Hulu Is Adapting My Favorite Comic With Kevin Bacon Starring, And I Don't Think Streaming Is Ready For Southern Bastards

A few years ago, while browsing my local library’s healthy collection of graphic novels, my eyes were drawn to this graphic novel called Southern Bastards. With an in-your-face title like that and the cover showing a man armed with a bat getting ready to take on an angry mob, I had to see what this was about. Nearly a decade later, I’m sitting here getting just as excited now that there is a book-to-screen adaptation on the way.

I recently stumbled upon a report from The Hollywood Reporter outlining the early happenings of Hulu’s take on Jason Aaron and Jason LaTour’s hard-hitting saga of food served hot and revenge served ice-cold in a southern town obsessed with high school football, and I couldn’t be more excited. With Kevin Bacon set to star, and some major players working on things behind the scenes, we could have our next crime saga on our hands. I just wonder if streaming is ready for the madness of Southern Bastards.

Southern Bastards Is Like Fargo, But With More Violence And High School Football

If you were to take the best qualities of Fargo, Drive-By Truckers’ discography (especially Decoration Day), Friday Night Lights, a pair of brass knuckles, and fried chicken, and mix them all together, you’d get Southern Bastards. Published between 2014 and 2018, Jason Aaron and Jason LaTour’s chronicle of Craw County, Alabama is full of unforgettable characters like Coach Euless Boss, a decorated football coach/BBQ pit master/no-nonsense crime lord who runs the community with an iron fish, the vengeful Earl Tubb looking for payback years after his dad, the former sheriff, was brutally killed, and Roberta Tubb, a veteran of the war in Afghanistan looking to put an end to a cycle of trauma and violence.

It’s a sprawling, captivating, violent, and emotional journey, one that is full of all kinds of twists, turns, revelations, and bloody encounters. Not for the faint of heart, Southern Bastards grabbed my attention all those years ago, and it still has a hold on me now. As someone who grew up in the South, specifically a town where high school football is king and its power players are kings, this one speaks to me.

This Show Is Going To Be So Violent, And I’ll Here For It

Did I mention that Southern Bastards is incredibly violent? And I’m not just talking about physical encounters in backrooms, the football field, or bars. There’s a meanness in Jason Aaron and Jason LaTour’s graphic novel, and sometimes words can do more damage than any fist, gun, or baseball bat fashioned from a tree under which a dead man rests. I’m excited for the physicality of this show (if Hulu doesn’t tone it down), but I’m just as curious to see how director Reinaldo Marcus Green and writers Bill Dubuque and Nia DaCosta handle the drama, hatred, and pain at the story’s core.

Just as I’m sure that Kevin Bacon will knock it out of the park with his portrayal of Earl Tubb (I wonder how his story will be told), I am confident that the creative team pulling the strings behind the scenes will make this a faithful adaptation of my favorite comic or graphic novel. It’s going to be something.

I cannot wait for the day when I’ll be able to watch Southern Bastards with my Hulu subscription. It most likely won’t be on the 2026 TV schedule, so I guess it’s time to go another round with this hard-hitting saga.