A superhero who is the very first of her kind could be headed to theaters.
According to Deadline, American Gods writer Maria Melnik will pen the film adaptation of Valiant Comics story Faith. If your knowledge of superheroes doesn't surpass whatever happened in the last Marvel movie, here's what you need to know about this titular heroine.
Faith Herbert is not just a comic book character, but one who is obsessed with all-things pop culture. The entertainment journalist is a bubbly, energetic fan girl who eventually taps into her own psychokinetic powers, turning herself into the kind of superhero she has admired and looked up to her entire life. She even gets to fly — which is definitely this entertainment writer's super power of choice as well.
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The other thing about Faith that makes her different from some of the more brooding, cerebral superheroes on the market? She is canonically drawn as a plus-size woman. While there's nothing wrong with Wonder Woman's thinner frame, 67% of real women identify as plus-size. It's time we get a heroine that reflects the bodies of the world we live in.
Of course, just because Faith is drawn as a plus-size woman, does not mean that Hollywood will necessarily cast a plus-size woman in the role. It would be pretty disappointing, however, for the film to go a different way in the casting process.
Not only would the film miss the opportunity to bestow the first plus-size superhero on the world, it would also skip an opportunity to cast a plus-size woman lead in general. Plus-size women may make up most of the women in our society, but we still don't see very many of them on the screen as the protagonists of their own stories. Representation matters, and Faith could be a work that allows the women often ignored by mainstream Hollywood to finally feel seen.
Guess we'll need to have faith and hope that, in this case, a Hollywood adaptation does right by its source material.