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The Webcomics Weekly #271: “The Silent Warrior” Isn’t So Silent (2/20/2024 Edition)

By | February 20th, 2024
Posted in Reviews | % Comments

The Webcomics Weekly is back in your life with a webtoon that has so much edge and smacks you in the face with the subtly of a giant hammer. But is that edge durable or does it go dull extremely quickly?

The Silent Warrior
Episodes 0-7
Schedule: Tuesdays
By Team Maetgamari (creator), ROAD WARRIOR (story), Kim hak-young (art), A-Nomad (adapted),
Reviewed by Michael Mazzacane

I’m not sure why but I’ve been in this 90s comics mood recently. I’ve been looking at a lot of eXtreme studios stuff and not like the A-tier 90s Image stuff that was bombastic but with class; I mean the low-grade stuff like “Celestine”. It was with that vibe that I picked “The Silent Warrior” to look at, I had seen it a few weeks back and it looked up my alley. I was wrong. There is an admirable quality to the amount of edge on display in this book, Rob Liefeld would be proud. The graphic displays of violence are to a certain degree the kind of content I have been looking for from on Webtoon. It just lacks any of the that joie de vivre.

Lead artis Kim hak-young does a poor Kentaro Miura impression for the world building of “The Otherworld”. “The Silent Warrior” panel structure grows repetitive as everything often becomes a rhythm of image and center justified word balloons. It’s a rhythm that is effective for Episode 0, which introduces are nameless warrior walking around with a big hammer slaying demons like it’s “Fist of the North Star”. It creates a palpable sense of dread and is when Kim hak-young’ sart is at its strongest. And then the titular warrior speaks. He’s the not so silent warrior it turns out, “The Not So Silent Warrior” doesn’t quite have the same ring after all. This shift was a sign.

“The Silent Warrior” soon shifts from a Dark Fantasy series to one that is understood through isekai and video game logic as the titular warrior is undone by the Demon King deciding to … not fight him. He needs to learn magic to now take on the Demon King and so he puts down his hammer and goes back to the tutorial zone. To the strips credit the design work done on the video game elements are effective texts within the series and provide the wittiest writing. I don’t even mind framing things through a video game lens, it’s honestly one of the more effective storytelling choices made in the strip. It just doesn’t go the further step of explaining the rules of the game. Titular Warrior understands the rules of the game as he breezes through the opening slaughter of the new recruits on his quest to become a wizard, I respect the choice of limited POV, but nothing else in episodes 3 onward explains anything. It just becomes a repetitive exercise in killing level 1 humans. The wholesale slaughter sequences are where the limit of Kim hak-young’s art begins to become noticeable, while the ways in which people are dispatched is relatively novel the paneling and framing is anything but.

“The Silent Warrior” showed a lot of promise in its first couple of episodes. It’s violent and brutal in a way you don’t find in strips that are promoted on the front page. I just wish it did more with it’s freedom. I a big dumb smash-them-up is fine by me. This one just isn’t done in a way that is actually visually interesting or worth the mature in an M rating.


//TAGS | Webcomics

Michael Mazzacane

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