Noble Causes Archives: Vol. 1 written by Jay Faerber, art by many and various

Jay Faerber’s Noble Causes follows the celebrity super-human family the Nobles, starting from the introduction of super-speedster Race Noble’s new girlfriend, “regular” girl Liz Donnelly. Liz serves as the entry point character for the world of both the super-human and high profile celebrity. Through her the often dysfunctional relationships of the Nobles and their family is explored.

This first of two volumes collects the first twenty-six issues of Noble Causes and their assorted back-up features. Almost six-hundred pages of super-human soap opera, family squabbles, murder, cross-dimensional travel, sex scandals, more murder, more family fighting, and even some old-fashioned cape-style face punchery…

Dynamo5: Post-Nuclear Family written by Jay Faerber, drawn by Mahmud A Asrar, colors by Ron Riley, letters by Charles Pritchett

Captain Dynamo was one of Earth’s greatest heroes. Blessed with super-human strength, flight, enhanced vision and eye-blasts, telepathy and shape-changing. And then he was found dead, naked in a motel room. Which lead to his wife finding his little black book and learning he was a philandering asshole along with being a super-hero. Seeing the city he protected up for grabs from his old foes Maddie, the widow, tracked down five kids from her husband’s affairs. And then exposed them to the radiation that gave her husband his powers. Each of them then gained one of their previously unknown natural father’s powers. And joined together as Dynamo5…

Faerber writes good old-fashioned super-heroics with just enough of modern day dramatics to keep things interesting. Though the most enjoyable part for me is how well Faerber crafts non-standard families as team books. He was one of the few people other than Nieceza I liked as New Warriorswriter and he also writes the ultimate in dysfunctional super-hero families Noble Causes. WithDynamo5 you can see the five Dynamo kids organically grow and bond together, both as a team and as siblings…