Silk #1 // Review
Cindy Moon is investigating a series of kidnappings in L.A. She’s expecting a monster when she goes in search of the missing. She’s not expecting the monster that she runs into to be so...literally a monster. This is the opening of a whole new chapter in the life of Cindy, as written by Emily Kim. The action comes to the page courtesy of artist Ig Guara and colorist Ian Herring. The opening of the new series promises to take Cindy in a completely different direction from the places she’s been in recent series. Judging from the opening issue, that’s going to be a good thing.
Cindy’s one of the hottest private detectives in Los Angeles in the 1930s. This is particularly confusing given the fact that she’s actually a journalist in Marvel Manhattan in the 2020s. So there’s something about the whole of reality that is at least a little bit off, but that doesn’t mean that the minotaur-like monster that’s attacking her is anything other than very, very dangerous. (Her danger sense wouldn’t be going crazy if it was all just a dream, would it?) Cindy’s got more than one mystery to solve as she investigates the kidnappings.
Kim’s clever variation on the traditional Marvel web-slinger action series had been a lot of fun at the beginning of last year. With the latest series, Kim is plunging Cindy into her own Spider-Verse in a serial that promises to take Silk into a variety of different genres. The Sam Spade-style detective story that Kim opens the series with is a thoughtful fusion of superhero and hardboiled detective fiction. Any writer would try to ape the narrative style of Dashiell Hammett with an issue that opens its action planted in a classic detective story, but Kim focuses the story on Cindy and her predicament in a way that is very much in line with her work with the character in the previous series.
Guara leads Cindy through action and drama that are revealed for the page with a careful hand. Cindy looks stylish as a 1930s detective, but she maintains an organic, earthbound sense of vulnerability that feels remarkably sharp. Drama and action articulate well on the page. With the setting being what it is, it would be far too easy to move in a black-and-white sort of direction with the color. Guara is given the opportunity to move through the action with muted colors that feel like they might have been inspired by art deco posters of the era. It’s a clever choice.
The success of a mini-series like this is going to rely on the creative team’s ability to shift from one mood and genre to another in a way that embraces the strange contrast between settings while also maintaining a solid through-line of drama and intrigue that never loses sight of Cindy as the central character. It’s kind of a lot to ask for. Kim did such a good job with the last series. It’s nice to see her going for something a bit more challenging with her second Silk series.
