After The Sandman ended, DC's Vertigo line was without its biggest seller and a new book needed to step up to take its place. That book would prove to be Preacher, Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon's violent, sacrilegious, and irreverent tale of Jesse Custer, a Texas preacher who gains the greatest power in creation and aims to take God to task for the horrors of his creation.

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Preacher struck a chord with audiences. Melding the sacred and the profane, it was a modern cowboy story wrapped up in a tale about religion, love, friendship, and betrayal. Like any story, though, not everything about it holds up. What about Preacher has aged well? What hasn't?

10 Aged Well: The Art

Preacher-Grandma-Marie-L'Angell

Steve Dillon and Garth Ennis had worked together on Hellblazer and brought their sympatico working relationship to Preacher. Dillon's clean, simple line work was perfect for just about anything that Ennis threw into the book, be it the ultra-violence, the visual humor, or the sheer emotion of the scenes.

Dillon was a rare talent and his visuals will stay with readers long after they read Preacher. Ennis wrote Vertigo books about other Preacher characters with other artists but they never looked right unless Dillon was drawing them.

9 Didn't Age Well: Jesse's Attitude Towards Tulip Sometimes

The love story between Jesse Custer and Tulip O'Hare is one of the most touching and beautiful in comics. The things that they got through to be together and the power their love is amazing. It's not something one would expect from a Vertigo book like Preacher.

However, Jesse has a very old school, cowboy need to protect her even though Tulip can not only take care of herself but often saves him. Jesse himself knows that he's being irrational and sexist, but he still does it and for modern readers, it makes Jesse look like an idiot.

8 Aged Well: The Violence

Preacher is known for its hyper-violence and while most fans think they have an idea of how violent it is, they really don't. Not at all. However, at its best, violence is cathartic and powerful. It's also used effectively throughout for punchlines that have made the book a legend.

Preacher is not a book for the squeamish or the faint of heart but if one can stomach a lot of violence and the aftermath of said violence, then it can be a very entertaining book.

7 Didn't Age Well: It Feels Excessive Sometimes

'90s Vertigo books had pretty much no rules when it came to what could and couldn't be shown. Preacher uses this to its advantage a lot. It's a very violent, profane book with a lot of sex and nudity. While most of the time these things fit the story, there are times when it can definitely seem like a little much.

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It definitely feels at some points that Ennis was just throwing in as much sex, profanity, and violence as possible for shock value and that's never a good look. Preacher is a wonderfully entertaining book, but at times it will make even the most jaded reader think that last head being blown off was a bit much.

6 Aged Well: Arseface

Arseface

The story of Arseface runs throughout the book. He was a depressed teenager who tried to kill himself because Kurt Cobain did it. He failed and his face was left looking like an arse. While there are some jokes at his expense, for the most part, Ennis treats Arseface with more respect than one would think.

Life doesn't treat Arseface well and yet he never loses his optimism, optimism that he only found after he survived his suicide. He even gets one of the happiest endings in the book and it's just really nice and heartwarming.

5 Didn't Age Well: The Angels And Demons

Steve Dillon's art is easily some of the best art in any Vertigo ever but one place where it doesn't work very well is when the book deals with angels and demons. Dillon was great at doing over the top violence, emotional storytelling, and just about anything else the book needed but his angels and demons are very pedestrian.

The designs for them are very stereotypical and it's the only blemish on some pretty impeccable art. They don't look bad, there's just nothing very special about them and it's weird that a guy who cut his teeth on Hellblazer would design such run of the mill supernatural beings.

4 Aged Well: The Cassidy Twist

Cassidy rounds out the central cast and he's a very complicated character, one whose deficiencies are revealed as the book goes on. At first, the century-old Irish vampire feels like exactly the type of person that anyone would want as a friend, someone who is always there for their friends, and fun to be around.

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However, as time goes on, readers learn more and more about him and see the real person behind the shades and he's someone completely different than we imagined. Ennis deals out the revelations in spurts and it works wonderfully.

3 Didn't Age Well: Tortured Tulip

So, it's one thing for Jesse to be a sexist idiot and constantly try to keep Tulip out of the fight even though she's more dangerous than he is. However, Ennis uses doing bad things to Tulip as a source of drama way too much in the book. While all the characters get put through the wringer at one point or another, Tulip gets it the worst.

What makes it so egregious is that Tulip is easily one of the strongest characters in the book, but Ennis keeps playing into the women in refrigerators trope. It was disappointing back then and it's even worse now.

2 Aged Well: It's Still Thought Provoking

Preacher has a lot to say about religion and its role in people's lives. For a lot of readers in the '90s, it was their first exposure to the theory that Jesus survived his crucifixion and married Mary Magdalene. It was also a love letter to Americana and a meditation on the psyche of the weird place called America.

For a book that revels in violence, profanity, black humor, and sex, it's surprisingly thought-provoking and poignant. Preacher clothes itself in the horror concepts that Vertigo leaned into but became something very different as time went on.

1 Didn't Age Well: Lots Of Problematic Stuff

Most '90s Vertigo books were woke before it was a thing, full of positive representations of marginalized communities. Preacher isn't one of those books. There is a lot of problematic language in the book and some jokes about homosexuality that are extremely insensitive.

The book doesn't revel in it and it's not exactly homophobic, but it's definitely not kosher. The '90s were a different time and people could get away with saying some pretty repugnant things and Preacher has some very uncomfortable moments in it.

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