Saul of Tarsus is good at his job. He's earned a reputation throughout Rome for ruthlessly hunting down "Flesh Eaters," members of a strange and threatening religious sect that meets in secret and worships by eating and drinking the body and blood of their Lord. But what happens when Saul discovers that he's wrong, and becomes one of the greatest leaders of this outsider movement and one of the most wanted enemies of the very empire he has worked for so long to protect? What happens when Saul dies, only to be reborn as the apostle Paul?

Picking up where Marked left off, Blinded follows the apostle Paul from persecutor of the early church, to believer and missionary, to his death in Rome. In my retelling, Paul is a driven man, and not necessarily in a good way. Of course he is dead set in his beliefs and decisive in his actions, but he also comes to find that his vision is often clouded and his good intentions yield sometimes disastrous results. Time after time, Paul is forced to reevaluate his belief system and reset his course of action. In the end, however, he discovers that faith is not a destination but a journey, ultimately advocating a vision of God that still seems radical thousands of years later…

"Nothing, not principalities or countries or jails or presidents or rulers or rules, no, not even religion itself, can separate us from the love of God."

In the foreword, Bill Jemas, former president of Marvel Comics and publisher of Genesis Rejuvenated emphasizes the book's relevance to our own time. “Things look bad. The global economy is failing. The rich grow richer and flaunt their valueless lifestyles. The poor fall deeper into poverty and lose faith in their leaders. Selfishness and prejudice drive people into wanton acts of vice and violence…Welcome to the world of Paul the Apostle as seen through the eyes and drawn by the hand of a talented and insightful graphic novelist. In Blinded, Steve Ross portrays the life and times of Paul, drawing upon modern metaphors and images that hearken back to their ancient analogs and timeless issues and ideas.”

To the uninitiated—and perhaps to the uptight—Blinded  may appear blasphemous. But it really wasn't my intention to piss off Christians (well, maybe the more rabid fundamentalists, but that's another story.) Rather, I wanted to strip away all the hero worship that has accrued around Paul and try to reconnect Paul's relevance to today's world. It's no secret that Christians and non-Christians alike often have a real problem with Paul. He's not a very likable guy. He's arrogant. He's homophobic. He's misogynist. He's bossy. By his own admission he is deeply flawed, but buried within those flaws is a man driven to find the truth at whatever cost. And the kicker is that the truth is nothing like what he expected to find.

Review copies, interviews and excerpts available upon request from the publisher. Please contact William Falvey, 212-592-9416, wfalvey@cpg.org,  Seabury Books, 445 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10016