At the comics shop, religion goes graphic

The conversion of ‘The Atheist’
To a certain extent, the same thing has happened to “The Atheist.” When issues 4 and 5 appear, probably later this year, the title will have been de-emphasized, and it will eventually be branded exclusively as “Antoine Sharpe,” said Phil Hester, the series’ creator and writer.

Because of the series’ title and Hester’s reputation as an illustrator (he is perhaps best known for artistically invigorating the mainstream characters Green Arrow and Swamp Thing), “The Atheist” generated buzz even before the first issue was released last year. From the beginning, television and the movies were intrigued, but the TV talks fizzled, Hester said.

“The TV people were like, ‘Look, there’s not going to be any sort of “The Atheist” brought to you by Ford,’” he said from his home in Iowa. “‘I don’t think we’re going to be able to round up sponsors with this title.’”

That wasn’t a problem for Hester, who was already rethinking the title. For one thing, the story line isn’t religious, and “The Atheist” raised expectations among readers that Hester wasn’t prepared to fulfill. In effect, the title had become bigger than the story.

“I think people were expecting bigger answers,” he said. “And I just thought it was a cool name. I just wanted to present this character with an impenetrably skeptical, logical world view and throw him into these unexplainable paranormal events.”

More striking were the letters Hester got, most of them positive. But a few “sort of got to me,” he said. They were from teens who were “taking a lot of grief in their school life for their world view.”

The God Squad! Meet ‘The Illuminator’ At the other end of the comics spectrum are series put out by religious publishers for religious readers. Mostly, these are instructive parables targeted at young readers, while others are graphical biographies of saints and other church leaders. But there have been attempts to cross over to older, more mainstream audiences. “Creature Tech,” by Doug TenNapel, is a graphic novel that grafts traditional science fiction space adventures onto the story of a scientist’s return to his faith, while Arcadius Press, of Springfield, Mo., is launching a weekly series of comic books in which saints are transformed into superheroes. The most ambitious incursion into the mainstream market came in 1993, when religious publishers Thomas M. Nelson teamed up with Marvel Comic to produce “The Illuminator.” The goal was to produce an authentic Christian superhero in a slam-bang action style that traditional comics fans would embrace. Andy Prentiss, a normal teenager, is given supernatural powers and defeats a band of thuggish fellow students who are turned into zombies by a character who is very obviously Satan. “The Illuminator” didn’t overpower the reader with its religious message, and it looked and read like any number of other superhero comic books. But it was ahead of its time, and Nelson’s refusal to allow advertising necessitated an expensive cover price. It lasted just three issues. —Alex Johnson

“They didn’t care so much about the book being reflective of their world view, but they thought the fact that any horror comic book that had that title sort of reinforced some negative stereotypes about their world view,” Hester said. “And after thinking about it, I could not argue with that point. I agreed.”

Hester said the running conversation drove home to him that “we’re all individuals.” In his letters, “no two people had the same understanding of what being a Baptist was like, and no two other people had an understanding of what being an atheist was like. All these belief systems were unique to each individual.

“That’s sort of the way we as creators are like,” he added. “We're doing the best we can to express ourselves. We’re not always going to represent your point of view.”

The positive thing, he said, is that the topic can be discussed rationally today. While he probably won’t do so with “Antoine Sharpe,” Hester said he wouldn’t hesitate to take on an explicitly religious story some other time: “I don’t want to be bound by what my comic can and can’t do. If I want to explore it, it will go in that direction.”

Today, “creators feel they have that freedom,” he said. “Whether or not they’re using it in an effective way is another issue, but at least creators feel like they can explore all these issues.”

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