History ComicBook / Preacher

* ArtisticLicense - Medicine: When Tulip goes to a bar, she speaks to a barman who claims he was wrongfully chemically castrated (his name sounded similar to that of a pedophile). The thing is, he claims his testicles were rendered useless as if he was literally castrated. This does not work as one needs to be constantly chemically re-castrated in order for the effects to last. Given that this was written in the mid 90s, one could forgive Garth Ennis for not knowing this.

* ArtisticLicense-Medicine: When Tulip goes to a bar, she speaks to a barman who claims he was wrongfully chemically castrated (his name sounded similar to that of a pedophile). The thing is, he claims his testicles were rendered useless as if he was literally castrated. This does not work as one needs to be constantly chemically re-castrated in order for the effects to last. Given that this was written in the mid 90s, one could forgive Garth Ennis for not knowing this.

* NegatedMomentOfAwesome: Cassidy tries to attack the Saint of Killers by ramming him with a pickup truck. The Saint doesn't even flinch, the truck ''crumples'' like paper, Cass gets flung through the windshield, past Hugo Root, to land practically on his head next to Jesse. He clearly thought ''that'' plan through... (His repeated tendency to not plan ahead or thoroughly is main reason why he gets in so much trouble).

* TrampolineTummy: Disgustingly subverted. The handicapped kid who is the last surviving descendant of Jesus apparently amuses himself by taking flying leaps into the copious fat-rolls of the evil Cardinal who rules The Grail. Rather than bouncing hilariously off of it, however, it just makes the cardinal puke by the bucketload, which suits him fine since he's bulimic...

** One of the "sexual investigators" has a trophy for blowing the "entire English rugby team".

** The Texas Ranger Tom Pickett seems to resemble [[{{Alien}} Tom Skerritt]].

* DepravedHomosexual: ''All'' the queer characters in the series are more or less depraved.

* CombatPragmatist: Jesse loves his {{Groin Attack}}s.

* ComicBookFantasyCasting: The Saint looks identical to the late Lee Marvin.

* CowboyCop: Cal Hicks tries to be this, but he seems to embrace the stereotypes of PrivateDetective more. He has a fancy car (repossessed because he can't afford it on a police salary), hot girlfriend (leaving him, probably because he's a virgin with a ridiculously ludicrous idea of what sex is like), on suspension (you can only get away with this if you have a massively perfect arrest record and he doesn't), has a canine sidekick (Doofus, leaves after T.C. spends the night with the dog), and has a drinking problem (probably brought on by hard-drinkin' detectives on TV). Tries to fly a copter and crashes it. Tries to take charge and it's clear Jody has him outclassed. Talks tough and Jody feeds him to a gator. Really, one of the more inept wannabes.

*** Tom Pickett, the Texas Ranger Jesse and Tulip met when they were younger.

* DarkAndTroubledPast: A whole lot of people. But Jesse and his family gets a special mention.

* DirtyCommunists: Subverted. They're not longer Communists, but the Russians are still depicted as hard, crazy bastards anyway.
** Not to mention Jesse's father's famous "Fuck Communism" lighter.
* DisproportionateRetribution: Hoover, who is made by the Word of God to count sand. Even Jesse later admits that this crossed the line.

* EvenEvilHasStandards: Odin Quincannon: So monomaniacally racist, other KKK members think he's exaggerating.

* FunetikAksent: Arguably, anyone from 'the South' is depicted as having a stereotypical drawl to a lesser or greater extent, but particularly Arseface (Indecipherable) and the 'Sexual Investigators' [[OopNorth Bob Glover]].

* ExpositionOfImmortality: Cassidy. He's a vampire and was made one during the Easter Rising in Dublin 1916, which makes him 80+ during the series' run - though he brags that he's "as old as the century" in August '95. He tells Jesse all about how he was turned and how he came to America and all the friends he's left behind and lost to old age through the years during a long conversation on top of the Empire State Building. Turns out he [[UnreliableNarrator missed a few details]], though.
** The Saint Of Killers got a four-issue mini-series all of his own to tell us about his mortal life in the Civil War and the terrible winter of 1878. He dumps a silver dollar with just that date on the counter of a bar in ''Gone To Texas,'' too.

* ExpositionOfImmortality: Cassidy. He's a vampire and was made one during the Easter Rising in Dublin 1916, which makes him 80+ during the series' run. He tells Jesse all about how he was turned and how he came to America and all the friends he's left behind and lost to old age through the years during a long conversation on top of the Empire State Building. Turns out he [[UnreliableNarrator missed a few details]], though.

* HistoricalVillainUpdate: The series' portrayal of Patrick Pearse, the Irish revolutionary responsible for the 1916 Easter Rising, is unflattering, to say the least. Naturally, reader opinions will differ on how accurate this portrayal is. [[RuleOfCautiousEditingJudgement And that's all that needs to be said on the matter.]]

GarthEnnis' ''Preacher'' tells the story of Jesse Custer, a down-at-heel Texan preacher whose life is turned around when he is cursed with The Word of God, which compels people to do whatever he commands. After finding out that God has abdicated His throne, Jesse sets out on a quest to bring him to task, joined by Tulip, his ex-girlfriend-turned-hitman, and Cassidy, an Irish vampire.

* IAlwaysWantedToSayThat - Jesse quoting Theatre/KingLear in a thunderstorm.

Their quest takes them across the dark heart of America, from the streets of New York to the Louisiana swamps, and along the way they meet inbred hicks, serial killers, JohnWayne's ghost, The Saint of Killers, the retarded descendants of Jesus, an ancient religious conspiracy, a pair of perverted Sexual Investigators, Creator/BillHicks, the anti-Pope, fallen angels, voodoo children, psycho goths, the Ku Klux Klan and a kid with a face like an arse.

* CorruptHick: Odin Quincannon in "Salvation". Also known as the Meat King, he is a corrupt hick who operates an inhumane meat plant, orders the death of a local sheriff, is a card-carrying member of the Ku Klux Klan, tries to blow up a nearby village with napalm, employs a Hitler fetishist as his PA and repeatedly has sex with a giant female figure made out of sides of ham. Seriously. He was so corrupt his fellow Klansmen started wondering if he was taking the whole racism thing a bit too far.

* AuthorTract: There are too many times for it to be a coincidence that the plot stops dead in its tracks just so that various characters (Mostly Jesse and Cassidy) can give their opinion about a certain subject. One egregious example is when Jesse hears how Arseface was being sued by the parents of one of his fans because the fan tried to look like him and died by shooting themselves in the face multiple times. Jesse then goes on a tirade about media watchdogs and political correctness, and then for some reason the tirade switches from those subjects to being about people who wear body piercings. In fairness to this particular example, [[LampshadeHanging Jesse realizes what he was complaining about and says that]] [[YouNeedToGetLaid he needs to get laid.]]

* CowboyCop: Cal Hicks tries to be this, but he seems to embrace the stereotypes of PrivateDetective more. He has a fancy car (Repossessed because he can't afford it on a police salary), hot girlfriend (Leaving him, probably because he's a virgin with a ridiculously ludicrous idea of what sex is like), on suspension (You can only get away with this if you have a massively perfect arrest record and he doesn't), has a canine sidekick (Doofus, leaves after T.C. spends the night with the dog), and has a drinking problem (Probably brought on by hard-drinkin' detectives on TV). Tries to fly a copter and crashes it. Tries to take charge and it's clear Jody has him outclassed. Talks tough and Jody feeds him to a gator. Really, one of the more inept wannabes.

* ExpositionOfImmortality: Cassidy. He's a vampire and was made one during the Easter Rising in Dublin 1916, which makes him 80+ during the series' run. He tells Jesse all about how he was turned and how he came to America and all the friends he's left behind and lost to old age through the years during a long conversation on top of the Empire State Building. [[UnreliableNarrator Turns out he missed a few details, though.]]

* ActionGirl - Tulip, although it's clear that Jesse would [[InHarmsWay rather she wasn't]].

* HollywoodMasochism: If the authors know anything about actual BDSM and fetichism, then they chose to hide it really well for the same of RuleOfFunny or whatever. ''Or'' it might just be that every single sadomasochist in the comic also just ''happens'' to be psychotic or similar.
* TakeThat - One long trainride of it against Christianity.

** There are more than a few shots taken at the music industry, media commentators, media watchdogs, political correctness, psychiatrists and psychology buzzwords, liberal and conservative extremists, Goths, Anne Rice, racists, child molesters, self-loathing homophobes, hypocrites of every variety, in fact, it's hard to think of anyone who wasn't told to stick it where the sun doesn't shine at least once during this series. Except JohnWayne.

* TokenMotivationalNemesis - Grandma Marie L'Angelle. Also Jody, who claims to have been doing this intentionally ("Try'na toughen you up, boy").

** Jesse tells his grandmother that her description of Jesus as being everywhere and always watching doesn't sound nice so much as scary. She responds by nailing him into a weighted box and dropping him in the river for a week with just an air hose to keep him from suffocating.