Emily Kim and Ig Guara dropped an excellent first issue of Silk on readers last month with a big mystery and Cindy Moon in equally big trouble. She’s trapped in her own mind playing out adventures in different eras, but to what end is the villain doing this? The second issue promises Western hijinks, but you’ve come to the right place for the fan who wants answers.
Silk #2 opens with Cindy’s brother Max exiting a movie. It’s an apt location, given Cindy seems to be dreaming herself into American cinema. Soon we see Silk swoop in, reminding us of their relationship, that they live together, and that they look out for each other. Smash cut to a week later, where Max discovers their apartment has been turned into an experiment, and Silk doesn’t agree to it! It’s roughly explained what the villains are up to and why they’re putting Silk through mind games before things dive back into a Western.
That might be a problem, however, as it gives away much of the mystery and fantastical awe of the first issue. We could have guessed, but giving us a full explanation of what the villains are after and what they’re doing to Silk takes us out of the sci-fi element.
That allows Guara to drop us into a full-on train heist. Unfortunately, that scene is abrupt and lacks the stylized look the noir action scene had in the first issue. While the beast from the first issue rears its head, the story switches back to Max a little too quickly, delving back into sneaking around a rather boring-looking apartment. The cliffhanger leaves you with a lot of promise for Max and who he runs into, as well as Silk’s new adventure on the seven seas.
I kinda love how that click is such a dynamic sound effect in a rather mundane scene.
Credit: Marvel
Getting more of Max into the story isn’t necessarily bad, but since his scenes either recap what we already know or utilize him to get exposition out of the way from the villains, it adds very little to the story. Twelve pages are devoted to him, with only six featuring Cindy in the dreamscape. It’s a strange choice since the first issue had so much action and interesting “what is going on” moments with Silk. This issue also references previous stories in a few different places, which is a nice way to remind us a lot of this is ongoing stuff, but it takes us away from the story even more on top of things.
Silk #2 follows up an excellent opening issue with a slow crawl second issue spending way too much time with the hero’s brother, Max. From the opening scene reminding us of who he is to the unnecessarily cut-short Silk Western scene, there just isn’t a lot here to get your blood pumping. Instead, the story slams the brakes to bring us back to the real world rather than bask in the rather inventive setup of Silk in different eras.
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