Foster Hearst
Foster Hearst was a journalist and a friend of Max Murdock whom Jenny Everywhere confided in after shifting into his universe. He was an employee of the Weekly Comet, a supposed tabloid that was in reality an organization dedicated to protecting the world's mysteries.
Description
Physical appearance
Hearst was a human with a blond, rather eccentric hairdo and a goatee. He wore a turtleneck sweater. (COMIC: Jenny Everywhere is Back for the First Time)
Personality
Hearst was a kind and reasonable individual. He was willing to help his friends with their relationship issues, offering sensible advice. He was also, according to Jenny, very loyal, although this observation was made in an alternate timeline. Possibly as a result of his experience with the Weekly Comet, Hearst was very accepting of supernatural phenomena. (COMIC: Jenny Everywhere is Back for the First Time)
Biography
Working at the "Weekly Comet"
Foster Hearst, a journalist, was an employee of the Weekly Comet alongside his best friend Max Murdock. As a member of the inner circle of the paper, Hearst knew the truth: seemingly a typical untrustworthy supermarket tabloid, the Comet was really a cover for an organization dedicated to protecting the world's mysteries. (COMIC: Jenny Everywhere is Back for the First Time)
Meeting Jenny Everywhere
Foster Hearst met Jenny at Murphy's, a jazz club, after she kissed Max Murdock while believing herself to be further along in the universe's timeline than she really was. Hearst was skeptical of Jenny's claims that she was from an alternate universe, but he allowed her to confide in him nonetheless, eventually coming to believe her story. After Jenny told him that she was uncertain whether to continue her relationship with Murdock or change the outcome of events, Hearst offered his advice. He also offered to let her stay with him for the night, but she refused.
After Jenny fixed things between Murdock and his current girlfriend Andrea Campos, she confided in Hearst again, telling him that her time with Murdock would now be erased from reality. He reassured her, telling her that, based on his knowledge of time travel, her time with Murdock would simply become an alternate timeline that Jenny could visit when she wanted to. Jenny thanked him, then told him that, usually, there was someone who needed her help in every universe she visited. She asked him who he thought that was, and he told her that it was probably herself. Realizing that this was true, she thanked him again and shifted away, allowing Hearst to watch so as to confirm in his mind that her stories were true.
Hearst told his boss about what he had seen, and was assigned to write an article about it for the Weekly Comet, ensuring that the public would not believe it and Jenny's secret would remain safe. He happily did so. (COMIC: Jenny Everywhere is Back for the First Time)
In an alternate timeline
According to Jenny Everywhere, when she first visited Hearst's universe in what would become an alternate version of Hearst's future, he befriended her while she was in a relationship with Max Murdock. In this timeline, after an unspecified incident involving Hearst's friend Ito Masello and "scumbag" Mitch Elliot, Hearst apparently stood by Masello and eventually began a romantic relationship with her.
These events were later split off into an alternate timeline after Jenny interfered with the past. (COMIC: Jenny Everywhere is Back for the First Time)
Behind the scenes
Origins
Foster Hearst is the main protagonist of the the Scandal Sheet webcomic, of which Jenny Everywhere is Back for the First Time was a storylines as well as being a Jenny Everywhere story. Hearst's story is prior to meeting Jenny is detailed in the storylines leading up to Back for the First Time, while his life thereafter is depicted in later storylines, all of which can be read on the comic's website, here.
- ↑ First appearance in directly Jenny-related media; actual debut was in 2002's In the Beginning.