Faith #1

Alt cover (but my favorite.)

Faith #1: Gotta Have It.

Written By: Jody Houser

Art by: Pere Perez & Marguerite Sauvage

Release date: 7/20/2016

Trying to pin Faith’s success to a certain thing, seems to be a bit binary. I know its nice to see a different demographic represented in a flagship title. It has been done in different mediums though not often. But I think its the team at Valiant, that have put together a great book. Zephyr, the main protagonist is a character that was put together with a certain amount of endearment. Spiderman owes his success to the very same things that makes Faith #1 a success.

Well enough gushing about this book. Lets get to the nitty gritty. Faith #1 gets its audience. It’s a very human down to earth story. A young single (sorta kinda?) woman trying to make it in the world. A lot of triple A titles often have decades of baggage attached to it, along with mixed up storylines, and plot holes big enough to drive a charter bus through. With Faith #1 you get a comic book that starts fresh, and can have its own legacy.

Faith Herbert, the name of Zephyr our super heroine finds herself in her first issue balancing her friends, job, and super hero job. Not an easy trio to juggle. The first issue does good to establish exactly what is going on with this series. We get a bare bones assessment of what the series will be like. I believe in all honestly it does well to establish itself.

Jody Houser the writer for the book, has proven herself time and again with Faith. Shes given us an eternal optimist despite her circumstances. She isn’t the dark, buff, stoic, hyper genius that comicdom has pushed the last 80 years. Which don’t get me wrong, if you were to take a walk through my collection you’d see that exact thing and say, “Gee, Lowell you sure do like the dark, buff, stoic, hyper genius comics huh?” Well that being said, I’m totally opposite of what I tend to pull off the comics shelves. Faith I hope is a harbinger of things to come.

Houser keeps her characters approachable. The people that are in her stories are people that I would find in my life. The dialogue reads organically and natural, it reminds me of Kevin Smith a bit, but with her own style of course. The action and major plot points keep the story from becoming stale. Zephyr isn’t flying around just because, Houser is showing us the development and the school of hard knocks that Faith entered in.

Pere Perez does the real life sequence art. I truly dig the style. The way Faith Herbert is drawn looks true to life. Pere’s action sequences really pull me in when I’m reading. And when someone is hit or falls, it truly looks painful, due to the fact that the way Pere draws his facial expressions.

On the other side of the coin is Marguerite Sauvage. Marguerite draws the dream sequences, which breaks the book up. We get a glimpse too on how Faith sees herself, which I think we can all relate too. Plus Sauvage makes the book pop with color, which I love.

Overall this book will be talked about for years. Not to put any pressure on the team behind Faith #1, but they have a burden on their shoulders to keep doing great things. But as long as they have fun doing what they’re doing we’ll have an awesome book to keep adding to our pull lists.