Preacher

A friend of mine nagged me into reading this. It's been sort-of on my list for a while, but I finally got around to reading it. Like Sandman and Watchmen, it's held in high regard by a lot of people. It really is very good.

The main thing about this comic is it is extremely sacrilegious. It reduces all of the Christian spiritual figures (God, Satan, angels, etc.) to much less than lofty heights. It makes God out to be a self-serving ass-hole, and much of the heavenly host to be a bunch of morons. This is pretty different from anything I've ever read/seen before. It definitely worked; a lot of time it was quite funny.

Another important aspect is the violence. There is some gosh-darn gruesome stuff in this thing. Sometimes it seems there is scarce a page without a depiction of somebody's head being blown away. Again, sometimes this works out to be comedic.

Of course my favorite part of it (as usual) was the characterization. The characters were well defined and likable. One in particular, Cassidy the vampire, is fleshed out very well. Parts of his character are exposed throughout the story in a way that makes him the most believable vampire I've ever read. Great stuff.

Apparently there is currently a movie being planned, to be helmed by Sam Mendes. Sam did stuff like American Beauty and Road to Perdition, so I think he could pull it off well enough. Of course, it isn't definite yet. There's no script, and this story has gone through development hell on a number of projects before, so it might not actually happen. Considering the subject matter I wouldn't be surprised if it gets scrapped due to protests. I'll watch it if it happens though.