Preacher: War in the Sun

Just like Dixie Fried was a collection of stories about Cassidy, Volume 6 of the collected Preacher series is an arc devoted to fleshing out Herr Starr. War in the Sun spends most of its time explaining Starr's motivations, as well as balancing our newfound sympathy for him by taking him down a few pegs. The Preacher universe in one in which jackassery gets punished with violence. At this point in the story, it's easy to pick out who is doomed and who will survive to see another panel. Guys like Starr are just weak and mean enough to get knocked around, but not so much that they're instantly marked for death.

Starr began his career as a soldier in the Wermacht army of Germany in the 1970's. At the time, places like Munich were hotbeds of terrorist activity. For a hard-line believer in order at all costs like Starr, those conditions looked like signs of the end times. Starr quickly catches the attention of a recruiter for The Grail and quickly climbs through the conspiracy's ranks by using cold, ruthless tactics to complete his assignments. It's only when he first meets Allfather D'Aronique that we learn just how Starr lost his eye and how it turned him into the man he is in the present.

Starr was a quiet child who fell under the extreme cruelty of Preacher-style bullies. They scarred his face and cut his eye out of pure sadism. Over the next few years, Starr systematically murdered all of his torturers. From that point on, he was on The Grail's radar. The only thing that separates a monster like Starr from people like Jody or D'Aronique is that he has a twisted sort of faith that he's doing good. Starr doesn't want to hurt people or bring the world to ruin. He genuinely wants to save humanity from itself and as he puts it, he would "kill a million little girls to do it". Like Jesse, Starr is infuriated by the cruelty and indifference of those currently in power. Lacking the supernatural might that Reverend Custer carries around, Starr uses violence and manipulation to get the job done.

So, when Starr follows Jesse, Tulip and Cassidy to Monument Valley, he has no reservations about keeping a nuclear missile on call as his trump card against the Saint of Killers. Following the rule of Chekov's Gun, if the promise of a nuke is introduced early in the story, it must be used by the end. After the Saint destroys an entire tank division with his magical Colt revolvers, Starr does indeed call down the wrath of the atom. The bomb doesn't even make a dent in the Saint, but both Starr and Jesse find themselves lost in the ensuing chaos, waking up a month later with pieces of their bodies missing.

The parallel between Jesse and Starr at this stage in the story is pretty fascinating. Starr loses his leg to cannibals while Jesse loses his eye to a near-fatal fall from an airplane. Jesse naturally has Tulip mourning him intensely, while Starr is worried over by his co-conspirator Ms. Featherstone. By the end of the volume, Starr even makes a comment about taking the fight to God Himself, while Jesse goes on a surprisingly conservative rant about the absurdities of political correctness. These two characters, however different in their methods, are more similar than they are opposed. If War in the Sun has one purpose, it's to make us see this and thereby turn Herr Starr into one of the good guys.