We still don't have a Jesse Custer, but following yesterday's announcements of Ruth Negga as Tulip, the Preacher TV series has now also found its Arseface. Ian Colletti, most recently seen as Finn in Fox's legal drama Rake, will be taking on the legendary mantle and wearing what's presumably going to be quite an extensive facial prosthetic.
Yes, Arseface: perhaps a reassurance to anyone who was concerned that the TV series would water down the books. He's the son of sheriff Hugo Root, who attempted and failed a copycat suicide with his father's shotgun after the death of Kurt Cobain. In the TV series he's called Eugene, but we're not sure we ever actually learn that name in the comics.
When Sheriff Root commits suicide after a particularly nasty encounter with Custer and his cohorts, Arseface swears revenge, but eventually comes round to the Custer cause: Custer and Irish vampire Cassidy get him laid, and he ends up with his own recording contract. It is alleged that he had relations with all the Spice Girls.
His name refers to the puckering effect of the self-inflicted shotgun blast to his face. "That fella's got a face like arse," observes Cassidy on first catching sight of him. This makes an impression. Falling to his knees on a stormy night, our hero rages, "I will have vengeance for the blood of my father! And if I have a face like an arse, so be it! I will become Arseface!" Except it comes out, "Uh wuh becuhh Uhhfuhh!" Until later issues of the comic when we're used to him, Arseface is always subtitled.
This stuff is not what you'd call politically correct (botched shotgun suicides should probably come with a trigger warning), but it's Garth Ennis being adapted by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, so really, what did we expect?
Rogen and Goldberg have been attached for a while, developing a pilot they will direct for a potential show on US cable network AMC, with Breaking Bad scribe Sam Catlin recruited to write the first script and run the show if it’s commissioned beyond this initial outing.