Dying Inside #2
In this issue, we see a dramatic shift in tone of the characters as well as have a few revelations sprung upon us.
Starting where the first issue left off, we begin w/ Troy and Lynn standing in front of Christabella. Lynn suddenly changes character completely and decides that she doesn’t want to take Christabella’s shit anymore and that she can just leave. When Christabella makes a move to attack her while her back is turned, a new character, Brett, busts his way through the… wall? Shotgun blazing. He seems to know Troy, and throws a gun his way, which Lynn intercepts and suddenly becomes a totally different character.
Just last page and in a few panels of the first issue, Lynn is described as “vibrant, witty and kind”.
…Clearly. It is like she gets a gun in her hand and suddenly becomes some cartoon Army captain, which makes no sense. She and Brett start gunning down all the monsters they can see and she puts a bullet through Christabella’s right eye, which Christabella replies to w/ “Oh great, now my hair is on fire. Thank you so much.”
Around now, all the characters get what I like to call Single Personality Disorder, or SPD. SPD is when all the characters in a story begin to take on one single attitude, most likely based off the single author creating all of them. Lynn, Christabella, Julianna and Troy all seem to become the same person w/ the same bad sense of humor.
POOR WRITING, Scott Ciencin! They are different characters for a reason—they should act like it.
Anyway, Troy and Lynn escape w/ the help of Brett. Once outside, Brett reveals that the back of his skull is missing and that Troy is responsible. Apparently Brett was Julianna’s first husband and had abused her. Troy killed Brett and then married Julianna but when she found out Troy had killed Brett, she killed herself. I don’t know… I can’t really think of why a person would kill themselves after escaping an abuser, unless she lied about the abuse and then felt responsible for Brett’s death—but then again, she doesn’t act like it.
Julianna attacks Troy, but Lynn saves him. They run off towards a bridge where they find Brett and Christabella. Christabella apparently “controls(s) the manifestations” in Silent Hill and turns Brett into some weird tentacle-monster-thing.
To which Lynn starts screaming to Troy about how he has the power to defeat them. I don’t know what the hell she is talking about. I mean she spent time in a comatose state at some mental hospital after a romp through Silent Hill, so I wouldn’t trust her advice. And on top of that, that isn’t how Silent Hill works! The town doesn’t make up monsters to attack you but if you click your heels the monsters will just turn into puppies. You have to actually learn a lesson or fulfill your destiny, not believe in yourself and throw glitter and rainbows over your head.
Anyway, monster!Brett grabs Lynn and starts to eat her. Troy’s heart grows three times that day and he offers himself in Lynn’s place. Christabella says his offer is pointless since she ALREADY HAS HIM, but then he says something about “body and soul” and she reconsiders. She allows Lynn to leave and then looks up at the sky and speaks to someone.
The focus shifts suddenly to reveal that someone who work/ed at the hospital Lynn was in stole one of the tapes she had made. He claims that he has been watching them over and over again and that “they keep changing”. He shows them to his friends and some spiky-haired girl in the group tells them to pack their bags because they are going to Silent Hill.
The all-over art gets worse in this issue. Ben Templesmith seems to get halfway through drawing a panel, focusing solely on the character’s faces and then just throws ink and paint all over the rest of the page. There is almost no backgrounds and I found myself constantly forgetting where this is. At one point Lynn says she finds a back door out of the shop they are in and I had been reading up to that point thinking they were still outside!
The monsters get a little more original. We see an Air Screamer, but really only a silhouette of one in the distant. But don’t confuse a rise in originality as a rise in creativity! The “original” monsters are basically just squiggly blobs, far off or in movement so they are so blurred you can’t make them out. They more often than not just look like chewed bubble gum that grew vertical mouths.
The color scheme continues to be blue-purple and red-brown, though shifts in red-dark pink when the shift in character focus moves to the group of punk kids.
I feel this is a comic I am going to hate.
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