The Struggle Is Very Real: Reviewing ‘Silk’ #2

Superhero comic books are full of all the fights and battles that come with being a superhero comic, but the best ones never forget that these heroes are also people with lives of their own. Lives that they often are struggling with because trying to be a hero and a normal person are often two very at odds ideas.

Silk is a comic book that not only hasn’t forgotten this fact but thrives by showing just how hard it really is to have it all.

Spider-Man has been one of my favorite characters since forever basically, because of the idea of how Peter Parker has been depicted as the ‘every person’ type of character, struggling with things like rent and dating and school or just life while also battling some of the biggest bads around. No slight against any creators, as there has been and currently is some great work being done on Spidey’s titles, but this has been a thing very much sidelined at times depending on the given runs chosen direction.

Cindy Moon/Silk is a fantastic character who was born out of the same event that created Spider-Man yet is 100% her own thing in so many ways. At the same time the creators that have worked on her past few solos have perfectly captured that classic Spider-Man type of feeling but in a style befitting of Cindy’s personality and backstory.

Emily Kim keeps the overall plot of the ancient youth-stealing Korean witch going, including a great scene using Cindy’s journalism career to give us the lore dump about the threat, while telling a great story about the pressures of superheroism and the struggle to find oneself and their place in this world. Watching Cindy bounce from classes she misses or zones out, to getting a date, trying to please her boss, going to a friend’s concert, and then having her superhero times mess it up adds such depth to the character and the world.

Cindy has a ton going for her in many regards, but so many other aspects are just out of her reach as she tries to make it all work and finds that making it all work is harder than one might think. Just like the series before this, Kim has 100% nailed that perfect Spider-book formula with her own twist and it’s working. Also, I love the fact that friendships like those of Cindy and Luna Snow persist and cross book borders so we get great guest role spots like this issue.

Tackling a story that is light and fun but also has dark or firm elements to it needs the right artistic team and this book has that in Takeshi Miyazawa and Ian Herring. They proved they could bridge this gap with the last series but take it up a few notches here. All the action pages are smooth and kinetic with a sensible muted color tone and plenty of shadows, but it’s the non-action pages that work even more. All the right emotions are captured, and the emotional tone conveyed by chosen color style just works on every level.

All that emotional work means that we don’t have to be told how a character is feeling or how a scene should be going, as the artwork speaks for itself. Leaving room for the dialogue to focus on other things.

Ariana Maher is a name that I love to see on credits of books because what she does with lettering is truly beyond so many others. Lettering is something too many folks take for granted and don’t recognize as the art form that it is. With Maher, it’s all the ‘little things’ that she does like making fonts match the ‘tone’ of speaking (small fonts for a whisper, bigger for yelling, etc) as well as the perfect use of sentence case for dialogue rather than the standard all caps that is generally used. It makes all the wording feel more real and relatable in a way.

Silk #2 is now on sale in print and digital from Marvel Comics.