by: S. Scott Stanikmas – Senior Staff Writer

Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon created quite the stir when they launched Preacher under DC’s Vertigo banner back in the late 90’s. The wild take on religion and one man’s war against God was very controversial but probably one of the comics out at the time.

The new series set to debut on AMC (being brought to us from Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg) looks to be a very loose adaptation on the comic book series from what I’ve seen released so far. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing though. The comics (much like The Walking Dead) would be impossible to adapt panel-for-panel anywhere on basic cable. But the look and spirit of the characters is a step in the right direction.

Take Arseface for instance. This is a character who attempted suicide – like his idol Kurt Cobain – and came out with a face that looks like the puckered inside of someone’s backside. The character as drawn by Steve Dillon is horrific in nature and would take extreme make-up and even maybe CGI to accomplish. The first image of Arseface (as portrayed by actor Ian Colletti) that comes from Wondercon still kind of conveys the right look of the character:

I would have liked to have seen a little more in the way of scarring. Maybe even the mouth being a bit more puckered. But this is a good start. I’ll know just how much I like the character once I hear him talk and see him in action on screen.

This could wind up being a pretty good series, even if they can’t follow the storyline beat for beat. They’ve got a great set of actors lined up for it and a passionate crew behind it so that should translate to good TV at the very least.

Preacher is set to premiere Sunday, May 22 at 10 pm on AMC with multiple showings for the next week or so (to give everyone a chance to catch it) before new episodes start on the Sunday June, 5 at the regular time of 9pm.