Faith And The Future Force #1

About a year ago, I resolved to get more familiar with the Valiant Comic Universe, and one hero that immediately stood out to me was Faith. She is instantly likeable and very human, and you find yourself rooting for her very easily. I read her most recent run from beginning to end and loved how they developed her story, making it relevant to the world we live in without it feeling overly trendy, and they bucked the usual trend with secret identies by having a fair few people close to her know who she really is. This caught me unawares with how much I liked this idea, as it suddenly hits you how much more realistic that feels than the usual tropes of no-one knowing or only their partner being in on their secret. So I have been waiting eagerly for Faith to return to the shelves.

Faith and the Future Force #1 sees the story move along quite quickly; there is time given to re-introducing Faith Herbert to the reader, but not so much as to feel self-indulgent. This is more a book for people who have read some Faith already rather than people new to the character, but if you are, it doesn't take a great deal of back issue reading to gain familiarity. So we get down to the business of superheroing very early on, and the time-travel aspect of the story makes it clear why this is the case. The book is crammed with sci-fi references, which if you're a massive geek you will enjoy, and really would have to be done if you were travelling through time.

If they ever invented actual time travel, this conversation would be had, a lot.

Whilst I wasn't particularly struck by the cover art - it would make a great poster but I wasn't sure about it as a cover - Stephen Segovia and Barry Kitson's work on the pages of this book is absolutely wonderful. The splash pages are fun in a way that fits with the tone of the comic, and the colouring by Ulises Arreola is bright and makes every page very enjoyable to look at. Jody Houser has used the first issue very well to set up the basic premise of the story, packing a lot in without it feeling too busy, and gets us ready to plunge into the story proper right from the beginning of issue #2 which I will be sure to get when it comes out. You should too, this is another great effort from Valiant.

 3.5 / 5