Astro City: The Confessor

I thought for today I'd blog about one of the heroes of Astro City that is honestly one of my favorites. This guy is like the Batman of Astro City, because he is a stalker of nighttime villainy. Originally Roman-Catholic priest Jeremiah Parrish, who came to America in the 1800's with Cardinal Grandenetti to build his cathedral. He was seduced by a beautiful woman while working in the shanty town of the Eastern-European immigrants who had come over to America. The woman turned out to be a vampire, who drained Parrish and left him dead in the filth of an alley. Three days later, Parrish rose again, a vampire himself. Over the years, Parrish sank further and further into seclusion out of fear of what he was. It was not until the arrival of Air-Ace, the first hero to emerge publicly in Astro City (the known as Romeyn Falls) that Parrish began to feel hope. After secretly observing the heroes for years, he took on the costumed identity of the Confessor, as penance and made his first documented appearance in the late 1950's. His costume was a strange priest's robe, with a silver cross stitched on the front to help stem the need to drink blood. For years he fought crime, and at the climax of his career, he took on a sidekick, Brian Kinney, who became Altar Boy. They worked together taking down mostly street crimes, and hitting The Deacon (crime lord of Astro City) and his operations the hardest. At the time, the Shadow Hill murders were prompting public outcry against the heroes, and the Mayor of Astro City began behaving in almost brutal manner in treatment towards the city's protectors. Brian discovers Parrish's secret, but does not condemn him. Parrish dies while exposing a terrible truth, that the Mayor of Astro City had been replaced by a doppleganger, a member of the shape-shifting alien race known as the Enelsians who then mounted an invasion force of the planet, which was stopped by the various heroes, villains and strange creatues that made up the "super-human" community. After four years of training, Brian took up the mantle of his former mentor, and continued to fight crime as the new Confessor.