The Saint is described as "a grim, taciturn, implacable killing machine" with supernatural abilities involving divinity, immortality, and influence over Heaven and Hell.

[8] The Saint of Killers first appeared as a heartless murderer, who is transformed into the Angel of Death under the condition that he takes up the role of collecting the souls of those who die by violence.

The Saint was a primary antagonist in the Preacher series, who is tasked by Heaven to kill protagonist Jesse Custer due to his possession by the entity Genesis.

In the first season, the character's real name is revealed to be William Munny in the series' second season, after Clint Eastwood's character from Unforgiven,[11] who was initially cited by Ennis (along with fellow actor Lee Marvin) as his principal inspiration for the Saint's design in the original comic series, with artists Dillon and Glenn Fabry making him look far more physically imposing.

In his foreword to Preacher: Ancient History, Ennis reveals that Clint Eastwood provided the inspiration for the character of the Saint of Killers, with the face of Lee Marvin influencing Steve Dillon's visual depiction of him.

But eventually the soldier revealed the source of his intractable hate: the only good thing in his bad life was taken from him, and he died without killing McCready, leaving his thirst for vengeance unsated.

Due to his dangerously uncontrollable nature, Heaven arranged for him to be put into a deep slumber, until God had need of him as His instrument of death and destruction.

[3] For the final time, an Angel was sent to wake the Saint of Killers and to instruct him with the task of finding and killing a young man named Jesse Custer.

Because of Genesis's possession of Jesse, the young preacher has been granted ability of The Word of God, allowing him to give vocal orders that cannot be disobeyed, and this frightened the Angels.

In their terror, the angels told him everything – Jesse went to France to confront The Grail, a worldwide organization dedicated to triggering the Apocalypse and ruling the world.

In their possession, The Grail held captive an Angel, to which the Seraph told them that the entity Genesis was the key in gaining answers to God's abandonment of Heaven, as well as the reasons as to why the Saint's wife and daughter died; which intrigued the man, thus taking up the offer.

Discovering the truth placed the Saint into a fit of rage, and he stepped out and confronted the forces of the U.S. Army and the Grail; single-handedly taking on hundreds of soldiers, tanks and helicopters, and destroying every force that was pitted up against him, which drove Starr to pressure the President into sending a stealth bomber to Monument Valley, turning it into an irradiated wasteland with the Saint in the centre of it.

His activities during this point in time are relatively unknown; though after one year he felt a strong sensation which compelled him to go back to Ratwater, Texas, where Jesse was with the Saint's human remains.

He created a world full of humans who would fight in his name, just to see who adored him more, and that he engineered the creation of Genesis, a being as powerful as Him, in order to see if He could make it love Him.

[21] Chronologically speaking, his first description was given as, "Just a stooped and weathered man on a flea-bit mare, the Walker Colt worn backwards on his hip and the Henry rifle by his saddle silent now for many a year.

As time progressed and came the period where he was tracking the band of Kiowa and meeting of his future wife, we see the Saint sans-coat donning a blue shirt, cross-suspenders, grey trousers and his wide brimmed hat.

[24] Shortly after being bequeathed the title of 'The Saint of Killers', by the Angel of Death, he was presented with the attire he would remain with while placed on Earth: a long loose-fitting yellow duster coat, a wide brimmed hat, two Colt revolvers, and a cross draw holster at the trouser belt line.

[29] From his radically altered perspective, which awakens when he learns of God's purpose and when he fulfills his vengeance, almost all human concerns appear pointless and without obvious merit, to which he sleeps.

"[30] While Jesse acknowledged the Saint's "ten long years" of attempting to change from his past during the Civil War;[31] he trembled when Custer brought up the events of Ratwater,[32] and he too has shown aspects of compassion through mercy killing.

This weakness can be seen when he was tracking down Jesse Custer and threatened to "Kill his way across half Creation", but ended up being forced to commandeer a ship to travel from America to France.

Now, however, he is able to draw his guns faster than a man can see, at a seemingly superhuman rate;[41] coupled with a perfect aim — even when men were hanging off his arms the Saint could shoot true and find his target mark.

[43][44] The Saint of Killers possesses a pair of Walker Colt revolver pistols, which were bequeathed to him by the Angel of Death, composed from the previous Angel's steel sword and forged in the last fire that burned in Hell,[2] because of the nature of their making, the guns are supernatural in nature: Before becoming the Saint of Killers, his arsenal included a Henry repeating rifle,[22] a Model 1860 Light Cavalry Saber,[42] a Bowie knife,[46] as well as a pair of non-divine Walker Colt pistols.

[50] The character of The Saint of Killers is an eternal bounty hunter, one who delights in gratuitous violence on the American frontier in the 1880s following a personal disaster.

[51] Ennis described his creation of the Saint as owing much to Clint Eastwood "specifically in his later movies, the long coat, the wide brimmed hat, the old Colt revolvers", however, co-creator [Dillon] preferred Lee Marvin and, as Ennis explained,[52] "that's why you've got this character who I always think moves, speaks and has all the mannerisms of Eastwood but has that kind of handsome ugliness that Lee Marvin had."

Dr Julia Round of The Media School, Bournemouth University[53] has suggested such symbols were described as being somewhat reflective commentary on the west, by being "conscious appropriations of its underlying mechanisms", as both Ennis and Dillon based the character of the Saint specifically on the actors as not the characters they played; which is seen throughout Preacher as a means of reflecting the "expectations and genre anxiety" of the readers through the acknowledgement of sources and usage of "implicit commentary.

[54] Michael Grimshaw of the University of Canterbury observes that the Preacher's undercurrent of the violent frontier of the Saint of Killers acts both as a "sub-narrative and explanatory device".

And expresses acknowledgement to Garth Ennis' critique of "neo-romantic ideology" in terms of the "sacrificial outpouring of blood" and its involvement in the alteration of the environment.

[51] Niall Kitson believes every character in Ennis and Dillon's work has a sort of value system, stating, "those who appear good have an innate darkness to them and even the blackest of demons is capable of acting to a moral code", of which the Saint of Killers himself isn't immune to due to displays of such a logical moral system of thought, while Kitson builds upon such proposition by further adding, "[The Saint] has a background steeped in pathos and is not averse to making a deal when it suits his needs".

Kjartan Fossberg Jónsson argues that while Jesse is Ennis' representation on the "western hero" while the Saint represents "the old west, film, and myth."