Faith #7 Review

Bad Dreams and Force Ghosts


Written by: Jody Houser
Art by: Joe Eisma, Andrew Dalhouse, Marguerite Sauvage
Cover Price: $3.99
Release Date: January 4, 2017
Review by: Ryan Douglas

Check out Ryan’s podcast, Columbus Comics Corner HERE.

The “Long Con” arc is catching back up to Faith, the relic Murder Mouse used to duplicate people maybe coming back into play. During their encounter he used the relic to make a Faith double, but the two Faiths eventually teamed up to take down Murder Mouse. The arc ends with her double flying the relic and herself into the sun to a means of destroying it, costing the dupe’s life. Now let’s see how all this will affect Faith moving forward.




SPOILERS!!!

We catch up with Faith hanging out with her friend Jay, who shows her several costumes she’s made. She’s quite the a fan of both DC and Marvel heroes. We see a Superman, Jessica Jones and Cable type costumes. These costumes don’t seem to vibe with Faith and she sticks to what she knows. One thing really stood out to me about the art during this exchange. The colors Andrew Dalhouse uses to draw the floor tiles does feel very realistic and separates itself from the rest of the art. The combination of both coloring styles really fit together. 

While the two are talking, Faith looks into the mirror and see’s the image of her face melting off. She does a double take and things seem back to normal. She yells out to herself and makes Jay feel she dislikes the costumes that she’s made for her. Faith plays it off as just being tired since she’s bringing the Harbinger’s back together as well as starring in her own series. Which was nice to see the subtle note about the current Harbinger run to tie-in the two books. There Faith thinks it’ll be a good idea to head home to try to shake this hallucination off. 

Returning home, Faith falls asleep and we're treated to another amazing fantasy dream sequence drawn and colored by Marguerite Sauvage. It’s always a treat to see her art on paper.  Faith enters the “Comic Book Shop”, has a funny exchange with Chris Criswell while making her way to the back issue bins. There her dream becomes a nightmare. Charlene “Flamingo”, who died originally at the end of Harbinger Wars story appears to ruin her dream. After waking up and not being able to fall back asleep, Faith decides to head into work super early. Even there she can’t get away from these horrible visions and takes the rest of the day off work. As anyone may want to do when you leave work early to go home. Faith decides to relax and pick up the controller to play a fighting game based on her favorite superhero show, Night Shifters.

There Charlene appears again to ruin her video game session and continues to blame Faith for her death. It seems the relic and being back with Renegades is starting to trigger something in her mind. Not being able to even enjoy the game, she attempts to read Harry Potter to try and stay awake. That quickly backfires for her and wakes up to a vision of her deceased parents, Charlene, and her dupe. All these figures continue to blame Faith for their death. She finally has had enough, screams out blindly, opens her eyes and the relic ghosts are gone. The issue ends with Faith calling off work again the following morning and isn’t quite sure when she can return to work.  

Jody Houser continues to provide a fun take on superhero stories. I’ve followed her writing since jumping into Faith and recently reading Mother Panic(DC’s Young Animal). Seeing her take on a lighter hopeful character and darker character, it's cool to see she can handle both styles. As far as the story, it makes me wonder if this will also play into the bigger event leading up to Harbinger Wars 2. If that’s the case we are still getting a solo Faith based story that’s not interfered heavily with the bigger picture of the Valiant universe. While we weren’t provided with too much info to really get an idea of what's to come for this arc. 

Bits and Pieces:

If you’ve followed the series since the “Long Con” arc, you may have several theories of what may happen by the end of this. The earlier arc was a break between the two. Maybe to give it some breathing room before moving forward. Nonetheless, the start of the issue left me excited to see how this all plays out. Faith is a series you really want to check out if you want to break into the Valiant universe and looking for your next favorite superhero.

9/10