[Comic Book Review] Faith Volume 1: Hollywood and Vine by Jody Houser

Orphaned at a young age, Faith Herbert - a psionically gifted "psiot" discovered by the Harbinger Foundation - has always aspired to greatness. But now this once ordinary teenager is taking control of her own destiny and becoming the hard-hitting hero she's always known she can be - complete with a mild-mannered secret identity, unsuspecting colleagues, and a day job as a reporter. Faith makes a secret transformation to patrol the night as the City of Angels' own leading superhero - the sky-soaring Zephyr! But flying solo is going to be tougher than she every thought when Zephyr uncovers a deep-rooted alien conspiracy. Two-bit burglars and car thieves are one thing, but when the world needs a hero to stave off an full-blown extraterrestrial invasion, will Faith find herself over her head or reading for her biggest challenge yet?

5 STARS 

This comic series is absolutely amazing. I picked this up on a whim, not knowing anything about it other than it had a fat woman as the main superhero. Which honestly was enough for me to check it out from my local library. I am happy to announce I absolutely loved it.

The characters were great. I loved our main character,  Faith. She was sweet, kind, sometimes sassy, and totally badass. I loved what we saw of her personal and work friends too. I am excited to get to know them more in the next volumes. In this first volume she does a lot of lonely crime fighting so we didn't get too much background of who they are, but it seems like that'll change which I am excited about.

I loved the art. It was colorful and super visually pleasing to read. I found myself taking a lot of  photos of the panels and pages. That was for a couple reasons, the first obviously being the art but the other reason being because I have never read a comic series where not only is the main character a proper plus sized woman, but also her weight is never brought up. That was so refreshing and amazing to me. When going into this comic I went into it worried her weight would be brought up often and when I finished the volume and realized it hadn't come up I was really happy. Faith was treated like an actual human who has qualities other than her weight. She dates men who are "conventionally beautiful", she is competent and capable, and she is treated with respect. I applaud and thank the creators at Valiant Comics for this.

Overall, I highly highly recommend this comic volume. I cannot recommend it enough! I was never bored through it, and it was such a fun read. I am so excited this series exists and I have already requested the second volume so stay tuned for my review on that!

Thanks for reading!