Sunday church service in the small Texan town of Annville. Reverend Jesse
Custer wants to start his sermon, when suddenly something like a ball of fire bursts
through the church ceiling, into Jesse Custer, and kills the whole town community in a
vast explosion.
The thing that burst out of the sky is in fact the God-like entity Genesis, child of the
sexual relationship of a demon and an angel. And the host it chose to reside in is Jesse
Custer, who now literally has the Word of God, giving him the ability command those who
listen to follow any orders he gives them.
Still buried under the ashes and debris of his church, Jesse is discovered by his
ex-girlfriend, Tulip O'Hare, and a rowdy Irishman,
who spends the daylight hours sleeping under a blanket on his truck. The trio of heroes is
established, but soon hunted by the superhuman Saint of Killers,
who has orders to kill Genesis and its host. But the Word enables Jesse to stop the Saint
and to summon an angel who explains what has happened: After the birth of Genesis, God has
quit his creation and ordered his angels to take care of heaven.
Upon hearing this, Jesse embarks on his quest to find God and have him justify this
behavior. His ex-girlfriend Tulip follows him, hoping to find out why he abandoned her
years ago in Phoenix, and the vampire Cassidy follows them basically just for fun. And to
make matters even more complicated, the Saint of Killers is always one step behind them,
though his next appearance will be quite a while later.The trio
then goes to New York, helps to stop a serial killer, and splits up when Cassidy goes to
San Francisco to see his girlfriend while Jesse and Tulip are going South.
There, Jesse is forced to face his past when he and Tulip are kidnapped by the men who
work for Jesse's evil grandmother. She was the one who forced him to become a preacher,
and she wants him to father children in order to continue the line of Preachers in her
family. Tulip gets killed, is resurrected by God who wants Jesse off his trail, and Jesse
kills his grandmother and her servants.
The story shifts to San Francisco, where the reunited Jesse and Tulip
meet with Cassidy, who wants to avenge the death of his OD'ed girlfriend. More important,
the mysterious Grail is introduced, a world spanning conspiracy, whose
aim is to trigger Armageddon and rule the world with a new Messiah. This new Messiah is
The Child, last child in a direct and incestuous bloodline dating back directly to Jesus.
But Grail member and conspirator within the organisation, Herr Starr,
thinks that Reverend Jesse Custer should be this new Messiah.
Yet since Starr only knows Jesse's name, Cass' is jumping into the breach, and Starr only
finds out that he has the wrong person when he is already in the Grail's secret stronghold
in France. Jesse follows to rescue his friend, and in a first showdown the forces of the
Grail, Jesse, and the Saint of Killers meet. The result is a bloodbath, in which the
Allfather of the Grail, the Child, and hundreds of soldiers die.
Yet Starr, Jesse, Cassidy, and the Saint survive.
The stage is set, and from now on the plot heads towards the final
confrontation which will come in the end.
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