What’s next after co-producing and writing for a hit like Breaking Bad? For Boston native Sam Catlin, it was teaming up with Seth Rogen and producing partner Evan Goldberg (This Is the End) to adapt Garth Ennis’ ’90s comic book Preacher, which follows a Texas preacher with mysterious powers who encounters beings from heaven and hell on one heck of a road trip. We caught up with writer and co-producer Catlin before the dark comedic drama’s May 22 premiere on AMC.

Are you a big comic book fan? I grew up reading a lot of Sgt. Rock and Marvel and stuff like that. But I stopped reading comic books a while ago, and [Rogen and Goldberg] are big comic book geeks, so it was a good combination of them being total geeks about it and me kind of having no idea. It was a good marriage.

You’ve worked on dark shows. What draws you to those stories? I’ve always had a perverted sense of humor. The first thing I remember making me laugh hysterically was Monty Python. I watched a very late night showing of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, and there’s that scene where the knight gets all his arms and legs cut off. He’s spurting blood and he’s still like “Don’t run away!” … I’ve always been drawn to satirical, darker comedy. And Preacher certainly has a lot of that, a lot of over-the-top violence and idiocy and perversity. So in a way, I’ve come home.

Is the show aimed at fans of the comic or a broader audience? Hopefully it’s for both. We want the show to appeal to everyone, but we also want the longtime fans of the comic to feel that we’re aware of what dorks they are for it. A big part of the fun of the show is sort of putting in different clues and hints and little references, stuff that only Preacher fans would know about.

So is Seth Rogen like his onscreen persona in real life? Yes and no, because he really is that easygoing. He’s got that down-to-earth, everyman quality; he’s not an egotistical guy at all. But it’s amazing how professional [he and Goldberg] are…. He’s this really powerful, successful businessman—who smokes pot, all the time.