Time of the Preacher.

November 2, 2015 12:52 PM

Trailer for the new television series Preacher based on the 'cult comic book' by Garth Ennis and Steve Dillion
posted by fearfulsymmetry (113 comments total)

Oh, hm. 20-something-me is very excited about this. 30-something-me has doubts. Hopefully they will modernize some things in the translation to TV. There is some good potential here.
posted by Doleful Creature at 12:57 PM on November 2, 2015 [8 favorites]

Interesting that it doesn't touch on any of the supernatural aspects.
posted by vibratory manner of working at 12:58 PM on November 2, 2015 [1 favorite]

This has Ruth Negga in it ? I'm watching!
posted by Pendragon at 1:00 PM on November 2, 2015 [1 favorite]

1990's me is very excited about this.
2010's me... well, 2010's me has learned to trust AMC.
posted by miguelcervantes at 1:05 PM on November 2, 2015

I have very low expectations for this, especially from the trailer, but because it's on AMC, they might actually have to rely on creating a good story and well-developed characters, as opposed to leaning on ultra-violence and puerile gross-out garbage. Time will tell!
posted by majuju at 1:05 PM on November 2, 2015 [2 favorites]

Everything I've read by Garth Ennis (most recently Back To Brooklyn) just tries way too hard to be all OMG CHECK THIS SHIT OUT DUDE.
posted by The Card Cheat at 1:07 PM on November 2, 2015 [5 favorites]

That looks very little like the Preacher I remember reading. Which is ok, translations are difficult and some aspects absolutely have to change in going from one medium to another.

But Jesse looks ridiculous, like he has a bad white boy's afro, we see very little of Tulip, and there's that strange conversation with the kid, where Jesse takes the conversation to place that's clearly over just about any kid's head. Comic book Jesse, would have kicked the step-father's ass, then ruffled the kid's hair.

So yeah, I'll check it out, and hopefully there will be a better trailer or two. But at this point, my hopes are dim. Finally, Preacher is a very finite story. Making it an open ended series, with Seth Rogan being one of the producers makes me nervous.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 1:07 PM on November 2, 2015 [3 favorites]

Spoiler: if you have ever been offended by anything, Preacher will pull on that thread. HARD.

It's an example of that kind of willfully transgressive stuff that was a thing for some folks at the turn of the millennium. Like Doleful Creature, the part of me that remembers how this comic made me feel when it was new is pretty psyched... and the part of me that has spent the subsequent years growing and evolving is cringing and filled with dread.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 1:11 PM on November 2, 2015 [13 favorites]

It's not really an adaptation of Preacher unless all of the actors are made up to have exactly the same weird Steve Dillon horse face.
posted by Strange Interlude at 1:14 PM on November 2, 2015 [28 favorites]

I really like Joe Gilgun as an actor, especially in This Is England both film and tv series, but Jeeeysus Mary and Joseph that accent

That said I do think this looks interesting and I'll give it a few episodes at least. There's no way it can be as bonkers and all out as the comic but it might be it's own thing. Hope it does better than Constantine anyway
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 1:15 PM on November 2, 2015

I have the same hesitations as many people in this thread have. That said, I will be especially disappointed if it's not liberally peppered with Nick Cave songs. Because when I was younger, I was convinced the writers were huge Nick Cave fans.
posted by Windigo at 1:16 PM on November 2, 2015 [3 favorites]

Oh, hm. 20-something-me is very excited about this. 30-something-me has doubts.

Like Doleful Creature, the part of me that remembers how this comic made me feel when it was new is pretty psyched... and the part of me that has spent the subsequent years growing and evolving is cringing and filled with dread.


Yuuuup. 20-something-me really enjoyed this comic. 30-something-me isn't going to reread because I suspect I'd find it really obnoxious.

Man, this property has been kicking around for a long while in the film world. Wasn't there something associated with Samuel L. Jackson that was supposedly happening with it ages and ages ago?

I think I'd rather see Mike Carey's Lucifer (although the budget would be impossible) or Brian K Vaughn's Ex Machina (somewhat similar power)? Or a Hellblazer show ahahahaha I kill me.
posted by selfnoise at 1:18 PM on November 2, 2015 [3 favorites]

More unlikeable characters. Bleh.
posted by clvrmnky at 1:18 PM on November 2, 2015

Joe Gilgun is inevitably going to be the best part of this show.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 1:19 PM on November 2, 2015

If the phrase "space niggers" isn't uttered by a tough as nails stereotypical drawling southern sheriff, we'll know which way the wind is blowing on how outrageous the series will be.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 1:19 PM on November 2, 2015 [3 favorites]

I'm watching with a raised eyebrow to see if "GO FUCK YOURSELF" will be commanded and followed literally.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 1:21 PM on November 2, 2015 [7 favorites]

It seems a little generic, which it really shouldn't.

We'll see.
posted by Artw at 1:23 PM on November 2, 2015 [1 favorite]

I was wondering when Joe Gilgun would finally arrive on our shores. He's very entertaining on Misfits.
posted by cazoo at 1:23 PM on November 2, 2015

They'll have to drag Eastwood out of retirement for the Saint Of Killers or a CGI Lee Marvin.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 1:25 PM on November 2, 2015 [4 favorites]

Cassidy isn't wearing sunglasses.
posted by deadbilly at 1:28 PM on November 2, 2015 [7 favorites]

I thought that was a pretty good representative actor for Jesse. Now, for the Irish vampire... uh... Where are his death-like eyes hidden behind sunglasses? And it looks like Tulip isn't going to be blond, which I suppose is fine. I hope she's still bad ass, though.

I'm pumped about this show and I don't even have cable.
posted by jillithd at 1:29 PM on November 2, 2015

They'll have to drag Eastwood out of retirement for the Saint Of Killers or a CGI Lee Marvin.

Maybe they could dig up Nick Nolte. Robert Forster would also work. I would also accept Tony Todd.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 1:30 PM on November 2, 2015

I know nothing about the comic book, so I'm evaluating this with no preconceived notions. And, AMC has shown it is capable of making some good television, so there's that.

Based on what I just saw, this is yet another dark show about some mysterious guy (who possibly was a former preacher?) And he goes around hurting people to...what? Teach them a lesson?

I dunno. If the primary thing you show in the first trailer is a kid asking a guy to go hurt his father, and then a scene of the "hero" breaking the dad's arm...well...that's pretty fucking weak sauce. If there's much more interesting stuff about this character, they should have at least shown some of it. I'm not a comic book geek. Sorry. For now, I'll pass on this one.
posted by Thorzdad at 1:33 PM on November 2, 2015 [1 favorite]

WAIT WAIT WAIT... the Saint of Killers needs to be Danny Trejo.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 1:35 PM on November 2, 2015 [22 favorites]

I think I'd rather see Mike Carey's Lucifer

You know they're already doing that, right? And that it is going to be the worst thing that has worsted since J. Alistair Worstley invented the Worstley Worstificator (patent pending)?
posted by Shepherd at 1:36 PM on November 2, 2015 [8 favorites]

Wasn't there something associated with Samuel L. Jackson that was supposedly happening with it ages and ages ago?

That was back in the mid-to-late '90s, when Samuel L. Jackson was the default internet fanboy-casting(1) for absolutely every violent badass character in every comic book everywhere. There were a ton of Preacher fans who wanted Jackson to play the Saint of Killers even though the character was uniformly depicted as a deathly-pale white ex-Confederate soldier-turned-bounty hunter-turned-grim reaper. It's like these people had never even read the comic but thought SLJ was awesome so whatevs.

WAIT WAIT WAIT... the Saint of Killers needs to be Danny Trejo.

You know what? Never mind what I said up there.

(1) By the same token, this was also when all characters with noticeable chins could only be played by Bruce Campbell, according to dumb people on the internet.
posted by Strange Interlude at 1:36 PM on November 2, 2015 [1 favorite]

Based on what I just saw, this is yet another dark show about some mysterious guy (who possibly was a former preacher?) And he goes around hurting people to...what? Teach them a lesson?

I also haven't read Preachers, but... this looks painfully trite. Without all that extra context, there's not a lot here except for Grizzlebrood McManpain Has A Tough Day.
posted by mhoye at 1:37 PM on November 2, 2015 [16 favorites]

You know they're already doing that, right? And that it is going to be the worst thing that has worsted since J. Alistair Worstley invented the Worstley Worstificator (patent pending)?

I got as far as:

An LAPD homicide detective who is solving crimes with Lucifer.

Da fuq
posted by selfnoise at 1:38 PM on November 2, 2015 [2 favorites]

Joseph Gilgun was the perfect choice for Cassidy and Ruth Negga as Tulip O'Hare? Bring it on. I wanna see the fanboys cry in their racist cereal.
posted by Kitteh at 1:40 PM on November 2, 2015 [7 favorites]

Yeah, I got my hands on a copy of the Lucifer pilot over the summer and holy shit, it was so terrible as to be fucking insulting.
posted by Kitteh at 1:44 PM on November 2, 2015

Who's going to play John Wayne?
posted by thecjm at 1:45 PM on November 2, 2015 [2 favorites]

I'm completely fine with the show greatly diverging from the comics, but the trailer doesn't give me any faith that this will be a decent piece of television, let alone a decent adaptation of Preacher. Preacher is, as far as I'm concerned, the last good original series Ennis has written, and there are excellent moments in that comic that are completely divorced from all of the shock value he's almost solely known for now. At least Tulip looks cool.
posted by lunch at 1:46 PM on November 2, 2015 [2 favorites]

Agreeing with everyone about the 20-something-me versus the almost-40-me feeling conflicted at best about this franchise.

In the late 90's, when I read the whole run in one go, I loved it and thought it was amazingly well written and conceived as a dark and gritty comic about the supernatural and weirdo's.

I tried rereading it a few years ago. It made me feel sick inside. I realize it is a product of it's time, yet so much of the horrible things depicted in it are just things that I've seen too much of in modern media, so much so that I prefer to watch children's animated shows over critically acclaimed AMC dramas (I'm looking at you Breaking Bad and Walking Dead).

But I still love Cassidy, and how broken he is. Unrepentantly broken, and his whole relationship with Jesse is almost entirely about him wanting a friend who understands his pain, yet knows that Jesse would destroy him if he knew just how much of a true monster he is/was (even before he was turned). I loved the comics where they just followed one character and fleshed out their personality and made them more "deep" characters (deep for a comicbook, anyway). But with that depth, there was always something dark, something evil inside every one of them.

Also, the relationship between Jesse and Tulip was so full on wish-fulfillment for angsty teenager me that it kind of makes me want to go back in time and slap myself.

I really hope they go into the whole abomination-spawn of an angel and demon sideplot that never really resolved to my satisfaction. Also the decedents of Jesus of Nazareth plot line was so much fun (and predated The Davinci Code by what, a decade?).

Also, needs more Arseface.
posted by daq at 1:52 PM on November 2, 2015 [2 favorites]

I'm completely fine with the show greatly diverging from the comics, but the trailer doesn't give me any faith that this will be a decent piece of television, let alone a decent adaptation of Preacher

Yup.

Grizzlebrood McManpain Has A Tough Day.

Yup.

Preacher is, as far as I'm concerned, the last good original series Ennis has written

Punisher and Fury aren't original, so maybe. He's done some very good war story stuff but it tends to be short/one-offs.
posted by Artw at 1:54 PM on November 2, 2015

Grizzlebrood McManpain Has A Tough Day.

An excellently succinct summation of the last decade of action film-making (looking at you, rebooted Batman/Superman/James Bond/etc).
posted by Existential Dread at 1:57 PM on November 2, 2015 [5 favorites]

The comic has aged very badly, IMO, in part because it's really very sloppily put together--it got its reputation for being sort of the anti-Image Comics X-TREEM 90s stereotype (note: Image has really gotten its act together since then and is putting out some genuinely interesting stuff), and succeeded despite its faults mostly through sheer audacity--and in part because Ennis has repeated its tropes numerous times since them and run them into the ground over and over. That this seems to be going in a very different direction is encouraging; that all we're really being teased with is the same old ultraviolence that nuTV falls back on when it doesn't have anything genuinely interesting to say is not.

Incidentally, the original celebrity casting, which was bandied about while the comic was still being published? Johnny Depp. (There's a marked difference between how Glenn Fabry, the cover artist, drew Custer at the beginning and what it became.) Not sure how much of that was real interest on Depp's part and how much was wishful thinking.
posted by Halloween Jack at 2:00 PM on November 2, 2015 [1 favorite]

I have very low expectations for this, especially from the trailer, but because it's on AMC, they might actually have to rely on creating a good story and well-developed characters, as opposed to leaning on ultra-violence and puerile gross-out garbage.

I might be suffering from Irony Fatigue, but can't tell if serious...were this 2007 AMC might be relying on good story/well-developed characters, but 2015 AMC is basically The Walking Dead Network. Puerile gross-out garbage is their calling card at this point, no?
posted by Existential Dread at 2:00 PM on November 2, 2015

Yeah, the trailer makes it look like the Preacher is a loner who goes around kicking ass and solving people's problems... like a case of the week kind of thing. "Punched by an Angel." Which would really, solidly, definitively suck.

The interesting part of the book was the Preacher being given this amazing power, and slowly evolving out of the desire to use it. If they make him a foul-mouthed broody Michael Landon I'm going to be annoyed.
posted by skullhead at 2:01 PM on November 2, 2015 [10 favorites]

The only thing Ennis has written since Preacher that I can remember finding striking was Crossed, but I'm still not sure I'd call it good. It was horrifying without amounting to much. (For that one, if you don't know it, imagine how Garth Ennis would write The Walking Dead... the plague doesn't kill people, it just scars their faces and ceaselessly compels them to rape/maim/kill/eat uninfected people.) But even if Crossed hadn't ended up being ugly and pointless, I think between TWD and Z Nation, this niche is filled in TV land.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 2:01 PM on November 2, 2015

Actually, you know what? Judging by the baffling success of The Walking Dead, Preacher's going to be a flagship AMC property for six seasons and a movie, and then they're going to double down on The Invisibles, executive-produced by, I dunno, Danny McBride. Or Transmetropolitan starring Corey "My God, The Strain Is Bad" Stoll.
posted by majuju at 2:02 PM on November 2, 2015

The series will focus on Lucifer, "who is bored and unhappy as the Lord of Hell and resigns his throne and abandons his kingdom for the beauty of Los Angeles, where he gets his kicks helping the LAPD punish criminals."

A Jerry Bruckheimer production, I see. CSI limped to a conclusion in September, leaving the lackluster CSI: Cyber as the only remaining Bruckheimer procedural on TV. He must be scrambling to rebuild his case-of-the-week empire out of whatever scripts land on his desk, regardless of whether they're actually mysteries.
posted by Iridic at 2:03 PM on November 2, 2015

Oh gawd, The Strain is bad. I've come to think the title doesn't refer to the virus but to the challenge it takes to one's suspension of disbelief needed to watch that honking piece of junk.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 2:04 PM on November 2, 2015 [5 favorites]

I think I'd rather see Mike Carey's Lucifer

You know they're already doing that, right? And that it is going to be the worst thing that has worsted since J. Alistair Worstley invented the Worstley Worstificator (patent pending)?

I nearly rolled the Lucifer trailer into the post, but it looks terrrrrrrible
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 2:04 PM on November 2, 2015

I really did not like Crossed. I know people who have worked on it and have good arguments that it might have some merits, but nope, do not like.
posted by Artw at 2:05 PM on November 2, 2015 [4 favorites]

It's kind of horrible watching TV utterly destroy whatever legacy Vertigo has left. I watched the Lucifer pilot a while back, and it's absolutely not Mike Carey's story. It was enjoyable, in a kind of stupid sex-comedy way, but there's nothing to differentiate it from any other kooky murder-of-the-week drama. Castle on a coke and amyl bender.

The less said about Constantine the VERY MUCH BETTER THANKYEW. iZombie? No thanks.

I always felt that Preacher was one of the more... conflicted... titles in the lineup - it's bullying, vicious, nihilistic, has some deeply odd notions about women and sexuality, and is at times just blatantly sadistic and nasty (what? oh, Garth Ennis! Well, that makes sense...) Even for a channel with AMC's pedigree for gore and violence, characters like the aforementioned Arseface or Herr Starr are going to be a hard sell.

That said, I will watch Joe Gilgun's rubber-hatchet face gurn through any comic villain role he chooses. He was stellar as Rudy in Misfits, far better than the little Irish twazzock who preceded him.
posted by prismatic7 at 2:08 PM on November 2, 2015 [1 favorite]

Crossed is like eating the hottest curry / chilli imaginable... it's an experience and an adrenaline rush but it's not really what you would call enjoyable
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 2:09 PM on November 2, 2015 [4 favorites]

Constantine is going to show up on the next episode of Arrow, with the same guy playing him as did on the ill-fated NBC show. This is good, as far as I'm concerned, as that show sucking had everything to do with the writing and directing and nothing to do with him.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 2:11 PM on November 2, 2015 [1 favorite]

In retrospect Hitman was always much better than Preacher. Hey! CW! Got an idea for you!
posted by Artw at 2:17 PM on November 2, 2015

Crime & Punishment: The Series: Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov (Matthew Goode), sentenced to eight years hard time for a murder he did not commit, is released when a DNA test proves his innocence. Detective Petrovich, the man who put him away, approaches him with an unusual proposition: to put his fractured psyche to work with the Philosophical Murder Squad of the Newark PD. (Produced by Jay Baruchel and Martin Starr.)
posted by Iridic at 2:17 PM on November 2, 2015 [6 favorites]

I had the whole of Preacher in comic form (well a couple of graphic novels covered the start because I didn't start reading it until it had been out for a while). But I dumped the whole lot on ebay when I it finished because I thought the end was a massive cop-out and I had no desire to re-read it.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 2:18 PM on November 2, 2015

"Punched by an Angel." Which would really, solidly, definitively suck.

I'm "Meh" on whether Preacher will be worthwhile. But I'd watch the fuck out of Punched by an Angel!
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 2:18 PM on November 2, 2015 [14 favorites]

I don't believe in the concept of guilty pleasures, but if I did then The Boys would definitely be one.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 2:21 PM on November 2, 2015 [2 favorites]

Oh and those stories about an SAS solider (Kev?) in The Authority... god does Ennis have a hard on for the SAS.

That said if Ennis had only written WWII war stories and serious stuff about the Troubles he'd be hailed as like a literally genius. But he's got that other side...

But seriously track down 'Condors', it's one of the best single issue comics ever written and has got hardly any sick jokes in it.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 2:26 PM on November 2, 2015 [2 favorites]

Or Transmetropolitan starring Corey "My God, The Strain Is Bad" Stoll.

SWEET BABY JESUS CHRIST DON'T GIVE THEM IDEAS
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 2:27 PM on November 2, 2015 [3 favorites]

I don't believe in the concept of guilty pleasures, but if I did then The Boys would definitely be one.

Adam McKay has been working on a feature film adaptation of The Boys for a while now.

Possible poster tagline for this film:
OMG CHECK THIS SHIT OUT DUDE.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 2:29 PM on November 2, 2015 [3 favorites]

I don't believe in the concept of guilty pleasures, but if I did then The Boys would definitely be one.

Seeing as Rogen and Goldberg are shopping The Boys around the cable networks, if Preacher works out for AMC then it'll probably land somewhere sooner rather than later.
posted by peteyjlawson at 2:30 PM on November 2, 2015 [2 favorites]

Preacher is such a relic from the nineties. I read through it all about five years ago and found it boring and attempting to be provocative, the sort of thing teenage boys flock to and rave about. I think one of the volumes had a quote from Kevin Smith on it about how great it was. Like, the whole inbred Jesus thing was just so "edgy" that I had to be careful turning the pages.

I feel good that this is happening though, the talks about adapting Preacher have been going on for such a long time now that it'll be nice to have the quiet whether it's exceptionally great or mediocre. This trailer didn't instill me with any faith.

How great is it though that comic books are being turned into bland procedurals? iZombie, Lucifer, Constantine, probably a few more in the works. Which one do you think will last more than three seasons? (My hope is on Lucifer, that trailer was just.......something else...)
posted by Neronomius at 2:30 PM on November 2, 2015 [4 favorites]

But seriously track down 'Condors', it's one of the best single issue comics ever written and has got hardly any sick jokes in it.


God, Condors. That thing is fucking amazing. Best art Esquerra has ever done, the personal connection really bringing it out of him. /
posted by Artw at 2:38 PM on November 2, 2015 [1 favorite]

Seeing as Rogen and Goldberg are shopping The Boys around the cable networks, if Preacher works out for AMC then it'll probably land somewhere sooner rather than later.

I look forward to the subtle interpretation of The Frenchman
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 2:39 PM on November 2, 2015 [4 favorites]

I'm excited that AMC is investing in potential great hits, because that means more money in their coffers that they can use to continue subsidizing the under-viewed unexpected greatness of Halt and Catch Fire.
posted by Apocryphon at 2:50 PM on November 2, 2015 [3 favorites]

In what I am somehow ONLY NOW, 15 years later realizing is oddly apropos, my entire collection of Preacher trades was stolen for dope money by a junkie former best friend named Cassidy.
posted by deadbilly at 2:51 PM on November 2, 2015 [9 favorites]

Best art Esquerra has ever done, the personal connection really bringing it out of him.

Better than Dredd motorbike punching a zombie's head off without looking?
posted by biffa at 3:01 PM on November 2, 2015 [1 favorite]

"Crossed" is pretty much "Hey, guys, what if zombies were actually RAPISTS instead of cannibals?!?!?11one", and, yeah, no.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 3:01 PM on November 2, 2015 [2 favorites]

I'm generally super-wary of this, but there is one way they could go which would be *amazing*. As described by a friend:

Looks like they're not telling folks what's up regarding the crazy shit either.
I'll appreciate if they keep that going for a season and manage to rabbit punch the audience with a huge, screen-filling image of a demon and angel fucking to make God 2.0.
Just convince people this is Sons of Anarchy/Justified sort of neo-Western with maybe some weird shit, then VAMPIRES. GOD. SAINT OF KILLERS.
Reveal the vampire thing mid-season, to make people think ​that's​ the twist.
If you're going to rabbit punch an audience in any work, it might as well be Preacher.

posted by CrystalDave at 3:03 PM on November 2, 2015 [4 favorites]

Also, needs more Arseface.

He has been cast and is high up the cast list. His face might not look like an arse early on I guess...
posted by biffa at 3:03 PM on November 2, 2015

Best art Esquerra has ever done, the personal connection really bringing it out of him.

Better than Dredd motorbike punching a zombie's head off without looking?

Better than the entirety of The Apocalypse War. It really is that good.
posted by Artw at 3:07 PM on November 2, 2015

Cassidy isn't wearing sunglasses.
Pretty sure he's got them on at 1:02.

I have the whole first print run, all 75 issues. I hope this series will change up some stuff. It's no longer 1995 and this show needs an audience larger than those of us who read it anyway. It's AMC and they've got quite a lot of goodwill to spend off of Breaking Bad, so I'm reservedly excited about this show. We'll see.
posted by linux at 3:10 PM on November 2, 2015

I remember Preacher as being a truly effed up series that really made me feel something (disgust, anger at the misogyny, interest in the larger themes, etc) that nothing in the "normal" comic world had really touched since Hellblazer and Sandman. But I think it was totally a product of it's time. I LOVED it when it first came out, and I thought Cassidy and Tulip were both awesome. Not to mention the Saint of Killers. But I think re-reading it now would certainly take some of the shine off, especially since Ennis has gone back to that well a bit too often since... (Crossed was too much, couldn't get past the first book.)

I feel some trepidation at AMC ruining something I really liked, even though I have some reservations about the comic now. But this trailer was pretty much blah. It made no sense as a standalone intro, and mostly just made me roll my eyes. And I feel there is NO way to do THE WORD as effectively as they did on the written page, which is a shame.

I hope it works. I'll watch for a few episodes, anyway, just like I did with TWD before giving up on it.
posted by gemmy at 3:14 PM on November 2, 2015 [1 favorite]

Reminder that the original is so utterly 90s it actually has Bill Hicks show up.
posted by Artw at 3:15 PM on November 2, 2015 [14 favorites]

I actually made the effort to track down a book that features in Preacher - The Day Before Midnight by Stephen Hunter... it's one that Cassidy beds down to read through the night when everyone else is sleeping. It's a thriller about a group of terrorists who take over a nuclear weapons silo... it actually kept me up reading into the early hours as I finished it in one sitting. I re-read it sometime later but it then proved to be a bit empty and souless and I wasn't sure why past me liked it so much*

* SUBTLE METAPHOR
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 3:17 PM on November 2, 2015 [1 favorite]

I read *Preacher* really only because the shop I was using back then had a minimum title count for a pull list, and a friend suggested it might be worthwhile. It was a guilty pleasure at best, and I echo the comments that it hasn't aged well -- I leafed through a trade recently and found it totally cringey.

Plus, Strange Interlude has already noted what I have contended for years: you can't adapt this without finding a shitton of actors that all have exactly the same head. God DAMN that art was bad.
posted by uberchet at 3:20 PM on November 2, 2015

Reminder that the original is so utterly 90s it actually has Bill Hicks show up.

Oh god I'd forgotten that... like he just quotes a big chunk of Hicks' act verbatim then... oh god oh god
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 3:22 PM on November 2, 2015 [4 favorites]

I have just experienced bad flashbacks to Steve Dillon's art on Preacher and Hellblazer. Horse faces and bad teeth for everyone! At least Arseface was distinguishable.
posted by benzenedream at 3:35 PM on November 2, 2015

Oh god I'd forgotten that... like he just quotes a big chunk of Hicks' act verbatim then... oh god oh god

Oh god.
posted by Artw at 3:43 PM on November 2, 2015 [3 favorites]

In a previous Preacher thread, I brought shame to my ancestors by trying to goof on the Bill Hicks cameo but accidentally called it a Dan Hicks cameo, which really would have been something.
posted by Ian A.T. at 4:07 PM on November 2, 2015

It's not really an adaptation of Preacher unless all of the actors are made up to have exactly the same weird Steve Dillon horse face.

Read the full Preacher run in 2001. For about the first two TPBs I couldn't stop thinking about Rogue Trooper. Hey, it's Rogue Trooper! This guy's Rogue Trooper too!

In conclusion: Rogue Troopers all the way down. The way Jesus intended.
posted by turbid dahlia at 4:15 PM on November 2, 2015 [1 favorite]

He only does 3 or 4 faces, but my god is he a master of putting expressions on them.
posted by Artw at 4:22 PM on November 2, 2015 [3 favorites]

iZombie? No thanks.

HEY, iZombie is great!
posted by Pendragon at 4:32 PM on November 2, 2015 [2 favorites]

There's probably none better than Dillon if you've got pages of just two guys sat talking in a pub (So great for Ennis then...) but he had his limitations... that bit where Cassiday finally loses his shades and it's obviously scripted as horrific and it's just drawn that his eyes are a bit pale...
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 4:32 PM on November 2, 2015 [1 favorite]

Always remember Fabry's covers being uniformly excellent through
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 4:33 PM on November 2, 2015 [2 favorites]

I'm so split on Dillon's art. His faces all kind of look the same, but his expressions are great (and so is his gore), but the one thing that always annoyed me about his work on Preacher was that, even though all the characters smoke all the time, either cigarettes in the Preacher universe are some weird tiny miniature novelty cigarettes, or all characters are actually Nephilim, because those fuckers are tiny (and inconsistently sized, too).
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 4:54 PM on November 2, 2015 [2 favorites]

they're going to double down on The Invisibles, executive-produced by, I dunno, Danny McBride

This might be oddly in keeping with the spirit of the comic. Although if they open up with the Killing Mr. Quimper storyline, then I'm out ...

I'm so ambivalent about this series. In my head, the only person to play Jesse Custer was Walton Goggins, because who else is Boyd Crowder if not the Elmore Leonard version of Jesse Custer? I also have my doubts that we'll see the same gleefully nihilistic, occasionally sentimental energy thrumming through the show. It looks too damned 2010s broody and serious, not 1990s ironically violent. To me, Preacher was in the same strain of wink-and-a-nod complicity as the Tarantino movies of the 1990s, Scream , etc.
posted by sobell at 5:05 PM on November 2, 2015 [1 favorite]

utopua feels like the Invisibles series we really needed, and the bloody thing got cancelled.
posted by Artw at 5:15 PM on November 2, 2015

As foul and juvenilely nihilistic as as the comic was, it was also full of pitch-black absurd humor. A trailer with no trace of humor or outrageousness does not exactly fill me with hope.
posted by soundguy99 at 5:44 PM on November 2, 2015 [3 favorites]

I wouldn't worry too hard that a Seth Rogen script starring Joseph Gilgun is going to take itself too seriously. This just seems like marketing to try and slip this in as a prestige show.

It's going to be bananas. And deeply violent and fucked up. And darkly funny.

Arseface, you guys. ARSEFACE.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 5:58 PM on November 2, 2015

I'm so ambivalent about this series. In my head, the only person to play Jesse Custer was Walton Goggins, because who else is Boyd Crowder if not the Elmore Leonard version of Jesse Custer? .

Now that there is a heck of an idea, sobell. He really could pull that role off, I think.

I read the full series in 2011 - wife got it for me as a gift and I was very pleasantly surprised - had never owned or read a graphic novel series before; I'd only read about half of Watchmen at that point.

Always thought Tulip would be played by someone like Rene Russo, but I'm open to changes.

Surprised that the whole power of God thing wasn't introduced in the trailer. That's sorta the central premise, isn't it?
posted by Thistledown at 6:05 PM on November 2, 2015 [2 favorites]

It's doesn't look like the Preacher series I was hoping for—but beggars can't be choosers!
posted by infinitewindow at 6:11 PM on November 2, 2015

Surprised that the whole power of God thing wasn't introduced in the trailer. That's sorta the central premise, isn't it?

But what if... It wasn't?
posted by Artw at 6:28 PM on November 2, 2015 [3 favorites]

I wouldn't worry too hard that a Seth Rogen script starring Joseph Gilgun is going to take itself too seriously.

Green Hornet, man. Just sayin'.

(As in, Rogen's track record on mixing comedy and action is not without bumps, and I could totally see Rogen as being a guy who has not yet gotten past the "Duuuuuuude, it's totally CRAZY EXTREEM !!!11!1!" part of liking Preacher. I'm not sure Rogen's heart is dark enough for Preacher's humor - his version of "not taking it too seriously" could actually be worse than a straight grimdark reinterpretation.)
posted by soundguy99 at 6:52 PM on November 2, 2015

Mmm. Kind of...
posted by Artw at 7:18 PM on November 2, 2015 [3 favorites]

Someone I follow on twitter said the ideal Preacher adaptation would be a cartoon on HBO with Matthew McConaughey as the voice of Jesse Custer. They're right.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 8:19 PM on November 2, 2015 [2 favorites]

Green Hornet, man. Just sayin'.

There are plenty of reasons to worry it might not be good. Even accounting for the trailer, though, I don't think there's much reason to think they won't go for the jokes.

Will they get the jokes right? Who knows?

But no, I am not worried Seth Rogen is going to write scripts based on Preacher without jokes. Arseface, for crying out loud. Joe Gilgun, man.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 8:37 PM on November 2, 2015

This trailer didn't instill me with any faith.

BOOOOOO

Who's going to play John Wayne?

Hell, even in the comics, John Wayne didn't play John Wayne. Just a dude with a shadow over his face. The real question is who's going to play Bill Hicks?

I assume this is set in the '90s? The goatee on Custer certainly says so, even though he never sported one in the books. And you'd have to completely rejigger Arseface's origin story to get around Kurt Cobain. As for Saint Of Killers casting, I've always been an Undertaker or nothing guy, but this thread has made me realize that Danny Trejo is also a totally correct answer.

Add me to the pile of loved-it-in-my-twenties folks here. No idea how well it holds up. Some stuff I know I would still love (the gutpunch cliffhanger in the middle of the All In The Family arc, Starr trying on all the hats Featherstone picked out for him), some stuff... probably not so much?

The trailer, meanwhile... if I hadn't known what I was watching going in, I wouldn't have had any idea it was for a Preacher adaptation until the title came up. For the most part it looked pretty bland to me, although the bit where they flashed through a bunch of images really fast -- including a sunglasses-wearing Cassidy with his mouth slathered in blood -- offered a bit more promise. Definitely taking a wait-and-see approach with this one.

Given that it's AMC, I'm hoping for Mad Men-style episode descriptions. Jesse reflects on his childhood. Tulip buys a gun. Cassidy, the hard-drinking Irish vampire, goes to a club.
posted by brianrobot at 9:46 PM on November 2, 2015

I could buy either The Undertaker or Danny Trejo as the Saint, but when I think of somebody who could plausibly deliver the line "Not enough gun," there's only one voice I hear.
posted by MrBadExample at 10:09 PM on November 2, 2015 [2 favorites]

The real question is who's going to play Bill Hicks?

Denis Leary... bdum tish

But who's gonna play Elvis?
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 1:21 AM on November 3, 2015 [2 favorites]

No Word of God power? I could see them going that way. Cassidy had eyes in the trailer, which I think for Ennis there was some kind of soul connection thing. I think I was going to get around to counting the number of characters without eyes. On the plus, you would skip some stuff about God being an asshole which I think some people wouldn't really enjoy. I don't know, I think you would have to cut a lot of storyline out. I kinda wonder if Ennis was trying to work out some father issues. Maybe the point he is trying to make that all fathers fail at some point. The very fact that Jesse is tied to an abomination, and makes fast hang out buddies with another, being proof of that. I never minded the fact that Ennis did this whole thing as an interrogation of an American masculine ideal - the cowboy, but I always thought his overall picture was kind of mean. Every single character in Preacher is an unrepentant asshole except for that kinda likeable bumbling detective that Ennis kills off in a throwaway sentence.
posted by P.o.B. at 1:25 AM on November 3, 2015

daq:

It made me feel sick inside. I realize it is a product of it's time, yet so much of the horrible things depicted in it are just things that I've seen too much of in modern media, so much so that I prefer to watch children's animated shows over critically acclaimed AMC dramas (I'm looking at you Breaking Bad and Walking Dead).

Yes! Thank you. You've just expressed brilliantly how, now I'm a 40-something, the edgy dark stuff that was so great when I was 20 is now... something that just makes me sad. I'm better-read now, and have read of actual atrocities and experienced actual unkindnesses. I cannot now read or watch fiction where the atrocities are the main "shock value" point of the story.
posted by alasdair at 2:39 AM on November 3, 2015 [3 favorites]

The real question is who's going to play Bill Hicks?

Alex Jones.
posted by Halloween Jack at 8:52 AM on November 3, 2015 [6 favorites]

[....] because it's on AMC, they might actually have to rely on creating a good story and well-developed characters, as opposed to leaning on ultra-violence and puerile gross-out garbage.

Soooo .... not a very close adaptation, then?

I'm kidding, I'm kidding. I think I'm kidding. I did love the comic when it was coming out, but man, the comments in this thread have me strongly tempted to, you know, not ever, ever read it again.

I am going to second MrBadExample above -- Lance Henriksen is the only person I ever imagined playing the Saint of Killers.

I am going to be very annoyed if they eliminate the Word of God angle from this. I mean, that'd be like making a Superman series without having him fly or wear the costume. (Wait, they what?)

The main thing that made this series interesting, to me, was the idea that someone was going to try to make God account for himself. That idea was interesting enough to redeem everything else, I thought. I don't think the series would mean much without it.
posted by webmutant at 9:32 AM on November 3, 2015 [2 favorites]

I like the idea of Henriksen, but he's 75 years old. I don't know how well he could do a role that requires ass-kicking.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 9:40 AM on November 3, 2015

In the Saint of Killers one-shot (two-shot?) that detailed his origin, the earlier scenes very clearly used Johnny Cash as a model. Now, I'd say Josh Brolin, although I don't know that he'd want to do it, especially after Jonah Hex flopped.
posted by Halloween Jack at 9:51 AM on November 3, 2015

Have they cast Herr Starr?

That's really the make-or-break for me. Yeah, the material has aged BADLY, but I do love me some Very Entertaining Sarcastic Asshole Bad Guy Who Gets What's Coming to Him While Still Being Very Entertaining.
posted by tzikeh at 10:41 AM on November 3, 2015

That's where we'll get fan casting of everyone bald.
posted by Artw at 10:44 AM on November 3, 2015 [1 favorite]

That's where we'll get fan casting of everyone bald.

Why Patrick Stewart Should Play Herr Starr In Preacher

Patrick Stewart should play Herr Starr in Preacher because he is bald. Also he has a very commanding voice and is bald. In summation, Patrick Stewart.
posted by brianrobot at 10:58 AM on November 3, 2015 [6 favorites]

You just earned yourself 1000 Buzzfeed coins.
posted by Artw at 11:03 AM on November 3, 2015 [3 favorites]

I should think fanboy fave, aka the only German actor they know, Christoph Waltz, is being very much urged to shave his head right now.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 11:09 AM on November 3, 2015 [1 favorite]

Bruce Willis
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 11:45 AM on November 3, 2015 [3 favorites]

I was going to go with The Stath or Hank from Breaking Bad.

Cranston has hair now so he's out.
posted by Artw at 11:49 AM on November 3, 2015

Oh, I forgot Vinny Doff.
posted by Artw at 11:50 AM on November 3, 2015

Udo Kier as Herr Starr. Or maybe D'Aronique. I'm not picky, as long as I get me some Udo Kier.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 12:14 AM on November 4, 2015

"Grizzlebrood McManpain Has A Tough Day" is the best thing I've read all week.
posted by sidereal at 1:03 PM on November 5, 2015

"Grizzlebrood McManpain Has A Tough Day" is the best thing I've read all week.

That is a pretty hilarious line. OTOH, this might be one of the most fantastically awful times to try and guess the entire plot/tone from a single trailer in recent memory. The trailer doesn't show many cards AT ALL. I'd say it gives about a 10% peek into the content, and unless they're throwing most of the comic out the door, it's being cagey about its probable, eventual tone.

The trailer does make this look like a broody, wannabe prestige show. But two things: Seth Rogen is writing it; and, uh, go have a gander at the Wikipedia page for the comic. It's going to be, uh... different than that.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 7:11 AM on November 9, 2015

Just watched the trailer again and I'm cracking up at people who don't know the source material giving their read on it. I mean, I can't fault folks for trying, but as a point of comparison, the amount of information this trailer gives you about the premise is roughly equivalent to a Breaking Bad teaser that had shown you that Walter White was a teacher not feeling well.

Holy shit, you have no idea.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 7:04 PM on November 19, 2015