Welcome, dear readers, to another week of comics and commentary at Comics! The Blog! We kick things off, as always, by handing out awards for the Best of the Week – beginning with twoAward postings, followed closely by the past week’s Best.

If we’re being totally honest, I am just about sick to death with hearing about atheists online. Between Richard Dawkins, Ricky Gervais and the whiskey-soaked ghost of Christopher Hitchens, I could go the rest of my life without hearing someone sarcastically deride billions of people while trying to make a comment about equality. The funny thing, of course, is that I am myself a nonbeliever; I just simply don’t see my own school of thought relayed online as much as I’d like. Thankfully (and somewhat paradoxically), S.H.O.O.T. First #4, the end to Justin Aclin and Nicolas Daniel Selma‘s miniseries (for now…) about paramilitary atheism, ended up providing just the kind of salve I wanted.

All this has ended up being pretty funny to me, because, after all, this is a series whose hook is literally atheists blowing up representations of belief using weapons powered by a lack of it. It’s a concept that on a broad level is dear to my heart (80s action movies with an ironic twist) and on a smaller level has laid the ground for some excellent visuals by Selma and colourist Marlac, like the team fighting Jinn, blowing up a monsterized Sphinx and parleying with fairies. That, combined with the faint wink of some familiar archetypes and a distinct visual style with an eye for action scenes, has kept the book moving along, while the events of the first issue’s climax have been waiting their turn. All that comes together in the final issue, where the emotional stakes get their payoff and also some fairies are cut in half.

It is pretty boss.

Where it all comes together, though, is arguably the best scene of the entire series, a mother explains to her scared son (who is the antichrist but not really the antichrist because that doesn’t exist but also people believe it does and that gives it power) that he doesn’t have to be afraid, that he can be what he chooses to be because that’s the only thing that has power over what he becomes. It’s simple, emotional and a great moment of teamwork between the book’s creative team, as they render the key moment sensitively but without alienating it from the rest of the series. It’s also a nakedly vulnerable moment from Aclin, and one that I can identify with. If you’re going to base a book on one idea, it’s pretty great if you can do it with one about kindness. And also explosions.