Last week I accused the Preacher comics of being squeamish about sex. It appears I spoke to soon, sort of. The issues that comprise the second trade paperback compilation of the series skew much more toward overall seediness rather than just to violence, though I'll defend my statement about the issues in Gone To Texas because they do shy away from nudity and sexually explicit language more than Until the End of the World. But I think that may be intentional. A lot of the second book focuses on Jesse and Tulip, and especially what their love represents. I imagine Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon held off on sexual content so they could draw the stark parallels between different kinds of love present in later issues.

If Gone To Texas was all about presenting a lot of questions, End of the World is about answering them. While there are certainly mysteries remaining at the end of the book, we more or less know everything we need to know about Jesse, Tulip, Cassidy and most of the other major players in the story. It turns out that in a comic series about faith, power, violence and cruelty, everything actually boils down to love.

I appreciate Garth Ennis's approach to religion. It would have been easy for him to take a snotty atheist's perspective and make all religion unambiguously evil, but he opts for more nuance instead. Characters like Jesse are believers, but they're a new kind of faithful who reject the unquestioning zeal of hard-liners like Grandma L'Angelle. Especially in the disturbing issues in past and present Louisiana, religion and morality are not one in the same.

With their secrets revealed and all slights forgiven, Jesse and Tulip finally pick up where their romance left off. Namely, in a spree of petty crime and constant coitus. At the same time, their relationship doesn't seem immoral or meaningless. Maybe that's just because it's juxtaposed with the wanton decadence of Jesus de Sade's orgy and the sordid ugliness of Herr Starr's proclivities.

Underneath the grime, guts and Gomorrah of the second volume of Preacher, there's a degree of silliness. Ennis and Dillon have to up the already high ante they set for themselves in the early issues, which often results in ridiculous moments like the fight at de Sade's mansion. It rolls right over into slapstick, which is jarring after the sheer darkness in Angelville. Preacher was never an entirely serious piece, but it needs a certain level of gravitas to make the dark humor stick. If it devolves into pure exploitation, any religious or cultural commentary it hopes to convey will be lost in the mire.

I also want to take this opportunity to comment on the painted cover art of the series and how it differs from the regular panels. Glenn Fabry's covers, with one or two exceptions, are more distracting than they ought to be. Like a lot of the overindulgent comic art of the 1990's, Fabry's work adds too many dips, wrinkles and other bits of grotesqueness to the characters. He never fails to make Tulip look like a 50-year-old crack addict and all of his male figures come off like the worst of American Social Realism paintings from the 1920's. I hope nobody confused Fabry's work with Steve Dillon's superior comic art.