Advance Review: Dialing Up The Horror In `The Silver Coin’ Vol. 3
by Tom Smithyman
Overview
This new trade paperback collects The Silver Coin issues #11-15, which are some of the series’ best installments. Horror fans will find a lot of love in these tales – from cannibalistic diner to monstrous firefighter, with plenty of gore splattered across each page.
Overall
8.5/10Like a bad penny, a mysterious coin keeps showing up in every horror story in The Silver Coin. This currency, though, is a one-way ticket to hell. And yet it has attracted a heavenly group of creators for each installment. James Tynion IV, Stephanie Phillips, Johnnie Christmas, Pornsak Pichetshote, and Michael Walsh all lend their writing abilities to this trade edition, which features stories from issues #11-15. As he has since the beginning of the series, Walsh draws all the artwork.
The eponymous coin first shows as a tip at a diner, in a story written by Tynion, who has established himself as one of the preeminent horror writers in comics today. While business had been slow, once the coin is left, people are lined up for the diner to open the next day. Eventually the diner runs out of food and the cook looks to Sweeney Todd for inspiration to find a source for more meat. Some great visual storytelling from Walsh makes the story a classic.
Phillips’ story set during World War II is next. A wounded German soldier offers a cowardly American the cursed coin. The US soldier finds the courage he was looking for, but with predictably tragic results. Again, Walsh’s art is a perfect complement to Phillips’ text.
A story written by Christmas involving childbirth is the lone flat note in this collection. There’s no real lesson here. It’s just a gross-out story that is far below the quality of the rest of the collection. Walsh has fun with the visuals, but the reader may not be able to eat spaghetti for several days.
Pichetshote’s tale revisits the year that most of us would like to forget – 2020. He successfully demonstrates the extreme stress caused by the events of the year from hell while keeping true to the series’ themes.
Walsh doubles as writer for the final story, which follows a Louis, a firefighter seen in prior installments. The coin brings out the real monster in Louis, though we’re not quite sure if he’s even truly human in the first place. It’s the human that does the most damage, though.
The last story provides a suitable ending to the overall story, though Walsh promises to create more tales of The Silver Coin soon. We should hope he does, because it will likely be worth the wait.
The Silver Coin Vol. 3 will be available for purchase on November 23, 2022.