Silk #8
Written By: Robbie Thompson
Art By: Tanya Ford
Colors By: Ian Herring
Letters By VC’s Travis Lanham
Release Date: May 11th 2016
Price: $3.99
Plot
First I wanna analogize for not being able to cover the last couple parts of this event. I graduated college last week and these past two weeks have been really hectic. Now that I got all the housekeeping out of the way let’s get down to business. In the last issue of Spider-Gwen we find out Cindy 65’s role in Gwen’s origin. The issue ends with the two spider women being confronted by Mockingbird. This issue picks up from there and mostly with Cindy starting to realize that they may have a lot more in common than she’d care to admit.
Story
Silk #8 was definitely a much slower issue when you compare it to the other parts of the Spider Women event so far. That isn’t really a bad thing because Thompson does give us some time for some good character moments for Cindy. She also probably has the funniest inner monologues out of all three of our lead spider-women. One of the things that I’ve really enjoyed is the frenemy relationship between Gwen and Cindy. It takes an interesting twist when Gwen reveals that the reason that she doesn’t really get along with Cindy is because she sees a lot of herself in Cindy and Gwen is afraid of becoming her. Granted that wasn’t the best choice of words on Gwen’s part but it’s still a really cool development. It really helped give me a different perspective on Cindy. I’m also glad there was a legit in character reason why the two of them always but heads besides, uh…spider girls, am I right?
While that part of the issue was enjoyable once the two of them are set free by Black Cat and Gwen leaves the pacing of the issue slows down considerably, and that’s where I started to lose interest in the issue. Don’t get me wrong Cindy getting a really taste of the dark side is interesting and I’m sure if you’ve been reading Silk from the beginning I’m sure this is something you’ve been waiting for, but I honestly didn’t care as much about the Black Cat stuff. I felt like it kinda just paused the plot of the main event, so I found myself getting bored during these parts, though like I said I couldn’t help but laugh at Cindy’s inner monologue while talking to Black Cat. Overall though I felt like the story really started to lose its momentum when Gwen left and it just focused on Cindy and Black Cat being villains, well Black Cat being a villain and Cindy still playing around while seriously considering it.
Art
Honestly I think that the art was the weakest aspect issue of this issue. It really lacked detail in a lot of places especially when it came to the facial expressions. The proportions for characters were really off in some places, and the colors felt muted despite the fact that this series usually has a brighter more fun vibe to it. I often found that the backgrounds were also very generic. I know that’s something a lot of people may not notice but that really stood out to me. The few action scenes that we got in this issue felt very bland and static. They really didn’t help the slower pace of the story move along at all. Also I don’t know why but Gwen’s random curly hair really bugged me for some reason. The art didn’t take me out of the story but I thought it was a bit of a step backwards from the art that we’ve been getting. for this event.
The Verdict
If I had to sum up this entire issue in one word it would be average. The story has some good dialogue and a few interesting character moments, but other than that nothing much really happened. The slow pacing of the issue also really hurt it as well and like I said earlier I wasn’t a big fan of the art. If this week is a heavy comic reading week for you then I would say you could skip since you’re not really missing much, but keep in mind this wasn’t a bad issue I just felt it was average and I was expecting more after that great issue of Spider-Gwen. In the end the decision is yours true believers, so I’ll leave it up to you.
