4 out of 5

Simpler times.  Back before Ennis’ agendas overwhelmed any given text – moments of Preacher included – and back before war flashbacks and gross-out antics were requisite expectations when Garth’s name bedecked something; True Faith might be a very obvious tale, lacking the character nuance of later projects or the steady, forward plotting of books like Crossed and Punisher, with an eye-rolling attempt at a twist and some amusingly snap-to-it personality flip-flops, but its pared down nature serves it well, and works especially well with Garth’s generally excellent ear for dialogue.  This gives the story a very organic flow that mostly blankets its flaws, and makes the final, bleak gut punch one of Garth’s best.  I’ve often said that the writer is at his peak when highlighting society’s dregs, and even on this earlier effort, it holds true.

Student Nigel makes the mistake of trying to chat up devout Christian Angela.  When he lets loose with his opinions about god and religion at a bar (let it suffice to say they are not in line with Angela’s), a man named Terry overhears and joins the fray.  Intrigued by this, Nigel follows the man and discovers that his rant is in support of quite the agenda… one involving Molotovs and guns.  And, caught in the spying act… Nigel is roped in to assist with that agenda under threat of harm to his family.

Ennis uses True Faith to sketch out the arguments he’d use in many books to come, regarding blind faith and the blurry lines drawn around relative morals, but moreso than much of that future work, TF is actually about character: about Nigel.  Nigel’s neither a prat or a nerd or anything else that allows for tropey characterization: he’s just a dude, with friends, with awful parents, with an obnoxious sister, and with teenage opinions.  And although TF is lacking a lot of truly logical justifications for its actions (why Terry decides to include Nigel in his acts; why Terry turned so suddenly to his path), again, its straightforwardness lets us look past a lot of that and just recognize ourselves in Nigel’s stuck position: a cog caught in the world’s curiously constructed machines.  Warren Pleece’s dark, water colored art captures this mindset perfectly, and brings the main characters to life as believable human beings.

There’s no subtext to this: the potshots that are taken at government and social constructs are all right on the surface, but perhaps due to True Faith’s originally serialized publication (in Warrior), Ennis doesn’t dawdle on this stuff.  Plot escalation requirements take things in a somewhat deflating direction, but the short length of the tale again works in its favor: we hit the conclusion before that deflating can drag on too much.  And that final section is quite a doozy – much bleaker than I think one would’ve imagined at the outset.

Garth’s later stuff, in snippets, offers some very dense, heady work.  But a lot of that, like Preacher, gets mixed in with excess that doesn’t reread well.  True Faith may be boiled down Ennis, but due to that, its one of his most timeless publications.