MSNBC: That old-time religion

MSNBC has an article up on religion in comic books, hypothesizing that Peter Parker is a Protestant and talking about Image's the Atheist, among other books:

Comic books from edgier alternative publishers and adult-oriented graphic novels have explored explicitly religious ideas for several decades, but what's striking is how often such themes have been appearing lately in the most mainstream of publications. For a character you can't even see, God does seem to pop up all over the place in the comic book universe.

Or doesn't. One of the more talked-about comic book debuts in recent years was the introduction last year of Antoine Sharpe, a government agent who rejects all things supernatural, by Desperado Publishing and Image Comics.

Sharpe's rigid devotion to rationalism ("If your God falls out of Heaven tomorrow I'll walk up, shake his hand, tug his beard, ask him who shot JFK, and then I'll know God. Until then, he does not exist.") provides his nickname around the office--and the name of the series: "The Atheist."

And hey, even religious scholars are seeing that comics aren't just for kids: “In America today, where we’re told that 90-some percent of people believe in God and a certain large percentage of people have an active life of faith — being involved in church or praying or some other practice — then I think it’s going to be unrealistic not to see that depicted in a story,” said Garrett, a professor of English at Baylor University in Waco, Texas.

“Comics for the last 20 years have [come to] understand that it’s not just teenage boys who are reading about guys in capes,” he said. “There are actually some serious stories that are being told — universal stories.”