 Hey everybody, welcome back to another exciting episode, another edition of A We Can Keep Them Here on YouTube. Gio here and today we're talking the god damned. Let's do this. Welcome back to the channel everybody and yeah, I've had this book for quite some time and only until a couple days ago I thought, you know what, I could do another read through, make a video for YouTube. I haven't covered this book yet. I love talking about image comics or independent comics in general. It gives you sort of this freedom that's not, you know, you're not bogged down or constrained by capes and cows and the big two and all that stuff. Here we have a very peculiar twist to stories that we've known about for ages. This is sort of a biblical reinterpretation of certain characters and our protagonist is actually Cain of Cain and Abel. The story is set 1600 years after Eden and we follow the character of Cain and he's, as he's wandering through a hellish landscape called Earth. This is before the flood as the book kindly informs us right here, book one. And he's walking aimlessly not really knowing what to do. What he does know is that he wants to end his life. He's had so many hundreds of years living through Earth to this place that is filled with such barbarism and cruelty and violence and drought and, you know, sickness and fighting. It's a very inhospitable place compared to your perception of ancient history of ancient Earth, if you will. You see, Cain committed the ultimate sin of murdering his brother and the ramifications from that have corrupted the Earth and, you know, made us as a species that much more breakable and fragile than we were before. And those effects in real life still bother us now to this era, to this day and for the rest of humanity's existence, we will always have that in the back of our head that a person can murder another individual. Regardless of all of that, this story is written by Jason Aaron and drawn by Adam Getta, who you may know from his work with Jason Aaron in DC's Vertigo series Scout. So you are already getting some really detailed artwork, some beautiful grungy, disgusting muddy and just vile artwork and yet it is so awesome to read. The action is intense, the landscapes just look straight out of hell. This desert, this constant desert, I mean, you can judge from the back here and the multiple panels of just how brutal this world that is ours, you know, you have this perception of Earth. And here we have something completely different to look at. And here we have some muddy brownish colors to represent most of the book. It's this kind of art style which dominates the story. But you also have some very interesting night scenes like this, which really calms the reader from the hellish experience. It's sort of, you take a deep breath when you come to scenes like this. Of course, it's in the dark, there's no light sources. So you don't really know what terror lies in the dark. So it's even more frightening that these characters are roaming about like this. So we're following Cain, like I mentioned earlier, and he is seeking a way to end his life. So many years, hundreds of years, he has cursed God and he just doesn't want to continue anymore. He knows what he did, he's fully aware, and it's not necessarily, or at least at the start of the book, about seeking redemption. And it's more about just sort of freeing himself of this pain. And he's looking for this ultimate opponent that will kill him in combat, I guess. So he is on this journey, and along the way he meets a couple characters which sort of maybe bring some of his humanity back. He goes on this mission to save someone, and through that process maybe finds a little bit more about himself and remembers who he was before he murdered his brother. It's that sort of moral dilemma which of course Jason Aaron expertly goes through and captures a very interesting reimagining and a very interesting take on a famous character and sort of his reluctant nature of not only being like could he be a hero to this story, but he reformed himself as a person and not end it all and find some sort of new lease on life. And at some point in this book there are multiple hints at that and it's very interesting. I love the, I love that this story isn't necessarily about cursing and being like an FU to religious stuff. Not at all. It's not an alternate take for entertainment purposes, but also to sort of remind the reader that the stuff, and this is, we're talking about murder, so we have to take it with a grain of salt here. But what I'm trying to get at is that some of the stuff that we've done can be redeemed at least and we can find the right path from the negativity and we can aspire to do some good even through dire situations and all that stuff or at least that's what I took out of it. Other than that the story has a way too much violence and gore and just dirty looking people, just living mat-mack style in the desert with fricking animals and all that stuff. So it's a very interesting, wild, crazy, bitchin' interpretation of Before the Flood period when it comes to the Old Testament. So yeah. Also the comparison between Noah which is radically different than what you're imagining compared to Cain is pretty fricking interesting. I like that the book has a clear starting point and resolution and it gives you wanting more. We don't have a volume too unfortunately, it's been teased and the creative team is working on it, but we don't have that yet. However, the ending of the book, it ends on a really somber, sad note with promises for even greater tales to follow. This story sort of reminded me like a fricking biblical witcher. I would love to see this comic book adapted into either a video game or a live action movie. It has a lot of potential to be explored in an alternate medium, I think at least. A very interesting story, a wonderful artwork and the scenes and the action and the panels and everything, it just is very cinematic and scope. This book is obviously rated mature so I don't recommend it for everybody. And of course I do know that a lot of people, and I didn't even want to bring it up simply because it touches on biblical stuff, I am a fairly religious person and I had no problem whatsoever reading this at all and took some a lot of positives out of this and Aaron's examination of a character that is villainized and how he can rise against expectations and kind of maybe go on this redemption arc I guess. So I'm hopeful, I'm really excited about the possibility of that second and maybe more third book. Hopefully we do get to see that sometime soon in the next year perhaps, I don't know. Have you read The God Damned? Let me know in the comment section down below. This was a strange mix of biblical stories with Conan the Barbarian mixed in with Matt Max and The Witcher. It's pretty wild. If you've read it let me know, if not tell me your favorite sword and sandals comic graphic novel. Let me know down below, I'm very interested in finding out as well. Guys as always thank you so much for tuning in, thank you for liking, commenting, subscribing, as always hit the little bell icon here on YouTube so you know when new videos pop up and if you want to follow me on social media I'm on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, all that fun stuff. Also I've got a merch store, link in the description down below, it'll help out a ton if you go through that. I am working on uploading different designs and stuff so check it out. Thank you everybody for tuning in, I will catch all of you on our next video.