In the week leading up to the 2017 Will Eisner Awards voting deadline this Friday, the Comics Beat will feature a series of “For Your Consideration” posts highlighting a number of the nominees as a celebration of their well-deserved acknowledgement. We’ll feature some never-before-seen behind the scenes content and some of the books’ gorgeous interiors. We encourage all of our readers to check these titles out and all of the eligible comics industry members to vote for the titles they think best exemplify what make comics great.
While Faith Herbert, the high-flying, telekinetic, body-positive Valiant hero, has existed for over twenty years, when her latest incarnation made her series debut in 2016, she struck a powerful new chord in the public consciousness. As the Atlantic noted in their profile of the character, “Faith finally seems to exist in the right time, and readers seem to agree: The miniseries has received the fastest third, fourth, and fifth printing in comic history.”
While much of the discussion around Faith has focused around her body, the comic itself as written by Jody Houser and drawn by artists including Pere Pérez, Marguerite Sauvage, and Colleen Doran, rarely makes mention of it. Indeed, what’s at the forefront of Faith’s mind is managing her double life, geeking out as hard as possible, and dealing with the realization that her big celebrity crush is actually a supervillain! She’s allowed to simply be, and so doing, has become all the more inspirational for it.
Faith is nominated for the Eisner for Best New Series.
In a city under siege by robots, aliens, monsters, and even worse… celebrities, there is only one woman the people of Los Angeles can count on: the stratospheric superhero called Faith! Aspiring reporter by day and dedicated crime-fighter by night, Faith has tackled every obstacle in her path with confidence – like those crushing deadlines at work, the long-distance boyfriend half a world away, and the missing back issues that plague her comics collection! But, unbeknownst to her, Faith is about to collide with the one force she never saw coming: an up-and-coming super-villain bent on snuffing her out once and for all! But who is lurking behind the mask of her new foe…and could they just be the one person capable of rendering Faith powerless?
Check out of all of our 2017 Eisner coverage.
