Jesse Custer

The only one who could ever reach me. Fulfilling a promise to his deceased father, one-time outlaw Jesse Custer returns home to West Texas to take over his dad's church. Jesse's mission, however, becomes twisted when his body is overcome by a cryptic force that unleashes within him a highly unconventional power. Adapted to TV by AMC in 2016, Preacher was clearly meant to be a followup/replacement to the already-crested success of Walking Dead; which is, in a way, fittingly ironic, because the original Vertigo comic ended up being the "next big thing" followup/replacement after the end of Sandman (except Garth Ennis never pretended to be more than the edgelord he was, so paradoxically it's somehow less embarrassing today to admit you were ever a fan of his work than of Gaiman's). TV Jesse was played by Dominic Cooper, aka MCU Howard Stark. The box credits the sculpt to Adrienne Smith and Alex Heinke, so this is before Trevor Grove started regularly working his magic for NECA, but the likeness is still good for its era (this figure came out in 2017, which is how I managed to get it at Toys "Я" Us). The paintwork isn't the greatest, but this was almost a decade ago, after all. When DC Direct made a Jesse Custer, he at least had the advantage of wearing blue jeans with his black shirt and blazer; the TV series wasn't even that colorful, leaving Jesse in black pants. If he didn't have his sleeves rolled up to his elbows, there'd be almost nothing bright anywhere below his chin. We get little specks of silver for the buttons on the shirt and its pockets, plus the Western-style collar tips. And his white clerical collar, of course. He's got a pack of cigarettes sculpted into his left breast pocket, and the bit poking out gets painted, as well. Articulation is what it is. NECA figures today are better than they were back then, so looking at this toy in 2026 definitely makes it feel dated. Hey, at least he just has a single swivel/hinge for each elbow instead of two, right? Remember, we saw how those looked at the time this toy was released; they'd probably have been not-awful, since his shirt is dark, but the bare arms might have made them too obtrusive. We're still counting this as a win. Jesse has balljointed ankles, swivel/hinge knees, swivel thighs, swivel/hinge hips, a balljointed waist (rendered basically a swivel by the shape of the sculpt), balljoint wrists, swivel/hinge elbows, swivel/hinge shoulders, and a balljointed head. The toy has an open left hand, a gripping right hand, and an alternate pair of fists. His actual accessories include two bottles of Hard Hammer beer (Logan here we come!) molded from translucent ruddy plastic so they look like actual glass, a dark blue hymnal, and the coffee can the angels kept Genesis in before Jesse got it. Honestly, this is about all you could hope for from this figure - when your voice can make anybody do anything you want, you don't need to carry a lot of weapons. Dominic Cooper wouldn't have been my first choice to play Jesse Custer, but the show did him pretty well. And though nothing much came of the toyline, NECA did Jesse pretty well, too. -- 02/01/26 Who would win in a fight: Jesse Custer or Homelander? Tell us on our message board, the Loafing Lounge.