Silk #1

I came across the trade paperback of Silk: The Life and Times of Cindy Moon while on my lunch break. I was in a comic shop downtown. I liked the blurb on the back. So I bought it. Though I have not kept up with the whole Spider-Verse narrative -- in fact, I think I have only read a few Spider-Man comics since I was laid off the spring of 2011-- I must say Silk was thoroughly captivating.

And it dawned on me why last week. My coworker was describing to me her post-work routine: her husband is not allowed to interact with her until she has consumed a glass of wine and watched Judge Judy on television. She says that after watching Judge Judy tell people what morons they are, she feels better, the stress from the work day magically sloughed off like an old snake skin.

I told her that her ritual reminded me of Enoch Emery in Flannery O'Connor's Wise Blood (1952) and how he would walk through the zoo after work and swear at all the animals in their cages -- "Oh, you ugly fucking monkey! Look at how stupid you are!" -- and how much better it made him feel.

My co-worker had never read Wise Blood. So I described it to her, how important it was to me as a young man leaving college because it is basically about a young guy going off to make it in a big industrial city in the South.

Silk #1 picks up where the trade paperback leaves off. One of the young men who works at the comic shop in my neighborhood said that it has everything a comic book should have. And what I found that to be is the Wise Blood formula: a young person finds himself/herself in a big city and must survive. Throw in some fighting in the air high atop skyscrapers, and you have a real page-turner.

Below are eight scans from Silk #1. Cindy Moon wakes up in her overpriced New York City studio apartment, visits her brother in rehab, battles soldiers from Goblin Nation and smashes Mockingbird on top of the skull with a brief case. The writing is by Robbie Thompson; the art, Stacey Lee.