Abbatoir
May 22, 2005, 09:35 am
<img src="http://x-mencomics.com/xfan/images/columns/top70dccharacters/37.jpg" align=left alt="Jesse Custer">Real Name: Jesse Custer
First Appearance: Preacher #1
Known Relatives: John Custer (father, deceased), Christina L’Angelle-Custer (mother), Marie L’Angelle (grandmother, deceased), Allfather D’Aronique (cousin, deceased)
Known Allies: Tulip O’Hare, Cassidy, Arseface, Saint of Killers, Duke, Cindy Daggett, Skeeter, Johnny Lee Wombat, John Wayne
Major Enemies: Formerly Saint of Killers, Hugo Root, Si Coltrane, Jody, T.C., Marie L’Angelle, Allfather D’Aronique, Odin Quincannon, Herr Starr.
Eyes: Brown
Hair: Black
Jesse Custer’s parents met in Austin, Texas. His father was back from Vietnam and his mother was on the run from her captors in Angelville. They met at a bus station where she spat in his face after being goaded by peaceniks. She immediately apologised and they immediately became lovers. A year and a half later, Christina gave birth to Jesse, who grew up worshipping John Wayne.
A couple years later, Christina’s family finally tracked her down. Her mother’s henchmen tried to kill John but when they realised he and Christina had a son, they took them back to Angelville where they were forced to marry and were kept prisoner and not allowed to leave. A few years later, John decided to escape with his family. It was then that he told Jesse the words that he would live by. “You don’t take no **** off fools, and you judge a person by what’s in them, not how they look. And you do the right thing. You gotta be one of the good guys, son ‘cause there’s way too many of the bad.” Jody and T.C. caught them almost instantly. They were taken to a cornfield and John was shot in the head in front of his wife and son. Jesse cried his eyes out and Jody called him a crybaby. This scarred him for life and he never cried again no matter the tragedy.
Jesse spent the next twelve years training to be a preacher, with his vile grandmother Marie controlling his every move. He had to learn a page of the Bible every day and was educated in other subjects by his mother. His only friends were a dog called Duke and his friend Billy-Bob, a young Cyclops whose physiognomy had been warped by decades of inbreeding. When Duke humped Jody’s leg, his head was nailed to a fence post. Jesse was eleven and was so horrified he called Jody a ****er. Miss Marie heard him and decreed that for using such language, he would be put into the Coffin. Christine tried to stop her and Miss Marie ordered Jody to take her away and kill her. After being told that it was his fault that his mother was to be killed, Jesse was put in the Coffin and was lowered under the swamp were Jesse spent a week starving in the dark. When he was in the Coffin, Jesse was first visited by his conscience, the ghost of John Wayne.
Several years later, Billy-Bob was preparing to marry his sister and asked Jesse to be his best man. Billy-Bob was told to sleep in the barn by Miss Marie but was woken up by T.C. who was raping a chicken. He tried to hide but T.C. found him, thought he was spying on him and cut his throat. When Jesse found out, he beat T.C. viciously before Jody broke his arm. Because he called T.C. a ****sucker, he spent two weeks in the Coffin with Billy-Bob on top as a weight. When he was released, he escaped and vowed never to go back.
He spent most of his time partying and met Tulip O’Hare, who would become the love of his life. They were together for a year and a half, making money by stealing cars. Eventually, Jesse decided to go to San Francisco where he was going to ask Tulip to marry him. Then Jody and T.C. tracked him down and took him back to Angelville. He was beaten to a pulp and put in the Coffin for a month. Miss Marie pulled some strings and had him placed as a Minister in the town of Annville. He spent five years there, most of that time was spent drinking himself into oblivion. He was broken and had given up.
Eventually Jesse just lost his patience with the town, went into a bar and started shouting all their Confessions. The next day the entire town went to his service to see if he would lose his mind again. At this point, Genesis escaped from Heaven, bonded with Jesse and incinerated the entire congregation. While this was happening, Tulip was trying to make ends meet as an assassin but had botched her first hit. She ended up hitch hiking with an Irish punk named Cassidy. They went to see what had happened to the burning Church and Jesse was reunited with his love after five years of misery. However she hated him for leaving her and frequently demanded to know why. Jesse had to contend with Heaven’s assassin, the Saint of Killers and Annville’s sheriff Hugo Root. Jesse discovered his power of the Word when he forced Root and his deputies to drop their guns.
Jesse and Cassidy got involved in a brawl and Cassidy was stabbed in the eye. Then he grabbed the man who stabbed him and tore his teeth out with his throat. When Jesse realised that his new friend was a vampire, he was horrified and branded him an abomination. Cassidy was hurt and left Jesse and Tulip on their own. He ran into the Saint of Killers and was shot but went to Jesse’s aid anyway, crashing his pickup truck into the indestructible Saint. While this was happening, Jesse forced an angel to appear and pumped him for information. He discovered that God had ran away from Heaven. There was a showdown between Jesse, the Saint and Root but it was interrupted by Root’s disfigured son. Jesse incurred the Saint’s wrath by using the Word on him to make him holster his gun. The Saint swore to kill him another time and strolled away. Jesse also punished Root for his sins by telling him to **** himself, which caused him to commit suicide. His disfigured son swore revenge and christened himself Arseface. At this point, accompanied by Tulip and Cassidy, Jesse began his quest to find God and make him pay for his crimes.
Jesse’s first adventure out of Texas took him to New York to meet Cassidy’s friend Si, a reporter interested in religious phenomena. Si was writing about a viscous serial killer called the Reaver-Cleaver. Jesse and Cassidy went to the top of the Empire State Building where they discussed Tulip, vampirism and the Word. Eventually they discovered that Si was the Reaver-Cleaver. Cassidy was trapped in Si’s apartment in the middle of the day with an army of police outside. Si hammered a serrated hunting knife through Tulip’s hand, nailing her to the dashboard of his car. Jesse was tricked into going into the apartment of Paulie Bridges, a macho and brutal cop with sadomasochistic tendencies. Bridges wouldn’t let Jesse go so he was as good as dead anyway but Si appeared with a gun, intending to kill Jesse and blame him for the Reaver-Cleaver killings. Cassidy had escaped death by jamming a bayonet through his throat and waiting to be carried away in a body bag. Bridges’ partner John Tool appeared but slipped on a patch of semen. Luckily a badly injured and traumatised Tulip appeared and distracted Si long enough for Jesse to kill him with the Word. Jesse convinced Tool to let him go and tell the authorities that he was found dead in the Hudson river in exchange for being declared the hero who stopped the Reaver-Cleaver. Jesse took Tulip to the hospital and prepared to travel to Dallas to settle her debt with MacAvoy, promising to tell her why he left her five years previously. Cassidy decided to go to San Francisco instead preferring a quiet life.
Jesse and Tulip went to Dallas to see MacAvoy but before Jesse could do anything Jody appeared from nowhere and massacred all of Macavoy’s henchmen. Jesse tried to stop him using the Word but it wouldn’t work. He and T.C. took Jesse and Tulip back to Angelville where Miss Marie was waiting to turn him back into a preacher. Jesse and Tulip were tied up in a basement, where Jesse was forced to tell her about his life in Angelville. Eventually Miss Marie had Jody shoot Tulip through the head. Jesse was devastated and was taken to a room where he had a lengthy discussion with the Duke. Tulip’s body was taken to a spare room and God, who had been helping Miss Marie, appeared and resurrected her. He told her to warn Jesse not to follow him or the consequences would be greater. The Duke restored the Word and gave Jesse the ultimate pep talk. T.C. entered the room and Jesse made him give up his gun before beating him almost to death. He strolled out of the mansion to deal with the rest of the henchman. The hired hands were instantly dispatched when Jesse commanded them to “burn” but Jody survived. After a very long and brutal fight, Jesse broke Jody’s spine. While Jesse rested, the broken Jody smiled and said “Prouda you, boy.” Jesse strangled him. Back in the mansion Tulip had pushed Miss Marie out of her wheelchair and found T.C.’s gun. She followed a long trail of blood, which led to the deviant who was know a pathetic bloody mess. She shot him and left the mansion. Miss Marie saw the fire reaching her oxygen tanks and cursed Jesse as the tanks exploded, sending her rocketing away into the sky. Outside Jesse took his father’s silver Zippo lighter from Jody and watched as the house burnt down, finally free of his family. Tulip appeared and they finally kissed.
Jesse and Tulip spent the next few weeks in an expensive San Franciscan hotel, resting and fornicating. After a while, they met up with Cassidy who was mourning his long time girlfriend who had died of a heroin overdose. Meanwhile the Grail started looking for Jesse and the Sacred Executioner Herr Starr started a conspiracy to make Jesse the new messiah. Jesse and Cassidy found a case of heroin, which belonged to a local deviant called Jesus DeSade. The heroin was meant to be delivered by Bob and Freddy, the Sexual Investigators. Cassidy went to Bob and Freddy’s office to get the address of DeSade’s mansion and went there to find vengeance. DeSade was throwing an enormous orgy filled with the most depraved and decadent perverts in California. Jesse beat the doorman into unconsciousness and infiltrated the party. The gang split up and ended up in many dangerous situations. Jesse found DeSade and went to find Cassidy. By the time he went back, DeSade had gone. Eventually he found him making child pornography and beat the Hell out of him. While this was happening Herr Starr was leading a group of mercenaries into the party to capture Jesse. Since he didn’t know what Jesse looked like, he had to search for someone who knew him. He found Tulip and after a bloody gunfight threatened to shoot her if she didn’t tell him where Jesse was. Cassidy appeared and claimed to be Jesse. Starr gathered his soldiers and took Cassidy and Tulip to his vans where they would be taken to France. Jesse rescued Tulip but Cassidy was taken to Masada. Jesse took two Grail operatives hostage and forced the truth out of them. Eventually Featherstone escaped and warned Starr about Cassidy. Jesse made Hoover count three million grains of sand on small beach.
Jesse and Tulip headed straight for France. At John F Kennedy airport Jesse first met his father’s Vietnam war buddy Space, who told him a story of the war and how his regiment was visited by John Wayne. It also involved the death of their friend Gonny and how they killed the gunner responsible for it.
In France Jesse and Tulip were attacked by special forces units regularly before Jesse decided to leave Tulip in a motel, not wanting her to get hurt. Jesse killed his way into the Grail base and tried to rescue Cassidy who was being shot to pieces by a disgruntled Mafia prince. He was forced to duel with Starr but managed to get away in the chaos. Starr chased him and tried to convince him to be the new messiah but failed. Jesse tortured him with a knife to get Cassidy’s location, resulting in an odd scar on the forehead. He was ready to kill Starr but his briefcase flew open. Jesse saw Starr’s strap-on and wondered what it was before realising and throwing it away in disgust. This gave Starr enough time to destroy the base, kill D’Aronique and proclaim himself Allfather. Jesse found Cassidy and they travelled to New York to meet Tulip. They went to the top of the Empire State Building again and Cassidy told Jesse his life story, cementing their friendship.
Unfortunately for Jesse, Tulip tricked him into letting her handcuff him to a bed in revenge. She visited her friend Amy but also ran into Cassidy in a bar. He drunkenly told her he loved her and tried to make her leave Jesse. When he reminded her of how Jesse abandoned her In France, she left in disgust. Tulip didn’t tell Jesse about it because she knew it would crush him. She also promised Jesse that if he left her again, she’d leave him for good.
On the road, they ran into Arseface who tried to kill Jesse. Jesse took pity on him and let him join the gang for an adventure in New Orleans. Jesse met Xavier, an old friend of Cassidy who practised Voodoo. Xavier wanted to perform a ritual in a cemetery the next night and explained that it would involve Jesse being possessed by a snake god. Jesse and Cassidy hit the town with Arseface. They spent most of the time drinking but also set Arseface up with a hooker before getting him a record deal. Back at the hotel, Tulip was attacked by three members of Les Enfants Du Sang, a depraved cult who wanted Cassidy to turn them into vampires. She went to their headquarters and told them to forget about Cassidy. They followed her and gate crashed Xavier’s ritual. While possessed by the snake god, Jesse learned that God had placed a blizzard in the path of the Saint of Killers when his family were dieing of fever. Because of the blizzard he ran into some bandits who delayed him by shooting his horse, preventing him from getting back with medicine in time. God knew that the Saint would become the new Angel of Death if he was given the chance to reap vengeance on the outlaws who delayed him. When Jesse came out of the trance Les Enfants Du Sang attacked armed with machine guns. Jesse and Tulip managed to fight off the cult but was unable to save Xavier’s girlfriend Janice. Arseface stayed in New Orleans to record his album.
Jesse’s journey took him to Monument Valley in Arizona where he planned to take a dose of powerful Navajo hallucinogens. Unfortunately the Saint of Killers was also travelling there for a showdown as was Herr Starr, backed up by the United States army. Eventually they met in the desert and Jesse told the Saint about how God made his family die. Enraged, the Saint rushed down the desert to the nearby army. When Jesse tried to stop him, the Saint knocked him out. The Saint wiped out the army almost single-handed. Tulip and Cassidy managed to rescue Jesse and take him to a nearby plane. Unfortunately Herr Starr ordered a nuclear bomb dropped on the Saint. The plane buckled and Jesse fell out. He woke up a month later having lost an eye and being cared for by a half-crazed hermit called Johnny Lee Wombat. Jesse was with Johnny Lee for a week or so until he was healed. On his way to track down Tulip and Cassidy, Jesse rescued a dog from being beaten by a nasty cop and named him Skeeter. Unfortunately while he was presumed dead, Tulip was catatonic with grief and spent most of her time doped up on tranquillisers and vodka. A very conflicted Cassidy gave into temptation and raped her. When Jesse saw them kiss in a restaurant he collapsed and disappeared without telling them he was alive.
Grief stricken, Jesse drove to a small Texan town called Salvation. Salvation was overrun with crime due to the violent henchman of the local industrialist Odin Quincannon. The first thing Jesse did was beat the hell out of four henchmen single handed after they attacked Lorie, Billy-Bob‘s sister. Lorie took him to meet Jodie the local wise woman and bar owner. Jesse spent the night in her house and thought about Cassidy and Tulip. The next day Jesse spent some time in Jodie’s bar musing on the townspeople’s racism. The Sheriff Jim Bewley approached Jesse and asked him to be his deputy. Jesse refused but agreed to be the new Sheriff. Bewley was going to leave anyway so handed Jesse his badge. He was instantly visited by Quincannon who tried to buy him off and was thrown through a window. After beating two henchmen Jesse was threatened by Quincannon’s lawyer, Miss Oatlash. Quincannon swore to kill Jesse and went back to his meat plant. Later Jesse spoke to Lorie about Jodie and heard about how she was found in a swamp bleeding from a gunshot wound and screaming “Jody!” Jesse deduced that she was his long lost mother and confronted her. As soon as he did, her memories came back and she returned to calling herself Christina.
After narrowly surviving a car bomb planted by Quincannon’s men Jesse stormed off to his office and tried to kill him. Cindy, his deputy, stopped him and made him swear to take him down legally. Jesse went to see Gunther, a German who had revealed he was a Nazi spy. Gunther told him about his time as a spy and his love of America. Jesse instantly trusted him. Quincannon’s next plan to kill Jesse was to hire the Klan. Jesse managed to beat and humiliate the Klan members before dumping the leader in the local black community. Next Quincannon had the whole town rigged with explosives and made Jesse meet him in a showdown. Quincannon tried to blow up the town but was miraculously struck by lightning. Somehow he survived and escaped back to the plant. Jesse was going to find him but was knocked out by Oatlash. When he woke up he was tied to a bed and Oatlash was planning to perform various acts of sexual deviancy on him. Thankfully Skeeter managed to chew some of the ropes and Jesse managed to stop her. He went to find Quincannon and found him in a cold storage shed with a disturbing sex doll made of meat products. Jesse instantly killed him. Then he went to see Gunther and revealed that he found out Gunther Hahn was dead. He used the Word to force the truth out of Gunther who revealed his real name to be Siegfried Vechtel. He also told him about how he worked in concentration camps and wiped out villages. Jesse convinced him to hang himself. Jesse decided to leave after spending six months as sheriff of Salvation. First he visited his mother who gave him his father’s medal of honour. Then he made Cindy the new sheriff and left to go back to his quest.
Jesse went to a pier and took the hallucinogens and he discovered how he lost his eye. God saved him when he fell out of the plane and tried to convince him to abandon his quest. When Jesse refused, God punished him by biting his eye out and casting him back down to Earth in the Arizona desert. Jesse realised why God left Heaven and what he was scared of. Jesse swore to finish his quest but decided to find Tulip and Cassidy first. Unfortunately Cassidy had still been drugging tulip and using her as little more than a sex toy. One day he forgot to give her the pills and she managed to escape, returning to her friend Amy. Jesse travelled to New York and they were reunited. Tulip told Jesse everything about Cassidy and feeling betrayed, he tried to find out about his past. Jesse found an elderly homeless woman named Sally who told him about Cassidy’s sordid and disturbing past. Cassidy took heroin and got his girlfriends hooked on it while using their money to buy more of it while occasionally beating them. Eventually Cassidy tracked Tulip down and Jesse told him to meet him in a bar in two months. Jesse and Tulip left Amy’s apartment and went back on the road.
Jesse prepared for a final showdown against Cassidy and Herr Starr at the Grail. He tracked down DeBlanc and Fiore and forced them to tell him about the Saint of Killers. Jesse summoned the Saint and convinced him to join his plan. Fearing for her safety, Jesse drugged Tulip so she wouldn’t be in the final fight and left to meet Cassidy. After a lengthy conversation about Cassidy’s sins, they went to the Alamo and fought. Meanwhile Tulip had woken up and headed there with enough guns to stop an army. Herr Starr watched from a balcony while Jesse beat Cassidy to a pulp. Eventually the sun came and Cassidy burned. At that moment a Grail sniper shot Jesse in the head and Genesis left his body. Tulip fought her way through the army and killed Starr.
Earlier Cassidy had made a deal with God that when Genesis was removed, Jesse would live no matter what and that he would come back as well. Later in Heaven, the Saint of Killers tracked God down and shot him. Honouring her earlier promise, Tulip left Jesse. Jesse sat down in a park with Skeeter and decided to go after her. He appropriated a horse from his cruel master and rode off to find her. Earlier Cassidy had planted letters for Jesse and Tulip, apologizing for his crimes and wishing them goodbye. His letter to Tulip convinced her she had a future with Jesse just as he appeared on his horse. To her astonishment he cried for the first time in twenty years. He convinced her to come with him and she left her car. They got on the horse and rode away into the sunset.
Jesse possessed the power of the Word of God. This allowed him ultimate mind control. If he told someone to do something, they had to do it. This could be avoided if you covered your ears or couldn’t speak English, therefore not understanding the command. The power of the Word is unlimited. Jesse once made a man die by telling him to and he made another man eat a gun. Jesse lost the Word when Genesis left his body. Jesse’s one of the finest hand to hand combatants on Earth. While not being trained in any martial arts, he’s expertly trained in fighting dirty and will use any opportunity to win. He’s also very skilled with a gun but rarely uses them.
APPEARANCES:
Preacher #1-37, 39-50, 52-66
Preacher: Tall in the Saddle
First Appearance: Preacher #1
Known Relatives: John Custer (father, deceased), Christina L’Angelle-Custer (mother), Marie L’Angelle (grandmother, deceased), Allfather D’Aronique (cousin, deceased)
Known Allies: Tulip O’Hare, Cassidy, Arseface, Saint of Killers, Duke, Cindy Daggett, Skeeter, Johnny Lee Wombat, John Wayne
Major Enemies: Formerly Saint of Killers, Hugo Root, Si Coltrane, Jody, T.C., Marie L’Angelle, Allfather D’Aronique, Odin Quincannon, Herr Starr.
Eyes: Brown
Hair: Black
Jesse Custer’s parents met in Austin, Texas. His father was back from Vietnam and his mother was on the run from her captors in Angelville. They met at a bus station where she spat in his face after being goaded by peaceniks. She immediately apologised and they immediately became lovers. A year and a half later, Christina gave birth to Jesse, who grew up worshipping John Wayne.
A couple years later, Christina’s family finally tracked her down. Her mother’s henchmen tried to kill John but when they realised he and Christina had a son, they took them back to Angelville where they were forced to marry and were kept prisoner and not allowed to leave. A few years later, John decided to escape with his family. It was then that he told Jesse the words that he would live by. “You don’t take no **** off fools, and you judge a person by what’s in them, not how they look. And you do the right thing. You gotta be one of the good guys, son ‘cause there’s way too many of the bad.” Jody and T.C. caught them almost instantly. They were taken to a cornfield and John was shot in the head in front of his wife and son. Jesse cried his eyes out and Jody called him a crybaby. This scarred him for life and he never cried again no matter the tragedy.
Jesse spent the next twelve years training to be a preacher, with his vile grandmother Marie controlling his every move. He had to learn a page of the Bible every day and was educated in other subjects by his mother. His only friends were a dog called Duke and his friend Billy-Bob, a young Cyclops whose physiognomy had been warped by decades of inbreeding. When Duke humped Jody’s leg, his head was nailed to a fence post. Jesse was eleven and was so horrified he called Jody a ****er. Miss Marie heard him and decreed that for using such language, he would be put into the Coffin. Christine tried to stop her and Miss Marie ordered Jody to take her away and kill her. After being told that it was his fault that his mother was to be killed, Jesse was put in the Coffin and was lowered under the swamp were Jesse spent a week starving in the dark. When he was in the Coffin, Jesse was first visited by his conscience, the ghost of John Wayne.
Several years later, Billy-Bob was preparing to marry his sister and asked Jesse to be his best man. Billy-Bob was told to sleep in the barn by Miss Marie but was woken up by T.C. who was raping a chicken. He tried to hide but T.C. found him, thought he was spying on him and cut his throat. When Jesse found out, he beat T.C. viciously before Jody broke his arm. Because he called T.C. a ****sucker, he spent two weeks in the Coffin with Billy-Bob on top as a weight. When he was released, he escaped and vowed never to go back.
He spent most of his time partying and met Tulip O’Hare, who would become the love of his life. They were together for a year and a half, making money by stealing cars. Eventually, Jesse decided to go to San Francisco where he was going to ask Tulip to marry him. Then Jody and T.C. tracked him down and took him back to Angelville. He was beaten to a pulp and put in the Coffin for a month. Miss Marie pulled some strings and had him placed as a Minister in the town of Annville. He spent five years there, most of that time was spent drinking himself into oblivion. He was broken and had given up.
Eventually Jesse just lost his patience with the town, went into a bar and started shouting all their Confessions. The next day the entire town went to his service to see if he would lose his mind again. At this point, Genesis escaped from Heaven, bonded with Jesse and incinerated the entire congregation. While this was happening, Tulip was trying to make ends meet as an assassin but had botched her first hit. She ended up hitch hiking with an Irish punk named Cassidy. They went to see what had happened to the burning Church and Jesse was reunited with his love after five years of misery. However she hated him for leaving her and frequently demanded to know why. Jesse had to contend with Heaven’s assassin, the Saint of Killers and Annville’s sheriff Hugo Root. Jesse discovered his power of the Word when he forced Root and his deputies to drop their guns.
Jesse and Cassidy got involved in a brawl and Cassidy was stabbed in the eye. Then he grabbed the man who stabbed him and tore his teeth out with his throat. When Jesse realised that his new friend was a vampire, he was horrified and branded him an abomination. Cassidy was hurt and left Jesse and Tulip on their own. He ran into the Saint of Killers and was shot but went to Jesse’s aid anyway, crashing his pickup truck into the indestructible Saint. While this was happening, Jesse forced an angel to appear and pumped him for information. He discovered that God had ran away from Heaven. There was a showdown between Jesse, the Saint and Root but it was interrupted by Root’s disfigured son. Jesse incurred the Saint’s wrath by using the Word on him to make him holster his gun. The Saint swore to kill him another time and strolled away. Jesse also punished Root for his sins by telling him to **** himself, which caused him to commit suicide. His disfigured son swore revenge and christened himself Arseface. At this point, accompanied by Tulip and Cassidy, Jesse began his quest to find God and make him pay for his crimes.
Jesse’s first adventure out of Texas took him to New York to meet Cassidy’s friend Si, a reporter interested in religious phenomena. Si was writing about a viscous serial killer called the Reaver-Cleaver. Jesse and Cassidy went to the top of the Empire State Building where they discussed Tulip, vampirism and the Word. Eventually they discovered that Si was the Reaver-Cleaver. Cassidy was trapped in Si’s apartment in the middle of the day with an army of police outside. Si hammered a serrated hunting knife through Tulip’s hand, nailing her to the dashboard of his car. Jesse was tricked into going into the apartment of Paulie Bridges, a macho and brutal cop with sadomasochistic tendencies. Bridges wouldn’t let Jesse go so he was as good as dead anyway but Si appeared with a gun, intending to kill Jesse and blame him for the Reaver-Cleaver killings. Cassidy had escaped death by jamming a bayonet through his throat and waiting to be carried away in a body bag. Bridges’ partner John Tool appeared but slipped on a patch of semen. Luckily a badly injured and traumatised Tulip appeared and distracted Si long enough for Jesse to kill him with the Word. Jesse convinced Tool to let him go and tell the authorities that he was found dead in the Hudson river in exchange for being declared the hero who stopped the Reaver-Cleaver. Jesse took Tulip to the hospital and prepared to travel to Dallas to settle her debt with MacAvoy, promising to tell her why he left her five years previously. Cassidy decided to go to San Francisco instead preferring a quiet life.
Jesse and Tulip went to Dallas to see MacAvoy but before Jesse could do anything Jody appeared from nowhere and massacred all of Macavoy’s henchmen. Jesse tried to stop him using the Word but it wouldn’t work. He and T.C. took Jesse and Tulip back to Angelville where Miss Marie was waiting to turn him back into a preacher. Jesse and Tulip were tied up in a basement, where Jesse was forced to tell her about his life in Angelville. Eventually Miss Marie had Jody shoot Tulip through the head. Jesse was devastated and was taken to a room where he had a lengthy discussion with the Duke. Tulip’s body was taken to a spare room and God, who had been helping Miss Marie, appeared and resurrected her. He told her to warn Jesse not to follow him or the consequences would be greater. The Duke restored the Word and gave Jesse the ultimate pep talk. T.C. entered the room and Jesse made him give up his gun before beating him almost to death. He strolled out of the mansion to deal with the rest of the henchman. The hired hands were instantly dispatched when Jesse commanded them to “burn” but Jody survived. After a very long and brutal fight, Jesse broke Jody’s spine. While Jesse rested, the broken Jody smiled and said “Prouda you, boy.” Jesse strangled him. Back in the mansion Tulip had pushed Miss Marie out of her wheelchair and found T.C.’s gun. She followed a long trail of blood, which led to the deviant who was know a pathetic bloody mess. She shot him and left the mansion. Miss Marie saw the fire reaching her oxygen tanks and cursed Jesse as the tanks exploded, sending her rocketing away into the sky. Outside Jesse took his father’s silver Zippo lighter from Jody and watched as the house burnt down, finally free of his family. Tulip appeared and they finally kissed.
Jesse and Tulip spent the next few weeks in an expensive San Franciscan hotel, resting and fornicating. After a while, they met up with Cassidy who was mourning his long time girlfriend who had died of a heroin overdose. Meanwhile the Grail started looking for Jesse and the Sacred Executioner Herr Starr started a conspiracy to make Jesse the new messiah. Jesse and Cassidy found a case of heroin, which belonged to a local deviant called Jesus DeSade. The heroin was meant to be delivered by Bob and Freddy, the Sexual Investigators. Cassidy went to Bob and Freddy’s office to get the address of DeSade’s mansion and went there to find vengeance. DeSade was throwing an enormous orgy filled with the most depraved and decadent perverts in California. Jesse beat the doorman into unconsciousness and infiltrated the party. The gang split up and ended up in many dangerous situations. Jesse found DeSade and went to find Cassidy. By the time he went back, DeSade had gone. Eventually he found him making child pornography and beat the Hell out of him. While this was happening Herr Starr was leading a group of mercenaries into the party to capture Jesse. Since he didn’t know what Jesse looked like, he had to search for someone who knew him. He found Tulip and after a bloody gunfight threatened to shoot her if she didn’t tell him where Jesse was. Cassidy appeared and claimed to be Jesse. Starr gathered his soldiers and took Cassidy and Tulip to his vans where they would be taken to France. Jesse rescued Tulip but Cassidy was taken to Masada. Jesse took two Grail operatives hostage and forced the truth out of them. Eventually Featherstone escaped and warned Starr about Cassidy. Jesse made Hoover count three million grains of sand on small beach.
Jesse and Tulip headed straight for France. At John F Kennedy airport Jesse first met his father’s Vietnam war buddy Space, who told him a story of the war and how his regiment was visited by John Wayne. It also involved the death of their friend Gonny and how they killed the gunner responsible for it.
In France Jesse and Tulip were attacked by special forces units regularly before Jesse decided to leave Tulip in a motel, not wanting her to get hurt. Jesse killed his way into the Grail base and tried to rescue Cassidy who was being shot to pieces by a disgruntled Mafia prince. He was forced to duel with Starr but managed to get away in the chaos. Starr chased him and tried to convince him to be the new messiah but failed. Jesse tortured him with a knife to get Cassidy’s location, resulting in an odd scar on the forehead. He was ready to kill Starr but his briefcase flew open. Jesse saw Starr’s strap-on and wondered what it was before realising and throwing it away in disgust. This gave Starr enough time to destroy the base, kill D’Aronique and proclaim himself Allfather. Jesse found Cassidy and they travelled to New York to meet Tulip. They went to the top of the Empire State Building again and Cassidy told Jesse his life story, cementing their friendship.
Unfortunately for Jesse, Tulip tricked him into letting her handcuff him to a bed in revenge. She visited her friend Amy but also ran into Cassidy in a bar. He drunkenly told her he loved her and tried to make her leave Jesse. When he reminded her of how Jesse abandoned her In France, she left in disgust. Tulip didn’t tell Jesse about it because she knew it would crush him. She also promised Jesse that if he left her again, she’d leave him for good.
On the road, they ran into Arseface who tried to kill Jesse. Jesse took pity on him and let him join the gang for an adventure in New Orleans. Jesse met Xavier, an old friend of Cassidy who practised Voodoo. Xavier wanted to perform a ritual in a cemetery the next night and explained that it would involve Jesse being possessed by a snake god. Jesse and Cassidy hit the town with Arseface. They spent most of the time drinking but also set Arseface up with a hooker before getting him a record deal. Back at the hotel, Tulip was attacked by three members of Les Enfants Du Sang, a depraved cult who wanted Cassidy to turn them into vampires. She went to their headquarters and told them to forget about Cassidy. They followed her and gate crashed Xavier’s ritual. While possessed by the snake god, Jesse learned that God had placed a blizzard in the path of the Saint of Killers when his family were dieing of fever. Because of the blizzard he ran into some bandits who delayed him by shooting his horse, preventing him from getting back with medicine in time. God knew that the Saint would become the new Angel of Death if he was given the chance to reap vengeance on the outlaws who delayed him. When Jesse came out of the trance Les Enfants Du Sang attacked armed with machine guns. Jesse and Tulip managed to fight off the cult but was unable to save Xavier’s girlfriend Janice. Arseface stayed in New Orleans to record his album.
Jesse’s journey took him to Monument Valley in Arizona where he planned to take a dose of powerful Navajo hallucinogens. Unfortunately the Saint of Killers was also travelling there for a showdown as was Herr Starr, backed up by the United States army. Eventually they met in the desert and Jesse told the Saint about how God made his family die. Enraged, the Saint rushed down the desert to the nearby army. When Jesse tried to stop him, the Saint knocked him out. The Saint wiped out the army almost single-handed. Tulip and Cassidy managed to rescue Jesse and take him to a nearby plane. Unfortunately Herr Starr ordered a nuclear bomb dropped on the Saint. The plane buckled and Jesse fell out. He woke up a month later having lost an eye and being cared for by a half-crazed hermit called Johnny Lee Wombat. Jesse was with Johnny Lee for a week or so until he was healed. On his way to track down Tulip and Cassidy, Jesse rescued a dog from being beaten by a nasty cop and named him Skeeter. Unfortunately while he was presumed dead, Tulip was catatonic with grief and spent most of her time doped up on tranquillisers and vodka. A very conflicted Cassidy gave into temptation and raped her. When Jesse saw them kiss in a restaurant he collapsed and disappeared without telling them he was alive.
Grief stricken, Jesse drove to a small Texan town called Salvation. Salvation was overrun with crime due to the violent henchman of the local industrialist Odin Quincannon. The first thing Jesse did was beat the hell out of four henchmen single handed after they attacked Lorie, Billy-Bob‘s sister. Lorie took him to meet Jodie the local wise woman and bar owner. Jesse spent the night in her house and thought about Cassidy and Tulip. The next day Jesse spent some time in Jodie’s bar musing on the townspeople’s racism. The Sheriff Jim Bewley approached Jesse and asked him to be his deputy. Jesse refused but agreed to be the new Sheriff. Bewley was going to leave anyway so handed Jesse his badge. He was instantly visited by Quincannon who tried to buy him off and was thrown through a window. After beating two henchmen Jesse was threatened by Quincannon’s lawyer, Miss Oatlash. Quincannon swore to kill Jesse and went back to his meat plant. Later Jesse spoke to Lorie about Jodie and heard about how she was found in a swamp bleeding from a gunshot wound and screaming “Jody!” Jesse deduced that she was his long lost mother and confronted her. As soon as he did, her memories came back and she returned to calling herself Christina.
After narrowly surviving a car bomb planted by Quincannon’s men Jesse stormed off to his office and tried to kill him. Cindy, his deputy, stopped him and made him swear to take him down legally. Jesse went to see Gunther, a German who had revealed he was a Nazi spy. Gunther told him about his time as a spy and his love of America. Jesse instantly trusted him. Quincannon’s next plan to kill Jesse was to hire the Klan. Jesse managed to beat and humiliate the Klan members before dumping the leader in the local black community. Next Quincannon had the whole town rigged with explosives and made Jesse meet him in a showdown. Quincannon tried to blow up the town but was miraculously struck by lightning. Somehow he survived and escaped back to the plant. Jesse was going to find him but was knocked out by Oatlash. When he woke up he was tied to a bed and Oatlash was planning to perform various acts of sexual deviancy on him. Thankfully Skeeter managed to chew some of the ropes and Jesse managed to stop her. He went to find Quincannon and found him in a cold storage shed with a disturbing sex doll made of meat products. Jesse instantly killed him. Then he went to see Gunther and revealed that he found out Gunther Hahn was dead. He used the Word to force the truth out of Gunther who revealed his real name to be Siegfried Vechtel. He also told him about how he worked in concentration camps and wiped out villages. Jesse convinced him to hang himself. Jesse decided to leave after spending six months as sheriff of Salvation. First he visited his mother who gave him his father’s medal of honour. Then he made Cindy the new sheriff and left to go back to his quest.
Jesse went to a pier and took the hallucinogens and he discovered how he lost his eye. God saved him when he fell out of the plane and tried to convince him to abandon his quest. When Jesse refused, God punished him by biting his eye out and casting him back down to Earth in the Arizona desert. Jesse realised why God left Heaven and what he was scared of. Jesse swore to finish his quest but decided to find Tulip and Cassidy first. Unfortunately Cassidy had still been drugging tulip and using her as little more than a sex toy. One day he forgot to give her the pills and she managed to escape, returning to her friend Amy. Jesse travelled to New York and they were reunited. Tulip told Jesse everything about Cassidy and feeling betrayed, he tried to find out about his past. Jesse found an elderly homeless woman named Sally who told him about Cassidy’s sordid and disturbing past. Cassidy took heroin and got his girlfriends hooked on it while using their money to buy more of it while occasionally beating them. Eventually Cassidy tracked Tulip down and Jesse told him to meet him in a bar in two months. Jesse and Tulip left Amy’s apartment and went back on the road.
Jesse prepared for a final showdown against Cassidy and Herr Starr at the Grail. He tracked down DeBlanc and Fiore and forced them to tell him about the Saint of Killers. Jesse summoned the Saint and convinced him to join his plan. Fearing for her safety, Jesse drugged Tulip so she wouldn’t be in the final fight and left to meet Cassidy. After a lengthy conversation about Cassidy’s sins, they went to the Alamo and fought. Meanwhile Tulip had woken up and headed there with enough guns to stop an army. Herr Starr watched from a balcony while Jesse beat Cassidy to a pulp. Eventually the sun came and Cassidy burned. At that moment a Grail sniper shot Jesse in the head and Genesis left his body. Tulip fought her way through the army and killed Starr.
Earlier Cassidy had made a deal with God that when Genesis was removed, Jesse would live no matter what and that he would come back as well. Later in Heaven, the Saint of Killers tracked God down and shot him. Honouring her earlier promise, Tulip left Jesse. Jesse sat down in a park with Skeeter and decided to go after her. He appropriated a horse from his cruel master and rode off to find her. Earlier Cassidy had planted letters for Jesse and Tulip, apologizing for his crimes and wishing them goodbye. His letter to Tulip convinced her she had a future with Jesse just as he appeared on his horse. To her astonishment he cried for the first time in twenty years. He convinced her to come with him and she left her car. They got on the horse and rode away into the sunset.
Jesse possessed the power of the Word of God. This allowed him ultimate mind control. If he told someone to do something, they had to do it. This could be avoided if you covered your ears or couldn’t speak English, therefore not understanding the command. The power of the Word is unlimited. Jesse once made a man die by telling him to and he made another man eat a gun. Jesse lost the Word when Genesis left his body. Jesse’s one of the finest hand to hand combatants on Earth. While not being trained in any martial arts, he’s expertly trained in fighting dirty and will use any opportunity to win. He’s also very skilled with a gun but rarely uses them.
APPEARANCES:
Preacher #1-37, 39-50, 52-66
Preacher: Tall in the Saddle