Comics I Bought: March 20, 2008

I'm back from the comic shop this week and I got 1 new comic plus a hard cover collection:

Ex Machina - 35

"The Saga of the Seven Suns: Veiled Alliances" (Yeah, I dug around the shop until I found this. I couldn't leave with just one comic!)

And now for a review of something I've read recently.

"Antoine Sharpe is The Atheist Incarnate" by Phil Hester, John McCrea, and Will Volley

I picked this book up having never heard of the series it collects (issues 1-4). I'm not that familiar with it's authors, though I recognize their names, but the artwork looked okay and I liked the basic premise written up on the back cover. The lead character, Antoine Sharpe, is a brilliant skeptic who, as an independent contractor, debunks things for the US government. I'm a fan of debunking. What's more fun than ruining some con man's fun? Penn and Teller's "Bullshit" is a favorite show of mine. And who can forget that PBS show where; I think it was the Amazing Randi (a real life debunker) went to Russia to check out a health spa run by crazy Russians who "charged" water with their minds to make it into health water. Good stuff debunking.

Strangely enough, upon reading the book, I discovered there was no actual debunking going on. For the first time in his career, Antoine Sharpe, runs into a real supernatural threat. That is a fairly common plot where fictional debunkers are concerned. It usually annoys me and started to here but then I was quickly turned around by the more original elements in the story. That and the overall execution of the comic which was done well.

You see the dead have found a way to inhabit the bodies of the living. And they want to live in Winnipeg. That causes a real big problem for the living. Especially the Winnipegers. Antoine Sharpe is called in to figure out what the hell is going on. He loves figuring things out. It's what makes him tick.

That's all you need to know about the plot. The story has some interesting characters, twists and turns, and kept me involved the whole way. The first three issues are drawn by John McCrea and the last by Will Volley. Volley does his best to match McCrea's style and generally succeeds so it all hangs together nicely as one piece despite the change in artists.

I'll have to put this book in the "pleasant surprise" category being that I was so unfamiliar with it yet enjoyed it thoroughly. If you're looking for a good read in an X-Files or John Constantine sort of way check this book out. It's from Desperado Publishing and is labeled as horror. Well worth tracking down.