10 Comic Book Characters You Wish You Could Be

3. Jesse Custer

There’s a horrendous saying usually applied to crusty old Hollywood bros like Sean Connery and Warren Beatty: “men want to be him, and women want to be with him”. Well, with Jesse Custer, protagonist of Garth Ennis and the late Steven Dillon’s cheerfully helter-skelter road trip rollercoaster Preacher, it’s kinda true.

Morally upright heroes often struggle to appear to be anything more than paper thin caricatures of nobility, as everyone around them chews on the scenery and steals the story out from under them. But Custer - hard drinking, chainsmoking Texas good ol’ boy turned preacher, with rock star looks and a punch like a mule’s kick - isn’t the kind of guy to let that happen.

Possessed by a supernatural creature that gives him a virtual Voice Of God, Custer has John Wayne as an imaginary mentor and the hardest girlfriend in all creation. And there’s no quit in the boy. Custer always stands up for what he believes in, and loyalty and honour runs in his blood like beer does in an Englishman’s. He’s the cowboy hero of a thousand Westerns, but he’d rather die than wear a white hat.

The jury’s out on whether season two of the Preacher TV show will give us the real Jesse Custer after the misfire of season one. He’s a man’s man who knows how to love, the best friend you’ll ever have… and if you screw with someone he cares about, he’ll nail you to the floor without thinking twice or breaking a sweat. Hallelujah and yippee ki yay.