Read more about Citizen Pain at: Wikipedia

Official Site: Hurricane Entertainment

Violent Messiahs is an American comic book series created by Joshua Dysart and William O'Neill and published by Image Comics. The comic takes place in a fictional city known as Rankor Island, and focused on the Rankor PD's attempts to bring in Rankor's vigilantes. The most prominent characters are Lt. Cheri Major and Detective Ernest Houston, the two cops leading the investigations of, Family Man, a serial killer who attacks bad parents, and Citizen Pain, a giant, dark figure who was the most prominent vigilante in Rankor (and became the face of VM).

The original black and white comic was drawn by O'Neill, written by Dysart and published by Hurricane Press in 1997. Only one issue, of what was to be a 3-issue story arc, hit the shelves, and the second issue was scrapped by Jan Utstein, Editor-in-Chief. Years later, Image Comics picked up the rights to the series, and the original issue was remade, this time with art by Tone Rodriguez, and color by Travis Smith. Joshua Dysart expanded the script into an 8-issue arc.

In 2001 Image published GENESIS. This black and white trade paperback (TPB) contains a prologue to the first story arc; the original O'Neill comic; pages from his unpublished second issue; and clips from Rodriguez's sketchbook. The prologue story originally released as Wizard Magazine's 1/2 issue quickly touches on the four main players of Book Of Job. It begins with the explanation of how Cheri came to be transferred from NYPD to heading the Rankor Island Violent Messiah Taskforce, as well as the origin of her "badass mother fucker hat". From there it segues to Ernest's first interaction with Family Man, and how despite his bungling of the situation he is promoted against his will to homicide and given the case. Finally Job is shown and what can be inferred as the moment he became aware of Cheri is revealed. This section reprints Tone's penciled pages, no ink, no color.

BOOK OF JOB, a collection of the first story arc, issues 1-8, was published in 2002 . The initial serials were published beginning in 2000. The story opens and quickly introduces the four protagonists before. Throughout the story arc they are slowly developed and fleshed out, particularly Cheri and Job who seem to be standard stereotypes when the story begins but have been expanded beyond that by the end. As the story progresses it turns into a melange of mystery, horror, romance, superhero/scifi, and conspiracy.

CBUB Match Record: