One of the most interesting things about the long and accomplished career of Garth Ennis as a comic strip writer is how much he openly carries his influences on his sleeves. For example, he is one of the best writers of military comics in the history of the medium, and that came directly from the stories that he read as a child. He recalled in a recent interview“There is no doubt that reading war stories at such an early age – as well as things like CommandoTHE Image libraries And see various films – gave me an interest in military history, which I finally translated as the writing of my own war comics. “”
Likewise, his love for Western films also had an influence on his comic strips, in particular his emblematic series, Preacher, which he wrote with artist Steve Dillon from 1995 to 2000 (the series won the Eisner Prize for the best continuous series in 1999). However, the influence of classic Western films has gone beyond an influence on Preacher, whennis has actually added one of the most famous Western cinema stars of all time, John Wayne, who played in eleven classic films with perfect rotten tomato scores, in the pages of pages of Preacher As a support character in the series!
Related
What was the preacher?
Preacher Played Jesse Custer (a classic Western name if you have already heard one), a preacher from Texas in a small town who found himself merged with Genesis, the mysterious offspring of the prohibited romance of an angel of the sky and a demon of hell. It gave Jesse the “Word of God”, an ability that may make him as strong as God Himself. Jesse discovers that God abandoned his throne after the birth of Genesis, and now Jesse wants to go find him.
Over the series, we learn that Jesse had a heartbreaking life to the point where he became a preacher. Her grandmother was a diabolical and controlling woman. Jesse’s mother fled from her house and met Jesse’s father, John Custer, a Vietnam veteran who married her. He maintained the bar and they raised Jesse together. When Jesse was a boy, however, his grandmother’s henchmen, Jody and TC, tracked them, killing Jesse’s parents. His grandmother decided to raise him as his, forcing him to become minister.
He was terribly mistreated throughout his childhood. He finally escaped as a young man and met Tulip O’Hare, the love of his life. Finally, however, Jody and TC found him, and he agreed to suddenly leave Tulip, otherwise she would be murdered. He then agreed to become a minister. Later, when he won the powers of Genesis, he found Tulip. He told her his past, but he omitted much of his life. He omitted John Wayne!
Related
How the preacher was the pioneer of toxic masculinity resistance in the comics
Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon created a preacher as a twisted Western Macho. Despite his problems, the suppression of toxic masculinity was his heart.
How did John Wayne appear in the series?
In a mysterious scene at the end of the number 1, when Jesse found Tulip (as well as a new friend, the Irish vampire known as Cassidy), someone mysteriously calls him Pilgrim and notes that Jesse did not speak to anyone.
After Jesse spoke to Tulip her terrible life, she wonders how he was able to make his way through torture. Well, what he didn’t tell him is that he did the help of John Wayne, who visited him throughout his life, serving as Hobbes to Calvin de Jesse.
In Preacher # 11, we revisit the story that Jesse told Tulip (including a horrible torture where he was kept in a coffin at the bottom of a lake), but now see that John Wayne was there …
We had seen that John Custer had taken Jesse to see many films by John Wayne Grandir, and John Custer had even met Wayne during his stay in Vietnam (Wayne gave him a cigarette lighter who said “kissing communism”). So Wayne has become the symbol of Jesse of his father’s wisdom and love (technically, the series never explicitly declares that, and as it is a supernatural world, it is at least theoretically possible that “John Wayne” is a kind of mind. But go, it is obviously his imagination).
When Jesse was finally “broken” and became a preacher as his grandmother wanted, John Wayne called him a homophobic insult (demonstrating the self-hatred that Jesse was overwhelmed at the moment), and disappears from her life, reappearing only when Jesse received the power of Genesis, and broke out of her grandmother.
John Wayne is obviously not happy that Jesse did not speak to anyone about him, and also to have been such weak (again, remember, it’s just Jesse’s vision of himself through Wayne’s words) …
But it still serves as a Jesse guide and a harmony table for the rest of the series.
In particular, however, the fact that Wayne is the perfect image of the Western hero in Jesse, also means that he represents toxic masculinity (hence the homophobic insult earlier). And at the end of the series, Jesse matured beyond this way of thinking, and therefore, before what he thinks will be the final battle of his life, he speaks to John Wayne one last time before never talking to himself again.
Their last moments present together John Wayne evoking the lesson that John Custer taught to his child’s son,
“Do not remove the foolishness fools. And you judge a person by what is them, not what they look like. And you do the right thing. You have to be one of the good guys, son. Because there is too much trouble.”
Jesse was certainly up to this lesson. Assaissily, however, Jesse then climbed the sunset at Monument Valley at the end of the series, the same part of the country which appeared in so many John Ford Westerns with John Wayne.
Just epic.