Robbie Thompson

Really big fan of this one! Cindy Moon is a bright, immediately likeable, and funny young woman with Spidey-powers, and seeing her spin her webs over New York as she works to track down her family made for a compelling set of stories. Some bits felt a tad weak (I felt like I was missing information on Ezekiel and his motivations) and the last issues art was not my taste, but everything else was fantastically fun to read!

Silk, Volume 3: The Clone Conspiracy collects Silk vol. 2, nos. 14-19 written by Robbie Thompson with art by Irene Strychalski and Tana Ford. The story continues after Cindy Moon has reunited with her family as she struggles to adapt to this new normal. Looking for a chance to put off dealing with it, she flies to San Francisco where J. Jonah Jameson is promoting New U, a company that can revive dead family members, including his wife and his niece, Mattie Franklin (the third Spider-Woman). show more Cindy doesn't trust this and does some snooping, where she encounters this Spider-Woman. The two are initially wary of each other, but work together to uncover New U's secrets as even Mattie is troubled by the ramifications of her return from death. Things going on in other Clone Conspiracy tie-in books destroy Jameson's hope to recover the family he lost and lead to him losing his position on the Fact Channel. Cindy, feeling her time is done there now that she has her family back, moves on to find something else, but not before she and Jameson share a moment of mutual understanding.
This book concludes Silk's standalone series for the time being and it keeps with the larger themes of loss and dealing with uncertainty that have characterized this book. While many of Marvel's heroes have their own troubles, Cindy Moon was a fascinating character because hers were more subtle. She felt she'd made peace with the problems of her past only for anger and loneliness to continue affecting her. Cindy Moon was funny, too, and that made her all the more compelling to read.
Many of these issues have had different artists illustrating them, which often led to a disjointed feel. While Irene Strychalski and Tana Ford have their own styles, they're similar enough that the slight differences don't jar the reader from one issue to the next. Even though Dan Slott and Humberto Ramos created Cindy Moon, Robbie Thompson wrote her various solo outings (and the team-up book with Spider-Man) and he used this great responsibility to great effect, crafting a narrative that was enjoyable and felt complete even when it crossed over with other storylines. show less

Silk Vol 0: The Life and Times of Cindy Moon by Robbie Thompson and Stacey Lee is the first ever collection of Silk comics. Like Spider-Gwen, Silk became a popular character during the Spider-Verse event and now has her own book, whoo. Also like Spider-Gwen, she was bitten by the same radioactive spider as Peter Parker, but unlike Spider-Gwen, she's from the main Marvel universe and the reason we haven't seen much of her up to now (well, and earlier in some Amazing Spider-Man comics) is show more because she was locked in a bunker for ten years. Isn't being a female superhero great?

Questionable origin story aside (and, I should say, this isn't an origin comic), The Life and Times of Cindy Moon is a really, really excellent comic. The art is nice and respectful (funny how you don't get gratuitous objectification with a female artist...) and the choice of colours is sort of subdued, making the comic look more serious and less "larger than life" than a lot of superhero comics tend to do. Not that there's anything wrong with brightly coloured superheroes, but this book tells a serious and relatively down-to-earth story, so it works really well.

Cindy's focus is in finding out what happened to her family after she went into the bunker. As far as she can tell, they seem to have disappeared. In the meantime, she's working as a reporter (a strangely common occupation for superheroes), getting her start writing stories about the new superhero Silk. As Silk, she spends her time fighting minor (for now) bad guys, with occasional help from her sidekick, Spider-Man (the Peter Parker one).

I didn't realise before I started reading, but I think Cindy might be the first female Asian-American superhero from Marvel? Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure I haven't read/seen any others. There are also a lot of Pokémon references, which is one way to get me on side. So that was pretty cool. I enjoyed spotting random Pokémon in the background of panels.

Overall, this was an excellent book. All seven issues formed a coherent story — which I always appreciate more than shorter story arcs — and even though the last issue was part of Last Days (the apocalypse immediately preceding the Secret Wars event), the story continued in a sensible manner and even managed to tie up a few loose ends before the inevitable post-event reboot. I just hope the post-Secret Wars continuation doesn't jump around too much. (I'm kind of hoping most of the comics I follow just ignore the whole Secret Wars thing as much as possible, really.)

Silk was an excellent read. Honestly one of my favourite comic books that I've read lately. I was surprised how much I enjoyed it, especially compared with Spider-Gwen, who arrived on the scene at a similar time. Basically, Spider-Gwen has the cooler costume, but Silk is much better written. It's in my top 3 superhero comics. Recommended to all discerning comic book fans.

5 / 5 stars

You can read more of my reviews on my blog. show less

When Spider-Woman, Silk, and Gwen are all trapped in Gwen's universe by unknown individuals, the three women must team up. In the process, each of them will learn more about themselves.

A pretty fun side arc, I enjoyed a comic that so effortlessly aced the Bechdel test. The story itself is solid and as ever, I enjoyed the variants an alternate universe provides. There's also an interesting development for Gwen's character that should provide some interesting stories going forward. However, be show more warned the art in the first issue of this collected volume is AWFUL. After that issue, it goes back to the excellent quality I've been used to in pursuing this part of the Marvel universe. show less