Silk’s bizarre adventures continue in this family feud written by Emily Kim, with art by Ig Guara, colors by Ian Herring, and letters by Ariana Maher.
When we last saw Silk, she received a literal rude awakening in her apartment when she returned from a dream world only to see Saya Ishii transform herself into a demon.
Before Silk can ask Saya if there is any remnant of her human self leave, demon Saya attacks.
Unfortunately, Silk is moving really slow due to the lengthy amount of time she spent having her energy drained in the dreamscape. “I feel like I ate ten cheeseburgers and then got hit by a truck.” Silk thinks in her witty internal monologue courtesy of writer Emily Kim.
Ariana Maher’s letters and Ian Herring’s colors are also a highlight of this fight, as both enhance the sound effects and action. One panel features demon Saya grabbing Silk’s leg, a slight tint of red in the center of blue background that enhances Saya’s swiftness. It is further improved in the next panel with an even brighter red and a “Slish” as Saya slashes Silk’s body.
After quickly hitting demon Saya with a table, Silk escapes by going out the window and heading to The Sanctum Sanctorum to meet up with Wong and her brother Albert. Just then, Saya’s brother Max appears to say hi to Cindy. In the previous issue, he helped Saya hold Albert captive and went after Albert when he escaped. Naturally, Cindy isn’t too happy to see Max as she tells him what happened to Saya.
When he replies that Saya becoming a demon wasn’t part of her plan, Cindy demands he tells her what’s going on. She wants to try and turn Saya back to normal, but whether she can remains to be seen.
Anyway, Max explains that after Saya’s scheme with the evil cat demon failed, she learned her father, the villain Silvermane, was still alive. Silvermane gave up on her, saying that she wasn’t driven enough to be successful.
As a result, she decided to turn to magic and become the ultimate tech lord in order to win her father’s approval. She exhausted her savings to find The Moondragon Codex, a book that would allow her to summon a demon to provide her with power and resources. By sapping Silk’s energy while she slept, Saya could gave the demon the energy it needed to cross into the human world and get revenge on Silk.
As much as I sympathize with Saya’s daddy issues, she used her own sibling to further her schemes and nearly destroyed another pair of siblings in the process. Sibling relationships are
dear to me and I cannot stand folks who get in the way of good ones.
Cindy has also had enough of Saya and Max and gets him to tell her where his sister is: the apartment she shares with Max that serves as headquarters. Max is going with Silk so he can bypass security and Albert wants to come as well. Too bad Cindy goes big sis mode and tells him to stay put and rest.
On the one hand, I believe that Albert has proven himself capable of helping his sister since he risked his own life to save her in the previous issue. On the other, Albert needs to rest since his rescue efforts involved entering Cindy’s dreams. Grudgingly, Albert stays and Wong goes in his place. Glad Wong can get some fresh air, I can’t imagine how stuffy the Sanctum Sanctorum must be.
On the way to Saya’s headquarters, Max tries to explain why he helped Saya. Helping her is helping him find his purpose because he always felt stuck in Saya’s shadow, who is driven and knows what she wants. Max even compares his situation to Albert, who played a background supporting role in Cindy’s life until now.
While I empathize with being devoted to your sibling while feeling like you’re second best to them, this isn’t an excuse to help your sister ruin other people’s lives. Besides, Silk says that she didn’t see any of Saya’s humanity left and informs Max to pick the right side before its too late. By this point, everyone has arrived at Saya’s headquarters.
After Max gets them past security, they find the demon Saya looking up the locations of Reed Richards and Tony Stark. Max tries to appeal to her, but literally gets roared at in response.
As Max, Silk, and Wong try to battle Saya, Saya says she is going to kill Tony Stark. Silk figures out that Saya wants to kill all the big tech leaders so she is the only one left. Silk also tries to web up Saya while Wong tries to use a freezing spell on Saya.
Both their efforts only work temporarily as Saya suddenly disappears, but not before explaining that she can use her powers as a sleep demon to walk between the sleeping realm and the real one. By doing this, Saya can target someone Cindy loves, her brother Albert.
Back at The Sanctum, a sleeping Albert dreams that he and a friend are running through a dark forest to get away from something. At first, the “something” seems like a horde of zombies but Albert and his friend soon find something worse. The issue ends with demon Saya approaching them. If I were Albert, I’d run for my life and never watch a scary movie again.
Latonya Pennington
Latonya Pennington is a freelance contributor whose comics criticism can be found at Women Write About Comics, Comic Book Herald, Newsarama and Shelfdust, among others.
