Faith Herbert, otherwise known by her alias Zephyr, is a Valiant Comics character created by Jim Shooter and David Lapham, first appearing in Harbinger #1 (dated January 1992).
After losing her parents in an accident, Faith Herbert finds solace in fictional worlds of superheroes and tabletop RPGs. Years later as an adult, she discovers her latent psionic abilities and joins a team called the Renegades, adopting the codename Zephyr. Through her experiences with them, she not only comes into her own as a superhero, but a person in general.
After appearing as a supporting character throughout the modern Valiant Universe since its reboot in 2012, Faith finally landed her first solo title —a limited series written by Jody Houser with art by Francis Portella and Marguerite Sauvage— in 2016. Due to overwhelming acclaim from critics and audiences alike, Faith was soon relaunched as an ongoing title with much of the same creative team intact.
Notable Comic Books
- Harbinger vol. 1 (1992 — 1995)
- Harbinger vol. 2 (2012 — 2015)
- Faith vol. 1 (4 issue mini; 2016)
- Faith vol. 2 (2016 — 2017)
- Harbinger Renegade vol. 1 (2016 — Present)
- Faith and the Future Force vol. 1 (4 issue mini; 2017)
- Faith: Dreamside vol. 1 (5 issue mini; 2018)
Faith provides examples of the following tropes:
- Acrofatic: Faith's body type is atypical for a superhero — especially for a female superhero.
- Art Shift: In her solo title — Marguerite Sauvage provides the art for Faith's dreamy fantasy sequences.
- Ascended Fangirl: Faith was already a lifelong fan of superheroes when she became one.
- Benevolent Boss: In Faith's solo series, her boss at Zipline, Mimi, despite initially showing some Mean Boss tendencies, agrees to protect her secret identity when she is exposed to the Zipline workers and comes up with a cover story, and is later very understanding of when Faith's superheroics get in the way of her work.
- Big Beautiful Woman: Regardless of her body type, Faith is a fairly attractive woman.
- Bland-Name Product: Faith works for a website called Zipline, which is an obvious stand-in for Buzzfeed.
- Blow You Away: Faith can generate wind bursts.
- The Cameo:
- Issue #3 of the ongoing series, where Faith and Archer go to a convention together, features background cameos by real life comic book writers and artists like Gail Simone, Jeff Lemire and Kelly Sue Deconnick.
- Issue #5 of the ongoing series, released the week before voting day in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, includes a short story where Faith goes on a reporting assignment at a Hillary Clinton campaign rally and ends up meeting her personally after defusing an incident with the supervillain Squall.
- Clark Kenting: Subverted. While her real identity is Faith Herbert, she constructs a civilian identity by the name of Summer Smith, who wears glasses and has red hair.
- Contractual Purity: In-Universe, with the teen actress Zoe Hines, the star of the Show Within a Show TV series Broadway High School, who was one of the victims in a phone hack that leaked private photos of her in her underwear intended for her boyfriend. Even though the pictures were harmless, it was considered incompatible with her "wholesome teen star" image, resulting in the show being cancelled.
- Dating Catwoman: Faith's initial interest in Chris Chriswell, who turns out to be not such a good guy.
- Flying Brick: In conjunction with her psionic abilities, Faith can also fly.
- Meaningful Name: Living up to her name, Faith is known for being a source of boundless optimism.
- No Celebrities Were Harmed: Chris Chriswell (Faith's crush-turned-nemesis) is an amalgam of Marvel's trio of blond Chrises (Chris Evans, Chris Hemsworth, Chris Pratt) in their cinematic universe.
- Psychic Powers: Faith has psionic abilities, such as telekinesis and force field generation.
- Shallow News Site Satire: Faith works at "Zipline", a BuzzFeed parody that churns out quizzes and listicles. She hates it, but has no other recourse, as blogging is the only thing she can actually put on her civilian resume.
- Show Within a Show: Night Shifters, shown in the initial miniseries, is a sci-fi action series about a maintenance crew from the future who travel across time and space to recover a collection of futuristic cleaning equipment that was sent back in time and keep it from being misused.
- So Beautiful, It's a Curse: Chris Chriswell is an evil example; he always dreamed of playing supervillains, finding them more compelling than heroes, but because of his good looks, he kept getting cast in heroic roles, making him miserable.
- Tiny Guy, Huge Girl: When Faith begins dating Archer.
- Voice with an Internet Connection: Faith is aided by the hacker @x, whom she and the other Renegades met in the Harbinger series.
