“Silk” #1

Can a top creative team turn Silk into the breakout character she deserves to be? Read on and find out. (Warning: may contain minor spoilers.)

Cover by Stonehouse

Written by Maurene Goo
Illustrated by Takeshi Miyazawa
Colored by Ian Herring
Lettered by VC’s Arianna Maher

By day Cindy Moon is an intrepid reporter for the upstart new media empire Threats & Menaces under her old boss, J. Jonah Jameson. By night, she’s Silk, crime fighting super hero! But those worlds are about to collide, as an investigation into a series of gangland murders puts Silk and everyone she loves in danger! Who is this powerful new player in New York’s underworld, where did she come from, and what is she doing with that strange cat demon? It will take all of Cindy’s prowess as reporter and hero to find the answers…and stay alive! Written by Maurene Goo (I Believe in a Thing Called Love) and drawn by Takeshi Miyazawa (RUNAWAYS, GHOST SPIDER), Cindy is on assignment, and nothing can stop her!

It’s a great testament to the comics industry as a whole that you rarely ever see a book that just flat-out sucks. The professionalism and prestige of the medium have risen to the point where truly inferior work rarely even makes it into print. But it’s also a double-edged sword. When good work is everywhere, it can be hard as hell to stand out.

Going into “Silk” #1, my expectations were high. With a great creative team at the helm and a largely untapped character to explore, I expected a knockout debut. Instead, the first installment plateaus at pretty-decent-but-not-great. There’s nothing wrong with it – there aren’t any real flaws to speak of – but I don’t think a blurb that says, “Brimming with competence!” is going to move much product or make the book an early favorite on anyone’s Best of list.

Writer Maurene Goo kicks off the story right in the thick of the action, with a bickering pair of criminals in the midst of a late night heist. The art is smooth and dynamic, the characters are expressive and well designed and the colors are wonderful, with lots of blues, greens and grays with well placed Spidey-red accents. The dialogue, however, tends to sound quippy and a bit inauthentic.

Is the criminal duo a married couple? A pair of siblings? Roommates who’ve been trapped in COVID quarantine too long? (All of them do wear masks.) It seems like a line doesn’t pass without the next character trying to top it with sit com-like precision and comedic timing, as though it’s all choreographed. It’s especially unfortunate because, in the barrage of witty banter, there’s an occasional nugget. “You weren’t supposed to be here today,” says one of the would-be thieves. “You weren’t supposed to be a disappointment to your parents,” Silk retorts. It’s a great exchange, but it’s nearly buried in a whirlwind of verbal jousting.

The subsequent newsroom scene at Threats and Menaces – J. Jonah Jameson’s latest publishing venture – is similarly reliant on tropes, most of all the endless debate of print vs. digital. “We create digital content. Might want to read more on your phone – that’s our medium,” Norah Winters tells Cindy Moon, Silk’s alter-ego. “News is news, last I heard,” Moon fires back.

In contrast to Winters, of course, Jameson is the stodgy, old school editor-in-chief. Or, in the words of Moon in one of numerous interior monologue wisecracks, “Billie Eilish and Van Halen.” She’s full of so many one-liners, she doesn’t even have time to say them all out loud.

Somewhere in all of this, amidst the pop culture references and millennial vs. Gen X beefs, there’s a mysterious and bloody gangland “group execution” and two anonymous thugs who want the story kept quiet. Silk springs into action, kicking both thugs’ asses, and things move briskly from there to the end. By the final cliffhanger, Jameson has promptly employed Silk as his body guard; Silk has inadvertently discovered a high-tech mystery device; and the child of a corporate founder who’s perfectly positioned to be the villain – or at least villain adjacent—has made her dramatic entrance.

To be clear, the story is seamless, without a wasted panel from the first page to the last. Goo clearly knows how to write a taut, well-paced narrative without any filler or tangents. At the same time, however, the characters never seem to stretch much beyond their clever comebacks and witty retorts – with Silk at the top of that list. I get that she’s opaque and reluctant to open up, but it’s hard to tell what she wants, or even if she wants anything at all.

I’m still quite convinced there’s a ton of untapped potential here. The stage is nicely set to explore numerous intriguing angles. The debut came out hard on the side of repartee and wordplay. Hopefully, as it progresses, the characters will be free to show us who they are without having to try so hard.

Final Verdict: 7.7 The action is swift and smooth and the characters are great to look at, but “Silk” #1 sometimes reads like a sit com script.