Days Before Election, Valiant's Faith Co-Stars Candidate Hillary Clinton

When a person from the real world shows up in your favorite comic book reality, it used to be a pretty big deal. For the past few elections, the candidates themselves have been doing cameos here or there in superhero titles, such as when Spider-Man got the opportunity to meet Barack Obama.

This year is no exception, as Valiant Comics puts out the nick-of-time appearance of Hillary Clinton in FAITH #5. The appearance is central to the second story of the issue, "Faith in Politics," written by Louise Simonson and drawn by Pere Perez. In the story, Faith is sent by her editor (who knows her secret identity) to cover a Hillary Clinton appearance in her superhero guise. She's not keen on doing it -- covering politics for an entertainment blog -- and I can keenly sympathize with her as I write this.

While covering the event, she ends up thwarting a robbery on-site involving a super-villain and a helicopter, all the while reminding us page by page how important it is to vote: "We need to think about the kind of world we want to live in, and vote for the people who are likeliest to help make it happen." It's a decent, if superficial, story that ends with the hero meeting the candidate, who is of course a fan of Faith. Although I have to think that it's either super-sneaky of Simonson or just an incredibly unlucky choice that comics-Clinton is standing by a wounded Secret Service agent (pinned under broken helicopter rotor) while encouraging him: "Don't worry, Stevens, I'm not going anywhere. Help is on the way."

Casting about for which superheroes were engaged in meeting with Clinton's opponent, Donald Trump, the only examples I could find (outside of direct parody and biographical independent comics) were SPIDER-GWEN ANNUAL #1, where he is cast as the villainous M.O.D.A.A.K. (Mental Organism Designed as America's King) and CAPTAIN AMERICA: STEVE ROGERS where his campaign themes were used as the rhetoric for the Nazi bad guy, The Red Skull.

FAITH #5 also includes two other stories -- "Dark Star" by Jody House and Meghan Hetrick, which finds Faith looking for a missing teen star who falls under the influence of evil, and "No Days Off" by Rafer Roberts and Colleen Doran, a feel-good piece about what drives Faith as a superhero. The former is a to-be-continued piece, while the latter is a done-in-one, day-in-the-life glimpse. Overall, all three stories show why FAITH has been finding her way into people's subscription lists.