Silk #15 Review

Cindy Moon’s road trip to San Francisco seemed to be going well at first. Then a dead spider-girl showed up. This week, we see what that means for “Silkworm’s” mission to gather intel on New U while working on assignment for J. Jonah Jameson.

Is it good?

Silk #15 (Marvel Comics)

Observations

• It’s great to see Mattie again, but I wish she wasn’t beating up one of my favorite characters.
• This might be the friendliest fight ever.
• Cindy’s dad is making me nervous.
• I’m guessing that being a ghost doesn’t help Hector much when he’s surrounded by people who are supposed to be dead.
• I thought they were going to become friends ☹
• Just like always, J. Jonah Jameson misses the story behind the headline.

Is It Good?

In addition to suffering from middle chapter syndrome, Silk centers around a tantalizing interaction that bizarrely comes to a screeching halt. Even as adversaries, the chemistry and interaction between Mattie Franklin and Cindy Moon is great. I’m not sure if Robbie Thompson meant for Cindy to run off just as they seemed to be clicking, but I wish he hadn’t.

We also get a lot of subplot particles that don’t really seem to go anywhere. I have faith in Thompson to make them work down the road, but it doesn’t work out very well in a single issue.

On the art side of things, Irene Strychalski’s line work is beautiful, but her sense of motion is often very rigid and stilted. I absolutely LOVE the way she draws some of Spider-Man classic (and classic-esque) villains, but I wish we got more kinetic flow from panel to panel, especially during the fight scenes.

All that being said, Thompson’s dialogue between Moon and Franklin is more than enough to make the issue worth reading. We also get a nice moment with Moon’s supporting cast, who I was worried would be forgotten about in this arc after it moved from New York to San Francisco. We also get a great cliff-hanger that should provide quite a bit of conflict for Silk along with the various factions inside New U itself.