Jay Faerber's homage to Super Hero comic books and soap operas. The series revolves around the Noble family, a wealthy, famous family of superheroes. In addition to fighting supervillains, the heroes face such challenges as infidelity, unplanned pregnancies, and the tabloids.
The main family members are:
- Dudley "Doc" Noble: A Gadgeteer Genius who is more interested in working on inventions in his lab than spending any time with his family.
- Gaia: The matriarch of the family, who does everything she can to make herself and her family look good in the public eye. Currently divorced from Doc and serving a prison term.
- Rusty: The oldest son, a Super-Strong hero with a bad temper who had his consciousness transferred into a robotic body after nearly being beaten to death. In years since, he's struggled with his humanity, and, evidently, given in. He now speaks in a harsh monotone, doesn't use contractions, and rarely indicates emotion. He's faking it.
- Frost: Gaia's son from an extra-marital affair with The Doc Noble of an Alternate Universe. Has ice-based powers and a huge chip on his shoulder.
- Race: The middle child. He has Super-Speed and seems to be the nicest and most well-adjusted member of the family. No wonder they killed him off at the end of the first issue...
- Zephyr: The youngest child. A teenage girl who sleeps around. This results in her getting knocked up by Draconis, her father's archenemy.
- Liz Donnely-Noble: A normal girl who runs a bookstore. Her good looks and unpretentious nature caused Race to fall in love with her and marry her. She continues to live in the Noble Family mansion after Race's death.
- Krennick: Race's best friend, and the son of Draconis, Doc Noble's Arch-Enemy. A demon who holds unrequited feelings for Zephyr.
- Celeste: A publicity-hungry heroine with stellar energy powers who was married to Rusty, but had a long-standing affair with Frost.
- Olympia: Doc's second wife, a superstrong beauty queen with two children from a previous marriage.
- Surge: Olympia's son, and the youngest of the Nobles. In need of a serious attitude adjustment; gets on poorly with just about everyone due to his explosive temper.
- Minutae: Olympia's daughter. Extremely introverted and removed from social interactions, she strikes a quick friendship with Doc due to her love of science.
- Amy: Surge's girlfriend, who accused Frost of raping her after he resisted her advances. The real Amy had actually been killed and replaced by a shapeshifting assassin before her introduction in the comic.
- Slate Blackthorne: The youngest of the villainous Blackthorne family, who can turn into a gigantic rock-man and eventually abandoned his family to marry Zephyr.
This comic book series provides examples of:
- Aborted Arc: The ongoing series seemed to end a bit abruptly, as the plot thread of Slate intentionally helping two supervillains escape the Nobles’ custody wasn’t followed up on.
- A.I. Is a Crapshoot: (Icarus, Doc Noble's Robotic Assistant, sees himself as Doc's firstborn and makes attempts on the lives of all of his "siblings", since they were such a disappointment to Doc.)
- Back for the Finale: The resurrected Race and Liz were conspicuously absent after the Time Skip until the final issue, which reveals why: Race is a little busy because he's the President of the United States.
- Cliffhanger: one of the series' biggest strengths; it even finally ends on one regarding whether Doc will stay with Olympia or go back to Gaia.
- Cliffhanger Cop Out: Some of the cliffhangers are resolved in ways that nullify the suspense; one issue ends with Gaia asking Olympia how Doc will feel if he hears that Olympia only married him because Gaia paid her to. The next issue opens with Olympia outraged because she's never even met or spoken to Gaia before this moment; that is, Gaia is threatening to lie to ruin Olympia's marriage
- Convenient Miscarriage: (Subverted with Zephyr. Supervillains faked a miscarriage and abducted the baby.)
- Cybernetics Eat Your Soul: Rusty seemed to have lost all his emotions and even the ability to inflect his voice at some point during the time skip. He’s faking, he’s withdrawn into himself after a difficult breakup a few years in jail.
- Flash Back: Usually used to cast character's actions in a more sympathetic light.
- Home Porn Movie: The source of a scandal around Zephyr; A gun was held to a little girl's head in order to coerce her into participating.
- Grand Theft Me: Gaia's Loony Fan switches bodies with Doc
- Hair-Trigger Temper: Surge's entire character revolves around this.
- May–December Romance: After the time skip, Celeste is now married to an elderly man, retired superhero Gus “Colonel Comet” Geyer.
- Meaningful Name: Everyone in the Noble and Blackthorne families has a name that alludes to their powers, and as such they don't even use codenames like most heroes or villains.
- The Real Heroes: Frost gets an award for saving a bunch of firefighters and says they're the real heroes.
- Ridiculously Human Robot: (Cosmic Rae, secretly created by Doc to comfort Rusty, who didn’t know she was a robot until…
- Robotic Reveal: A couple of these. A fake Liz is revealed when a protective energy field around Zephyr's baby blasts off its skin; more disturbingly with Cosmic Rae getting her face cut on the "space" mission.
- Shared Universe: Invincible and Savage Dragon have made appearances in the comic; Zephyr was even a member of a team with Invincible, Shadowhawk, and Firebreather.
- Shrinking Violet: Minutiae, appropriately given her shrinking powers, is very shy and retiring.
- Soaperizing: To the point it's more like a Soap Opera with occasional superpowers.
- Sympathy for the Devil: At times, Draconis seems more sympathetic than Doc Noble.
- Canon Welding: The "Faerberverse" consists of this comic, Dynamo5, Venture & Firebirds.
- Theme Twin Naming: The Blackthorne family includes the twins Dawn and Dusk.
- Time Skip: Issue #32 takes place five years after the previous issue and wouldn’t you guess, a lot has happened.
- Time-Travel Romance: This is the answer to the mystery of why Celeste married Gus; they met and fell in love in the 1950s — she had to return to her own time and he had to just wait for her.
