Preacher, Season 2, by Sam Catlin et al. (Amazon Prime) | review

Jesse Custer (played by Dominic Cooper) used to be a preacher, albeit not a very good one. His life was turned upside-down, and not for the first time, when he gained the power of Genesis, a heavenly being. It had previously tried to join with Tom Cruise, with explosive results, but seems quite comfortable with Jesse. It gives him the power to command anyone, as long as they can hear him, and as long as they have a soul. By season two he has an uneasy romance with with passionate criminal Tulip O’Hare (Oscar nominee Ruth Negga) and an uneasy friendship with dissolute vampire Cassidy (Joseph Gilgun). (Church helper Emily from season one does not return.) God has wandered away from heaven, but he loves jazz music, so they come to New Orleans in search of him. Meanwhile, the Grail tries to get its teeth into Jesse Custer, the Saint of Killers is on his way, Cassidy has to learn a bit of responsibility, and poor old Eugene Root has to deal with Hitler (a brilliant Noah Taylor). It’s a season that features some of the most shocking scenes ever seen on television. Maybe it’s not quite up to the extremely high standards of season one, but it’s still a great show, and it looks like season three will be a corker, drawing on the comic’s very best issues. Stephen Theaker ****

Jimmy’s Bastards, Vol. 1: Trigger Warning, by Garth Ennis and Russ Braun (Aftershock) | review

Jimmy Regent is MI6’s number one man, if we can trust the word of the terrorist on this book’s first page. Regent is a deadly shot with Dan Dare eyebrows and a fine line in double entendres. As his new partner Nancy McEwan discovers, though, he’s not quite the git you might expect. He’s so exceptional with women that he can tell if they aren’t interested, so he’s not a sleaze, and he fights to defend a parliamentary democracy because he believes in the notion of social progress. McEwan wonders if it’s more that he gets to shoot whoever he likes, drive far too fast, and “have sex with beautiful morons”, but he says those are just the fringe benefits. However, although he may have treated women well while he was with them, he didn’t stay with them long, and the consequences of a lifetime of love affairs and one-night stands are going to catch up with him.

Preacher, Season 1, by Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg and chums (Amazon Prime Video) | review by Stephen Theaker

The comic Preacher was in development for so long, first as a film and then as a television series, that you might easily have concluded that there was something fundamentally unfilmable about the project. You – okay, I – might have thought there was no way this programme, having finally made it to the screen, could possibly live up to the standards of the comic. And it’s quite an old comic now. Would it still work? Well, anyone who had those thoughts, me included, has been proven utterly wrong by a programme that rollicked with an energy rarely seen on television, that has left every other programme since feeling muted and low-key. But not everyone has read the comic, and the show is not quite the same as the comic, so I should say something about the story. Jesse Custer (Dominic Cooper) is a half-assed preacher in a dirty, rotten town. His church helper Emily (played by Lucy Griffiths, the former Maid Marian in the BBC’s Robin Hood) has a crush on him, but he’s in no fit state to notice. Then three lightning bolts strike his life. Genesis, the offspring of an angel and a demon, embeds itself within his body, giving him the power to command. The vampire Cassidy (Joseph Gilgun) drops out of an aeroplane and pals up with Jesse in a bar. And old flame Tulip O’Hare (Ruth Negga) roars back into town, wanting Jesse to help her get revenge on an old colleague who left them in the wind. All of a sudden Jesse’s in the middle of a lot of trouble, so it’s a good thing he is surprisingly handy in a fight. It seems as if this show might, like The Walking Dead, cluster its seasons around particular locations, as this one is mainly set in the town of Annville, but it works very well, and at the end of a very satisfying season it’s a treat to know how much more from the comics is still in store. The cast is brilliant, coping with the shifts in tone from horror to comedy as if it was all the same thing, and without exception perfectly portraying the characters we’ve loved and loathed from the comics. Credit to Jeanie Bacharach, casting director, who must have clapped herself on the back for a job well done after watching each episode. One minute it reminds you of Justified or Fargo, the next it’s Monty Python or Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, all while successfully reclaiming its storylines from Supernatural in a way that Constantine didn’t quite manage. Altogether it adds up to something totally new. Confident, brash and bloody, I reckon it’s my favourite programme on television right now. *****

All-Star Section Eight, by Garth Ennis and John McCrea (DC Comics) | review

A six-issue spin-off from Hitman (the comic not the game) which was itself a spin-off from The Demon. Tommy Monaghan, the hitman with x-ray vision and a heart of gold, was introduced in the latter during one of DC’s dafter crossovers (invading aliens whose attacks gave some people superpowers). He once tried out for the JLA, but the funniest parts of his comic were usually when he ran into alcoholic Sixpack and his band of hopeless heroes, Section Eight, including characters like the Defenestrator, Dogwelder and the pervert Bueno Excellente. Here, at last, they get their own comic, or at least the survivors do, as Sixpack tries to get the team back together. After adding The Grapplah, the demon bartender Baytor, Powertool, Guts and a new Dogwelder (who found the previous guy’s outfit in a junk shop), he gets up to seven members, and then tries to persuade the stars of the (New 52) DC universe to fill the last slot. The Martian Manhunter, Wonder Woman and Superman all show up; none seem likely to take the bait. It’s funny and gross, Sixpack’s snot, drool and wee depicted in repulsive detail, but also surprisingly moving, by the end reminding me of the classic Doctor Who strip by Scott Gray and Martin Geraghty, “The Land of Happy Endings”. Super-heroes may be dumb, but as Garth Ennis writes here, “As dreams go... Well. I suppose you could do worse.” This mini-series may not mean very much to people who didn’t love The Demon or Hitman, but it’s a must-read for those who did. Stephen Theaker ****

Ten reviews that didn't sprout

Not all acorns grow into oak trees, and some notes never resolve themselves into proper reviews. Sometimes it might be a lack of time, sometimes a lack of anything interesting to say, and sometimes it's just that by the time I come to write the review I've forgotten most of what happened!

So: I've taken ten of those bits mouldering at the back of my reviews closet and put them up on Goodreads. Don't expect much and you won't be disappointed!

• Star Trek: The Next Generation / Doctor Who Assimilation2, Vol. 1, which unusually for me I read as single issues as they were published, got three stars, mainly for "including a team-up between two of the greatest ever hosts of Have I Got News for You".
• Witch Doctor: Under the Knife also gets three stars: "the first story is very derivative of the Necroscope series"
• Strontium Dog: Search/Destroy Agency Files, Vol. 1 is another enjoyable three-star comic: "I adored Wagner and Grant’s stories for Doctor Who Weekly; I wish I’d known back then that there was practically an entire comic of their work over at 2000AD every week."
• The Sticky Situations of Zwicky Fingers by Rhys Hughes: "Full of ideas and imagination."
  
• I didn't get far into or get on with Isis Unbound by Allyson Bird, though "there were some good things in the parts I read".
  
• Saga, Vol. 1 by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples, another one I read as single issues, got four stars from me: "I'm happy this exists."
• Red Sonja Digital Omnibus, Vol. 1 by Mike Carey and lots of others got three stars: "Quite good fun, despite Sonja’s occasional tendency to talk out of her bum".
• The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Century 2009: "Anyone could put Emma Peel and Mina Harker together in a comic, but only Alan Moore could make it so worthwhile."
  
• The Boys, Vol. 8: Highland Laddie: "Best use of a tapeworm since Simon Louvish’s Your Monkey's Schmuck."
  
• The Boys, Vol. 9: The Big Ride: "I’m slowly being driven mad by 'discreet' being spelt 'discrete' in all of these books."
  

NB: none of these books and comics were submitted to us for review – these were all things I bought. Once we've read something submitted for review, it gets a proper review, even if it takes us years and we do have to read the whole blinkin' thing again!