Silk
Volume 1
2014

Marvel

Robbie Thompson - Writer
Stacy Lee - Artist
Ian Herring - Colour Artist

I managed to pick up these five issues cheap from Mike, who runs the 'Waiting for Doom' podcast, which is all about Doom Patrol. He was wanting to get rid of them and I was lucky enough to score.

Silk is the alter ego of Cindy Moon, who picked up her powers from the same spider as Spider-Man. After locking herself away in an bunker for ten years because *reasons* she is now dedicated to becoming a reporter and fighting crime in New York.

Issue one sees Silk fighting Dragon Claw. Still with some inexperience, Silk has to get saved by Spider-man. Their relationship isn't the best, despite the fact that they have slept together.
In a cut scene we find out that Black Cat is behind the Dragon Claw character. Cindy also finds out that her family might be still alive.

Issue two starts with some investigations into her family and some flashbacks to her life before the bunker (cleverly done in another colour tone). Silk is attacked by a rogue Hydra robot, the kind we see across the Marvel universe; Skull and tentacles.

Issue three has a long action sequence against a now boosted Dragon Claw. Silk tries to re-habilitate his evil ways and finds out his back story. This bit really reminded me of the characters we play in our own SHRP games. After the battle Silk is ambushed by Black Cat. low on webbing and adrenaline she loses the fight but escapes. Spider-man introduces her to the Fantastic Four.

Issue four has Reed Richards test Cindy for her power levels. He recommends her to visit a shrink while Johnny Storm asks her out on a date.

Issue five sees Cindy hard at work at the Daily Bugle. She gets J Jonah Jameson to help her with some leads on her family. In a cut away scene Black Cat seeds a trap for Silk with Dragon Claw's kid. Cindy teams up with Spider-Man and then the trap is sprung...

I liked the artwork for this book and feel it really matches the story and the character. The characterizations are good and the story builds nicely. I liked the twists and the way Silk interacts with Spider-man is great. I recommend this book, especially if you like the 'ordinary hero' drama books, much like Spider-Man.

I will be trying to track down all the issues I'm missing of this one.

As an aside, along with Spider-Gwen, I remember Jessica Drew as a flying Spider-Woman and Julia Carpenter as the black clad psionic web weaving Spider-Woman. A quick Google let me know there is actually a whole bunch of Spider women in the marvel universe!

Suicide Squad volume 1 (I think) - 1987

DC

John Ostrander - Writer
Luke McDonnel - Pencils

I picked up the whole pile of these comics for basically postage off of eBay. Obviously not of the best quality they are still very readable. The down side to this is that I have a very random numbering so I don't have many complete stories.

Originally used in the Brave and the Bold waaay back in 1959, Suicide Squad was revived in 1987. The comic book emulates the concept of 'The Dirty Dozen' movie, a bunch of criminals doing tasks to reduce their sentence, and 'Misson: Impossible' parameters thrown in for good measure. Added to this concept was the fact that the writer could, and very often would, kill off characters while the team was on a mission.

Issue 4 is the William Hell Overture. What appears to be Hawkeye with a crossbow (Slower but more powerful???) is bringing down robbers in a rough part of the city and handing over the darker hued members to the Police.
William Hell is a front for a right wing Neo-nazi nutjob. Suicide Squad set him up for a fall with the ever so slightly racist Captain Boomerang in their midst.

Issue 6 see the squad in Russia trying to bring a defector back to the States. By this issue the mission has gone to heck and Deadshot is forced to shoot Enchantress in the head (grazing shot) to stop her wild rampage. Finally the sqaud gets the defector to the Russian Embassy via a train where we learn that she's not so keen to go to America.

Issue seven then sees them fighting The Peoples Heroes. In the 80's each main universe of heroes seemed to have a stash of villains set-up over in what was then the USSR. This one is no different with the heroes called Bolshoi, Molotov, Pravda, Hammer and Sickle. I often wonder what happened to them after the fall of the Berlin Wall? After the large donnybrook on the snowy Russian landscape the Squad escapes. Back in the States the team argues about who was at fault for the Russian shambles.

Issue 8 is a flashback type of story, with Amanda Waller, a great character, sifting over the people in her charge and her passing a very harsh judgement over the lot of them.

Rick Flag Jnr, who is a very Nick Fury like character, gets into fisticuffs with 'The Privateer' who has shown up at Squad headquarters looking like a cross between Snake Plisken and Sean Connery in Zardoz.
The Enchantress is judged as unstable. Deadshot flirts with his councilor. In a background story the Police are after Mirror Master, who is actually Captain Boomerang committing crimes in disguise.

By issue ten Nightshade, Slipknot and Bronze Tiger are listed as injured and the team Doctor, Karin Grave, has been killed. Batman breaks into Squad headquarters where he copies their files onto a floppy disc. Ah, old tech...
Batman has to fight his way past the Squad to escape and we get a mexican stand-off. He does not like the idea of the Squad and vows to shut it down at some stage. Rick Flag Jnr. states that he would rather fight alongside Bats than the rest of his team in the Squad.

Issue 12 sees the Squad taking out a cocaine ring, just to show that they are pretty flexible. The team is incognito, with Captain Boomerang stretching to play a creepy drug kingpin. Vixen succumbs to her animal side and kills the drug czar and rightly shows some remorse about it.

Issue 13 sees the Squad face down the Justice League. They are breaking into a Russian jail cell to free Nemisis, who was captured back in issue 5. The Squad has many links with the League and most of the one on one fights end with a stale-mate or a truce.

The book itself is very interesting and works because you have an eclectic bunch of A-holes and miscreants forced together to work for the government on assignments too messy for the heroes to touch. The stories are well layered and touch on all the characters and sets up lots of threads for each one. The art in the books isn't crash hot, which is both the actual pencil work and the quality of books of this era. Of course you may not like reading about villains simply doing missions to win their freedom but overall I like the way these are told.

Of course DC has now announced a movie starring the Suicide Squad so I would jump in and grab old copies of these books if this interests you before roughly August 2016, when interest will probably ramp up.