Publisher: Valiant Comics
Released: March 12^th 2019
Received: NetGalley
Issues: Faith: Dreamside 1-4
Rating:

I received a copy of Faith: Dreamside through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and honest review.

Faith: Dreamside is a new miniseries from Valiant. It includes a couple of their beloved characters…one of whom you could probably guess from the title of the series. Along for the ride is Dr. Mirage and Animalia.

Confession time: I am still not fully up-to-date with Faith’s main series. I’ve read most of the miniseries about her at this point though, so I’m used to getting minor spoilers. It does however mean that sometimes I’m out of the loop when major events occur.

Dreamside is only four issues long, but in some ways, it felt like it was longer. There was a breathtaking amount of character development and several absolutely striking views of a whole new land that these characters have never previously been to.

This was a beautiful series. I loved the character dynamics and the world that was shown to us, courtesy of Dr. Mirage and the combined subconscious of our main characters. I loved almost every element to this series, so forgive me if I sound a little too enthusiastic about it.

The series starts out with Faith being a little on the angsty side and being pretty tough on herself. Though on the bright side it did reinforce all of the reasons behind keeping your alter ego a secret. I’m not sure if this happened towards the end of Faith’s series, another series, or was invented for the sake of this introduction…but before this miniseries started Faith had been framed for murder. And by that I mean the superhero side of her had been, forcing her to take on her mild-mannered and adorably geeky alter ego full time.

Realistically this is something that all superheroes should do from time to time. Not get framed for murder, but take a break from the superheroing for a little bit. It probably provides a lot of perspectives. Granted it’s probably a lot less painful when it’s an intentional break…

Anyway, moving on. Animalia gets thrown into the mix early on, and she doesn’t really understand why Faith is so upset or holding back. Some would make comments about ‘kids, amirite?’ here, but Animalia has gone through a lot, so it’s not like she doesn’t get heavy subjects. In fact, she’s dealing with something downright horrible at the moment, hence her sudden appearance to Faith.

I actually really like Animalia’s character, and think that she’d be a great influence on Faith. Part of me wishes that the two could spend more time together, but that risks having the whole adult superhero with a child sidekick thing, and I think we’d all prefer to avoid that.

Dr. Mirage was fantastic. Her backstory was new to me, so naturally I found it utterly heartbreaking. I’m definitely going to follow the other series with her in it. I just have to know the whole story.

The last two issues were without a doubt my favorites of the set. I loved the world that they went to, and more than that I loved the way it was interpreted by the artists. It had this sickly sort of childhood theme overlaying something dark and more insidious. It was really well done. I wouldn’t mind seeing more of that.

There was a decent amount of character development, despite there only being four issues to work with. I don’t want to go into too much detail, because of spoilers. But I will say that I’m curious about the long-term ramifications of some of the things the characters learned from it.

I’m sad that I have to let Dreamside go. But since this isn’t Faith’s first miniseries, I hope that means we’ll get another one sometime. In the meantime, I guess I’ll go back and read all of the backlog I’ve been missing out on.