Following a highly successful run, rendering the book out of print,
IDW Publishing heralds in the long awaited return of Hurricane Entertainment’s Violent
Messiahs: The Book of Job. It tells a complex and layered tale about the
fictional city of Rankor
Island and the cops,
killers, and vigilantes who inhabit it.
It will be
followed in December by Volume II—Violent Messiahs: Lamenting Pain. This
installment collects the second story arc - a brand-new, never-before-seen
Citizen Pain story, as well as other bonus materials.
Created by
acclaimed writer Joshua Dysart (Unknown Soldier, Hellboy - BPRD:1946)
and William O’Neill (John Carpenter’s Snake Plissken Chronicles),
Violent Messiahs is scripted by Dysart with dynamic artwork by
Tone Rodriguez (Snake Plissken, Urban Monsters) and hyper-realistic
coloring by Travis Smith (Slayer, Resident Evil: Apocalypse).
"This
was my first comic book ever, and it has all the joys that come with a first
work," Dysart says. "Written between jobs in restaurants and bookstores,
during a period of tumultuous relationships and, quite frankly, a lot of drug
use, it seems now, in retrospect, to be the very spirit of my youth, that is,
angry, dark, glorious, ambitious, cocky and ultimately, hungry to be about
something greater than itself." Subsequently Dysart has written for
every major publisher in the comics industry, on such luminary titles as Swamp
Thing, The Age of Conan and Hellboy: BPRD 1946. He’s
adapted Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Deepak Chopra’s Buddha.
He’s written Avril Lavigne’s - Make 5 Wishes and for his most recent
project Unknown Soldier Dysart spent a month researching in Uganda.
Beyond the
masked men, cops with checkered pasts, and trappings of crime, Violent
Messiahs takes an unflinching look at some of life’s most fundamental
questions. As a film-noir, urban retelling of "Frankenstein" crossbred with "Beauty
and the Beast" it delves even further into the ideas of social control,
"heroism", and violence. It also takes a unique look at theology, while
combining sci-fi elements like indestructible clones and dark conspiracies. The
story takes a genre- bending look at some of our most basic human flaws.
At the
center of the story is Lieutenant Cheri Major, a woman obsessed with doing away
with crime and the two killers plaguing her city. Yet each of the two men serve
a seemingly higher purpose, the stitch-masked vigilante "Citizen Pain," who
murders criminals and, the serial killer "Family Man", who slaughters parents
he deems "unfit." But what Cheri doesn’t know is the link between these two and
the secret society they represent. Yet while one is an outcast and the other an
agent of this megalomaniacal cabal, both are ultimately serving their
programming and searching for their true selves.
O’Neill
dreamt up Citizen Pain in a small sketch book, while in art school over 15
years ago. "Citizen Pain has been with me for a long time. IDW is
an excellent company and they print some of the best books out today. I
couldn’t be more thrilled that they are the new home for Violent
Messiahs. With The Dark Knight and The Watchmen
in the public mind there couldn’t be a better time to reintroduce our Warrior
Poet to the world."
Nominated
for a Harvey Award, Wizard Fan Award, and the prestigious Eisner’s Russ Manning
Award the graphically compelling and poetic, Violent Messiahs: The Book of
Job is a strange and twisted look at morality and the complex role of
violence in our lives. The book is a thoughtful commentary on the ability
of the individual to create their own reality and ultimately be redeemed by
love.
Violent
Messiahs: The Book of Job hits shelves in October 2008.
TPB • FC
• 224 pages • 6.625" x 10.187"• $24.99 • ISBN: 978-1-60010-251-6
About
IDW
IDW is an award-winning publisher of comic books, graphic novels and trade
paperbacks, based in San Diego,
Calif. As a leader in the horror,
action, and sci-fi genres, IDW publishes some of the most successful and
popular titles in the industry including: television's #1 prime time series
CBS' CSI: Crime Scene Investigation; Paramount's Star Trek; Fox's Angel;
Hasbro's The Transformers, and the BBC's Doctor Who. IDW's
original horror series, 30 Days of Night, was launched as a major motion
picture in October 2007 by Sony Pictures and was the #1 film in its first week
of release. In April 2008, IDW released Michael Recycle, the first title
from its new children's book imprint, Worthwhile Books. More information about
the company can be found at http://www.idwpublishing.com.