Silk #1 Review

Written by: Emily Kim
Art by: Takeshi Miyazawa
Colors by: Ian Herring
Letters by: VC’s Ariana Maher
Cover art by: InHyuk Lee (cover A)
Cover price: $3.99
Release date: January 19, 2022

Silk #1 begins a new chapter in Cindy Moon’s career as the friendly neighborhood Silk. When a hapless social media influencer unwittingly releases a centuries-old witch from a museum exhibit, it’s time for Silk to swing into action.

Was It Good?

Well, my fine Weird Science readers, here we are with another volume of Silk with a new writer and a new adventure. How does it hold up against the previous volume? Okay.

One of these days I’d love to get a look at the internal memos dictating the characters that must be included in a Silk story. For some reason, it must say there has to be at least one character that’s so obnoxiously off-putting that you hate them almost immediately. In 2021, that character was tech CEO Saya Ishii. Any evil genius who unironically says the phrase “hashtag goals” out loud in more than one issue earns an automatic “No, Ma’am” from this reviewer. Maureen Goo did her best, but her best was mediocre at best (say that five times fast if you dare).

In this latest volume, readers are treated to a new writer via Emily Kim, and while the main villain isn’t the target of ire, readers get a new character who’s much worse by way of social media influencer and all-around jackass, Lucas. Lucas is the Logan Paul of the Marvel universe, constantly putting himself in ridiculously dangerous situations for clicks, likes, shares, and subs, and of course, he creates the mess that’s at the center of this volume’s conflict. It’s not that a story can’t have obnoxious people, but does Marvel have to put one in every Silk volume???

Regardless, Lucas sneaks into a museum exhibit and wakes up the ancient witch who drains the life force of the living, turning her victims into old people. It’s a fairly stock premise (obnoxious supporting character aside) with a mystical villain with a little room to bring exposure to ancient Korean culture. As a whole, it’s a decent first issue. Nothing spectacular (pun intended). Nothing terrible (Except Lucas. Everyone will hate Lucas). Issue #1 gets the job done.

A quick word about character voice. One of the down points from the last volume was the odd way JJJ was reworked into a stoic and thoughtful character. He had his moments but JJJ from Silk 2021 did not come across as JJJ. Here, J. Jonah acts and speaks closer to himself but seems to fall more in line with Perry White from the Superman canon. It’s at least an improvement, albeit not all the way there.

The art is very good in this issue. Most of the art team has returned, and not a drop of quality is missed. It’s a good-looking issue, which helps to make comics with a passable story better than average.

Final Thoughts

SILK #1 starts the volume off right with the introduction of a new and intriguing villain, an improvement in the depiction of J. Jonah Jameson, and the potential for a little character growth for Cindy Moon. That said, Marvel’s need to incessantly insert a super-obnoxious character in every Silk volume is wearing very thin. If you can get past Lucas, everything else about this first issue is fine.