Phil Hester on Antoine Sharp – The Atheist

The Atheist was a 4-issue mini-series written by Phil Hester featuring Antoine Sharpe, nicknamed “The Atheist” and described as “a scalpel on two legs – skeptical, brilliant, ruthless. A special agent with a shadowy department of the U.S. government, Sharpe applies his unconventional intellect to any paranormal threats that arise. His mission: Debunk or destroy!”

In this mini-series, it appears that people are being possessed by the souls of those long dead – leading to hedonistic raves, substance abuse, self mutilation, violence and murder. “The Atheist” is tasked with both finding out the truth behind these possessions and stopping what he believes to be a “plague” from destroying civilization as we know it.

The first three issues (published April 2005, July 2005 and March 2006) feature art by John McCrea, while the fourth issue (published November 2007) has art by Will Volley. This was collected as Antoine Sharpe – The Atheist: Incarnate and published in February 2008.

The first issue of Antoine Sharp: The Atheist Volume 2 was published in In August 2008, written by Phil Hester with art by Kevin Mellon. Issue #2 was published in October 2008, and issues #3 & 4 were subsequently cancelled.

Seeing Phil Hester on Twitter, I asked…

@philhester Any chance we’ll get the rest of Antoine Sharp: The Atheist Vol. 2?

… and he replied:

@Hellstorm It will be printed in an IDW Omnibus (entire series) & if you don’t want to buy that the last 2 issues will go online for free.

Searching online for shipping/price info, I found the following on the Bleedingcool.com forums.

Phil Hester: Sales were super awful and we got cancelled. So we’re printing the conclusion to the second series in IDW’s Antoine Sharpe omnibus later this year/early next. For those of you interested in the ending to the 2nd series, but not so keen on buying the omnibus, the conclusion will go online for free simultaneously.

Gary Reed: The first mini came out via Image, but it was a joint publication as all Desperado books were for the first couple of years. By the time the second mini-series started being printed, it was after Desperado left Image. Now it’s coming out from IDW as Desperado has moved over there and will be an imprint or a packaging house… not sure what the exact details will end up being.

I think the term Omnibus refers to ALL the issues so I’d expect the six published and the two unpublished. Desperado will make the unpublished issues available online for free so fans who purchased the first two can read the story without buying the entire omnibus. Desperado has done this before with Common Foe #6.

You can read a 5 Page Preview of The Atheist Volume 1, #1 here.

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