Preacher: Dead or Alive - The Collected Covers

by Glenn Fabry and Garth Ennis

Book Overview

Since its debut in August 1995, one of the hallmarks of Vertigo's phenomenally successful series Preacher has been its covers, painted by the acclaimed artist Glenn Fabry. Now the series' entire run of sixty-six covers is collected in a handsome new hardcover collection, along with Fabry's covers for all the Preacher-related specials and collected editions, sketches and commentary by Fabry and Preacher writer/co-creator Garth Ennis, plus an introduction...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1563896877
• ISBN13: 9781563896873
• Release Date: November 2000
• Publisher: Vertigo
• Length: 190 Pages
• Weight: 1.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.3" x 9.8"

Customer Reviews

Beautiful and unmarred

I purchased this volume because it reprints Glenn Fabry's beautifully painted covers without any other details such as the name of the book, number, or upc marking them up. It's just the paintings, and they are a wonder to behold. Fabry's art is so fabulous, so realistic, so wonderful. It also was supposed to contain details and comments by both Glenn Fabry himself, and the ever expressive Garth Ennis. However, I was slightly disappointed that both of them kept their comments so brief. Only a few of the covers have comments that actually shed any light on the series, other comments were `turn the page' or `I have nothing to say'. Also, this is just the covers. It contains no Preacher story material. So it's great if you're a fan of Fabry's, but if you're looking for something to read, or something that will give you great insight into the Preacher series, you might want to look elsewhere.

"A hell of a vision"

In my crowded apartment, there's very few comic books in my collection that don't get put away in a comic longbox. Only a handful of titles make the cut to be displayed on my bookshelf: Neil Gaiman's "Sandman," James Robinson's "Starman," Jeff Smith's "Bone," and Garth Ennis's "Preacher": all of these I keep out to take down and read again and again.Too often these days a comic book series is plagued by shifting writers, interior artists, and cover artists; it's a rare case when a unifying vision keeps a top team together for a full run on a series. It's even more rare when the team (writer Ennis, interior artists Steve Dillon, and cover artist Glenn Fabry) produce one of the more controversial, black-humored, anarchic, and *human* comic books in the past ten years. It's Ennis's writing that kept me coming back month after month, but it was the vibrant, vaguely unsettling Fabry portrait of Jesse Custer on the first issue that got me to pick the series up in the first place (well, that and my friend J.C. telling me I'd be a wanker if I passed on this series).This gorgeous color collection of the original painted covers to the recently-concluded "Preacher" series is a great overview of how, month after month, Fabry's powerful art unified the series and made it one of the most distinctive and outrageous on the comic book stands. Plenty of original sketches show how covers evolved, and the covers themselves are reproduced without logos or sales information to give you the full effect of the art. Ennis and Fabry comment on (and critique) each cover. My only complaint is that the commentary is sometimes somewhat skimpy commentary.A fair warning: like the series itself, this collection is not for everyone. Black-humored, blasphemous, sometimes physically grotesque but always powerful, these images have the power to offend...well, just about everybody. It helps to be a Preacher fan and understand these images in context, and to come to this collection with an open mind and a sense of humor.For a "Preacher' fan this is a necessity; I'd even recommend it to graphics people or budding artists as a great overview of design and anatomy that straddles the grotesque and the fantastic. You'll proudly display it on your bookshelf next to your paperback bound volumes of the Preacher comic. (Now, DC, now about issuing the comic volumes themselves in hardcover much like the Gaiman "Sandman" volumes?)

Great book, but where's the REAL #52?!

From the cover- "The rejects and the ones that made the final cut."If that is the case, where's the infamous #52 cover I ask you, if there are rejected covers?!But apart from that slight problem, this is a good book. I've been a fan of Glenn's artwork for a long time, and have got into PREACHER through the trade paperbacks, so there were two reasons for me to get this.The final version artwork- free of text, Vertigo logo, etc., is cool. I have covers like that in the trade paperback, but gathered altogether in one book is different...I like the sketches a lot. It makes you see where the idea(s) came from, and what could have been.One nit-pick that I do have, is with the commentary. This, I was looking forward to A LOT, and to me, I found that there just was too littleAll in all though, a great book if you overlook the #52 issue. No Preacher fan's collection would be complete without it.