas-man’s-man chew-the-cud Americana ideals he loves, then bookends with another Vietnam flashback, just to make sure we stay far off topic for as long as possible.

We do not see Tulip, or the Grail, or Cassidy, or nary more than one or two uses of The Word.  In part because Jesse has a blackhole in his memory regarding how he lost that eye, and what happened when he was chucked out of a plane, in part because this is the “figuring things out” section of the story, where the lead goes back to square one to learn whatever her needs to learn to continue on.  And it’s not a bad tale, really, as it’s got all the requisite Ennis stuff of gross outs and corporate fatcats and lovable losers, and it is part of the hero’s journey, its just amazing how far off the path Garth feels he has to go as part of that journey.  And because of that, some large plot points are incredibly undermined: whom he meets in the town of Salvation; what happend in the dessert.  These should be huge!  …But instead, we’re distracted by ol’ Sheriff Custer’s need to lay down the law for a bit.  And here’s his dog, woof woof!

It’s a quick read as a trade, and no dip in quality from Steve and Pamela on art – or even, as mentioned, in the page-to-page quality of Garth’s writing, forever excelling at mini speeches juxtaposing the highs and lows of humanity – but I’ll never understand this arc beyond its function as, essentially, padding; every character and interaction in it is separable from the overall Preacher plotline, and it would have killed me waiting for this to end on a monthly schedule.