Silent Hill: Sinner’s Reward #3

Jack shoots down all the monsters surrounding the young woman that states she had been traveling w/ her parents and then they had an accident and she woke up on the cross. He offers her a gun, but the woman, Sara, refuses to take it, claiming that she doesn’t like guns at all. Jack tells her that it is a mistake but she doesn’t listen, and then asks him to help her find her parents.
As they set off, we switch over to Finn Conway who is talking to the gas station attendant who tells him that he didn’t see the thugs, but only saw Jack and Jill head up to Silent Hill. Conway heads off and the attendant gives the creepiest face I’ve ever seen and tells Conway “That is what I’m here for.” leading me to believe he is sending people into Silent Hill for funsies. What a dick.

Look at that face… creepy as shit, man.

Also, I want to take a moment to point out that somewhere in the middle of issue #2, we start getting these timeline cues. “Before.” and “Now.” At first I was a little confused but it seems to be that Sinner’s Reward likes to move around in the space of time.

Jack on the ground preparing to kill himself is happening “Now.” and everything that is happening in Silent Hill is happening “Before.” so whatever happened in Silent Hill has brought Jack to “Now.” and why he is contemplating suicide.

Jack and Sara come across Brookhaven Hospital in their search for Jill and once inside, Jack hears someone screaming. He rushes up several flights of stairs to find Jill blubbering to bodies in the morgue.

Amidst Jill’s ravings, Sarah pulls a sheet off a table and finds her parents.

They kind of look like the Cynthia mannequins in Silent Hill 4. I don’t know if that was on purpose or just something I noticed.
Sara accuses Jack of killing her parents and just as Jack starts to demand that the bodies on the tables are monsters, he sees them as human beings and sirens begin wailing.

In the sirens, Jack recalls his last hit for Conway, a councilman and his family, which was Sara and her parents. The comic ends w/ Sara standing in w/ a posse of nurse monsters ready to make Jack pay for what he has done.


Idk… as this comic goes on, the art seems more frantic, but it is still better to an Nth degree than all the previous stuff. Ready for the next and final issue!

Silent Hill: Sinner’s Reward #2

Sinner’s Reward #2 starts off where the first comic ended. Jack rolls up into Silent Hill looking for Jill. We switch over to Finn Conway in Boston to see ANOTHER ALLUSION!

Heaven’s Night sign!
Finn decides that because his lackies haven’t returned any of his calls, so he sets out to find them.
Back in Silent Hill, Jack reveals a trunk full of weapons and a fiery ambition.

Jack flashes back to before they made a run for it and recalls the conversation between Jill and him.

Is it just me or does Jill have some serious Jessica Rabbit vibe going on…? Also, I can’t decide if Jill really loves Jack or if she just likes the danger behind the fling and the idea of running away from her husband. Jack seems to love her enough, but I don’t think I buy that she really loves him back. Anyway, Jack starts roaming around town and sees Jill’s dress hanging from a Halo of the Sun painted w/ blood on the front of Pete’s Bowl-o-Rama.

As Jack is prepared to bust through the doors after here, what looks sort of like a Closer attacks him and Jack beats it to the ground, when Jill runs out of nowhere screaming at him not to hurt “him”, directed towards the monster and not Jack as one would think.

I-I don’t know why she is in a nurse’s outfit.

No clue.

Moving on. Jack tries to drag Jill away from the monster’s corpse and she starts screaming at him that he is a monster and a killer.

She starts telling him that all their victims are in Silent Hill and they want their revenge because they deserve it. She pushes him away and runs off into the fog where Jack is attacked by another Closer-like monster that grows the face of one of his victims…

A male victim. I know I am nitpicking here, but Closers (and Mandarins, the Closer Alpha, if you will) were female and meant to invoke a stalking and hulking female presence, so a male face of Jack’s first hit for Finn Conway is a little weird and stretches the “rules” of Silent Hill’s preset monsters.
Well, at least it doesn’t talk or ask him to paint it, right?!
Jack hears a woman crying out for help and when he investigates, he finds a purple-haired woman nailed to a cross, surrounded by more Closers and that is where issue 2 ends.

I am all tingly in my low places for the next issue!

First off, just look!

I squeed when I saw that. Tom Waltz, you beautiful, BEAUTIFUL MAN. In case you don’t know, Scott Ciencin wrote the stories for all the other Silent Hill comics—and they were all HORRIBLE. Tom Waltz actually knows how to write a story and was the writer behind Past Life (which I’ll review when I can) as well as a co-writer of Silent Hill Downpour, so we know this is going to be good.
Second, we have a newer artist that can make truly beautiful art! Steph Stamb is an brilliant artist! There are backgrounds, ya’ll! Fucking backgrounds! And people look like people, not folded up photographs of coffee stains on napkins!

It is like a scoop of butterscotch ice cream on a 109F day. (and it is almost the hot right now. UGH) I cannot explain how refreshing this new art style it.

Ok, let’s get into the story. We hear Jack “the pup” talking about killing someone and that killing has become almost second nature to him, but that this current hit is too much for him. We pull out to reveal he is talking about himself.

This story is already better than when Among the Damned did this.
Jack tells us that he has been trained sine he was a child to be a killer, like his father but that he wants to start a new life w/ Jill. Yes Jack and Jill went to Silent Hill! CLEVER.
OH
MY
FUCKING
GAWD
SYMBOLISM!!!

DO YOU SEE THAT! It is an allusion to the Greek mythical figure Charon, the ferryman. Charon was doomed to forever scuttle the souls of dead mortals across the Styx River to the Underworld. A Greek figure of death in a story about a mob hitman?! This is better than sex after all the other comics!
Jack stole Jill from his boss and they are now on the run, from their past as well as Jack’s boss and Jill’s husband the same. They stop by a gas station and Jack gets an ominous yet wonderfully vague warning about the town they are “just passing through” from the station attendant. He ignores the guy’s warning about reasons finding people and making them stay longer than they like and heads out to fill up his tank to find a gun pointed at his temple. He thugs grab Jack and Jill but only manage to get away w/ Jill as the station attendant shoots 2 out of 3 of the thugs.
Jack blacks out and slips back to a faded memory.

Through the memory we see that Jack’s father trained him from a young age to be a psychopath, even getting Jack to kill his childhood dog for sport. When he wakes up, he thanks the old guy for helping him out and heads off toward Silent Hill in search of Jill whereupon he crosses this scene:

When he rushes upon the scene, he finds that Jill is gone and that Jimmy has turned into a zombie!! GODDAMIT!

What the fuck? Tom, I love you… you know I do. I’ve sent you fan mail on more than one occasion—but what is this? Come on, bro. This zombie is amazing for a Resident Evil comic, but not Silent Hill. *sigh*
Jack is forced to kill Jimmy before he mutates into the Nemesis and then drives off into the fog to end the comic.


Oh this comic is going to be gooooood.

Of course I’ll hold off my rating until later… but this comic is beautiful. FUCKING BEAUTIFUL

This comic is the hardest to read, by far. A dozen pages in and I’ve not got any names, beside random lady that makes breakfast… Her name is May.

Ok, so The Grinning Man starts out w/ some guy doing something. He talks about demons or something because someone is chasing him or something. Some guy that looks like a rip-off Joker pops up and blows up the mine-thingy they are in. It blows up and marshmallow streamers float around in the sky.

Seriously, is that supposed to be fire or smoke, because all I can see is marshmallow streamers. It’s a party!
The not-Joker guy walks away in the middle of a pun, then finishes it 15 miles later. He sees a car w/ some women in it and decides that he needs to don a magical disguise.

I think he needs a magical reimbursement because that disguise is broken. All that it looks like happened was his hair grew slightly longer and slightly lighter. Not exactly Pistachio DisGuise. I am kind of embarrassed to admit that I watched The Master of Disguise… and more than once.
The story shifts to some buy sitting in bed next to a lady who then offers to make him a five-course breakfast and that she already did all her chores. The perfect woman! We see him take money out of his wallet and place it under a “Congrats on Retirement” card. Is he retiring? Is he placing money in the retirement pot?

He goes to work and it turns out he is the one retiring! Sooo… he put money into his own retirement pot? Uh, okie-dokie.

And he is retiring after only 25 yr.s? Most every officer I know of reaches the 30-40 yr. mark long before retirement. Apparently this guy just sucks so they want to get rid of him. “He” turns out to be Tower, a guy that is ready to retire, move to the Florida Keys and start his own business down there. He names a replacement, Anderson, but is pissed to find out that someone named Mayberry has been named. Mayberry apparently was sent to the division because of an excellent record and marks from the FBI. I don’t know why Tower doesn’t like this guy— because this guy seems sentimental towards missing persons of Silent Hill.

Tower and unnamed cop buddy decide that they are going to scare off Mayberry by showing him a “real taste” of Silent Hill. And what is worse, Mayberry seems to be a fan of Tower, even look up to him. Tower is kind of an ass. At the crash site, Mayberry points out that the treads of the crash point to Silent Hill, that there are only marks for one car of the 2-car accident and that the blood everywhere is a dog’s so the crash was set up to look in a way that would get people to think that there are bodies to be collected instead of mounting a rescue operation to find the missing people that were taken to Silent Hill… I have no idea how Mayberry gets all that information in the 3 panels that they have been there—and he does so all while reciting Tower’s personal and professional record, well at least he isn’t an ass like Tower. That is something! And while we are on the subject…

Tower and Mayberry look the EXACT SAME. Tower and unnamed cop friend look THE EXACT SAME. It is like the artist only had one reference to go off of and didn’t want to be bold enough to change it up more than hair color. Nick Stakal also did the artwork for Dead/Alive, but it seems like he lost his arms in a tragic mac-n-cheese accident and is re-learning how to paint w/ his feet.
Tower asks Mayberry why he believes in the supernatural and Mayberry says that he believes that almost anything is possible and that Tower should understand that as he works in Silent Hill. Tower seems to think that the monsters in Silent Hill are COMPLETELY DIFFERENT than demons, ghosts, aliens or Santa Clause because he said so, I guess and tells Mayberry that he sounds crazy by talking about it. Mayberry sees a flying monster fly towards The Lakeview Hotel but Tower is too buys texting someone in code, when we suddenly cut to action panels!

I have no idea what is going on.
Two people are running from mushy-tentacle thing and they run into The Not-Joker Man, who starts shooting up the monster and is that—is that Slender Man?!

That is! You got Slender Man in my Silent Hill comic! I mean, if handled properly that would be awesome, but just sort of thrown in there and being shot at by The Grinning Man is stupid. We cut to a couple guys in monster costumes talking about how stupid their plan is.

Yes, I do hope Mayberry shoots you. A lot. And are they going to pretend to be monsters or are they going to pretend to be drug dealers pretending to be monsters? I thought the point was to use his belief in the supernatural as a springboard to scare him off. If you lean in and tell him you are drug dealers looking for your dope, he isn’t going to get scared and “go(ing) run back to his momy w/ a stain on his…” (underwear? Cheeks? Idk where that insult was going.) He is going to turn you in for hatching a plan to beat the shit out of a fellow officer! And what’s more, Tower tells Mayberry that the hotel is usually full of disfigured drug dealers! Now Mayberry is going to be expecting drug dealers, not monsters!
Mayberry and Tower talk a little more before Tower calls Mayberry a stupid sick fuck and then 3 floating, shirtless guys pop up.

Tower starts screaming at them to get down and “submit yourselves to arrest” while Mayberry is screaming at him to shoot them and make them go away… What? WHAT? OK, no. NO THIS IS NOT OK. The whole story up to this point is about Tower and nameless cop buddies hating Mayberry because he is into the supernatural and now the comic is going to flip around and try telling me that Mayberry is a big bitch in the face of the things he believes in?! No. I’ve known a lot of people that are into the paranormal—including me! And I can’t imagine any of them resulting to “SHOOT ‘EM! MAKE THEM GO AWAY!” when faced w/ 3 white-haired clones floating down a hallway.
Fuck you, Ciencin. That isn’t how real people act! None of your characters ever act like real people act! And to top things off, this “stand alone” comic is using the same crutch for its story as Dead/Alive did! Fucking Whately is back— WhatelySSSSssss. He is/they are the 3 floating white-haired guys coming down the stairs.

…
…
…
You know, I don’t even care at this point. Let’s have a race through the rest of this comic, shall we?
Tower and Mayberry find the 2 women from the car crash. They have marks on their flesh and are in some weird magic circle. Tower resort to violence and destroys the circle when 2 Frankenstein-looking dudes named “Stiff” and “Sawbones” pop up who tower promptly and w/o much coercion, shoots in the head and kills. What a guy.
Mayberry and Tower have a little heart to heart about how Tower has been able to deal w/ everything as long as he has to which Tower says he was either crazy before or just didn’t want to believe but now that he is seeing the monsters, it is because he “believes”. I-I don’t even know.
The Grinning Man pops up and catches Mayberry while Tower is going on a little tour given to him from a zombie boy. Goddamnit, Ciencin. Stop putting zombies in these Silent Hill comics. The dead kid shows him to where most of The Grinning Man’s prisoners are being held, all of them marked and in magic circles like the 2 women Tower saved earlier. He breaks their magic cages and sets them free after the zombie kid tells him that The Grinning Man draws his power from them. When Tower and The Grinning Man meet again, Tower shoots him and to his shock, The Grinning Man feels it.

I still couldn’t care less if I tried. Tower goes about shooting him over and over again, all while delivering a long little monologue about how the monsters never went after him because he was “…helping them keep the lie going about this place being normal.”
WHAT
Just a few pages ago you were saying that the reason you couldn’t see the monsters, TOWER, was because you didn’t “believe”, now you are saying that the reason is because you helped spread the lie? Which is it?! Is it because you were a close-minded bigot or because you are an ass that knew there were monster and chose to lie to people—I’ll solve the mystery we know that it is the latter because in the beginning of the comic, you said you knew there were monsters in Silent Hill and that was why you wanted to retire early! So you are just an ass… what a shock.
Whatever.
We are at the end.

That is it.
That is the last panel.
Done.
Fin.
It’s a wrap.


So, how about this comic. First off, it is the hardest to follow. I read the first dozen pages or so, at least 3 times. I’d start in on it and instantly get confused about who was who. There are almost no names, all the male characters look exactly the same and the art style DOES NOT HELP in any fashion. The only characters you can kind of tell apart is the female characters and the are so few and fair between, you barely notice them anyway. We’ve returned to Ciencin’s signature Single Personality Disorder, in which every character has the exact same reckless, humorless, asshole-ish attitude. It is a bad personality to be used once let alone as EVERY CHARACTER IN EVERY COMIC YOU SHIT OUT, CIENCIN!!!!! Stoppit. STOPPIT.

So aside from the writing and the art, what are we left w/? NOTHING.
The story is basically about a serial killer that kidnaps people and hides them in Silent Hill so that he can draw power from them and make himself immortal and stuff. That is it. There is nothing to build on, nothing to dig for. There is no symbolism, not foreshadowing or allusions or any sort of literary tool used other than the basic English language. I think Ciencin leaned on the hick Not-joker just so he could crap out bad writing and poor grammar and get away w/ it. Not to mention the fact that The Whatelys are in this for like 3 pages for no reason, even though 1) this is supposed to be a stand alone, 2) they served no purpose at all, and 3) WHY WAS THERE CLONES?!

Silent Hill: The Grinning Man rate: 0/10

I say avoid this comic even more than any of the others. I am tempted to give this comic a negative rating because of how bad it was.

Paint it Black

Paint it Black is about a painter named Ike. Ike is lazy and likes to leech off his friends. Yes, it is the same Ike from Dead/Alive. No… No I am not happy about this. I cried a little on the inside when I realized that. I hate Ike.

Ike is kicked out by his last friend and meets a homeless guy who tells him there is food in Silent Hill, that the town is abandoned but the stores are all stocked and the power is on. Ike heads out ignoring the homeless guy’s warnings about monsters in Silent Hill and when he gets there, he finds none other than monsters!

Sadly, the monsters to not make Ike into jam as I’d hope they would and instead he is allowed to roam around as he pleases. He shacks up in some old hotel that still gets PPV mind you, when he is contacted by the monster again. They bring him painting supplies and ask that he paint them.

He does so and after doing nothing but painting the monsters, he gets word that he is famous outside Silent Hill.

People in the real world seem to be clamoring to find him and give him his money. But every time he tries to leave the town he ends up back in the center of town. He just gives up as none of the cars work and goes back to painting the monsters and the tourists that are being killed by them.

It goes on again for another 6 months when a group of cheerleaders appear.

Yes, cheerleaders in Silent Hill.

Active cheerleaders that practice routines in the streets of Silent Hill.
YEAH
YEAH
UH HUH
IT GETS WORSE.
They try to get Ike to help them but he ignores them as anyone in the town that isn’t him gets killed pretty quickly and w/ them being loud cheerleaders, fucking screaming GO BENGALS GO BEGANLS, he figures they will be gone pretty quickly. But the head cheerleader Cheryl, OH YES. ANOTHER NAME FROM SILENT HILL 1 THAT HAS NOTHING TO DO W/ THE CHARACTER THEY ARE NAMED AFTER, picks the lock and invites herself and her team into Ike’s place. And because they are cheerleaders and have nothing better to do, they pull pink ribbons and balloons out of their asses and decorate for a Pepto-bismal birthday party.

Mike starts screaming at them to get out and they tell him that it is what he deserves for being a leech to other people.

He tries to push them out and Cheryl knocks him unconscious and tossed him into a closet. They keep him in there, Cheryl visits him once to bring him food telling him not to try anything because she knows “… seven schools of combat.” and she has a baseball bat. Right. Karate cheerleader. I almost miss Lauryn the math genius, debate captain cheerleader. BUT WAIT! IT GETS WORSE.
The next time Cheryl the cheerleader appears, she looks like this:

Commando, karate cheerleader. Are you kidding me? Spoiler, no. This comic is not kidding me and I am not kidding you. All of the cheerleaders somehow changed into gothic swat gear. Not like that is hard to find in Silent Hill or anything. Turns out that while Ike was locked up waiting for the monsters to eat them, 2 of the cheerleaders were taken by a flying monster. Cheryl tells him that he has to help them, so he tells them about a bowling ally that the monster don’t like him to go near.
They jump into a fire truck and drive around town screaming GO BENGALS

Even though they already said, TWICE, that cars don’t work in Silent Hill. It was the reason Ike couldn’t get out and it was the reason the cheerleaders couldn’t get out but here they are driving a fire truck around. The drive to the bowling ally and inside they find some sort of bio-mechanical demon sweat shop where they find the 2 missing cheerleaders.


Ike and Cheryl grab the two girls and Ike paints a hole in the wall for them to escape— EVEN THOUGH in Dead/Alive Ike told Kenneth that he painted his way into Silent Hill but could not paint his way out. Continuity?? WHAT IS THAT?! Ike lets the girls get out first but when Cheryl realizes that some of the girls died while they were storming the bowling ally, she decides to seal Ike in the alternate reality.

I don’t even like Ike and I would call that a dick move. She and the remaining girls drive out of Silent Hill and it is revealed that Chrissy and Missy, the 2 that had been missing, ARE DEMONS!!!


So how was Paint it Bla—AWFUL! Ike is the worse choice for a main character. I hated him in Dead/Alive. He is like all the bad parts of the stupid, artist guy from every 90s movie and tv show in one. He is completely unlikable, he leaves people to die, he tries to paint demons to get rid of the cheerleaders once he is locked in the closet and he is an obnoxious asshole that you don’t even want to survive.

It is like Ciencin sat down and was like “Eh, fuck-it. Let’s make a commando, karate, psychic, survivalist cheerleader named Cheryl… and she’ll go to Silent Hill and uh, she bugs that guy Ike from Dead/Alive. Yeah, yeah that’ll work. Send my paycheck to me when your done.”

This is probably the worse comic I’ve ever seen—worse than Dead/Alive. There is no story, there are so many plot holes it looks like swiss cheese. Ike is struggling to get out but then when the cheerleaders show up Ike tells them there are state troopers that come through every couple of days! If Ike wanted to get out, why didn’t he hitch a ride? Or how about the fact that Ike says any human that shows up in Silent Hill is hunted down by the monsters so that he could continue to paint the carnage. Wouldn’t any trooper that came through get torn up pretty quickly? And how would a trooper be “passing through” if the cars don’t work?!

This comic is HORRIBLE.

SILENT HILL: PAINT IT BLACK RATE: 0/10

Do not read this. Don’t. Just don’t.

Silent Hill: Among the Damned

Among the Damned is a single publication in the Silent Hill Comics. Still written by Scott Ciencin, sadly, but the art is done by Shaun Thomas. I don’t hate his style, though it is a little weird the way Jason looks like a folded piece of paper. Maybe he was going for the meaning behind it, that Jason feels bent and broken, I don’t know.

Jason is a soldier and a survivor. His team was attacked by some monsters or something and he was the only one spared. Every night he dreams about the slaughter over and over again. He wakes and curses that Dahlia probably thought he was a pussy annnnnd the frustration begins here!
1) What is going on, Ciencin? Up to this point you’ve left out most of the games alone and allowed them their dignity. Aside from ripping off monster designs and throwing out the name “Alessa” in some graffiti, the games have been mostly left alone. But now you are just straight up taking the name of the antagonist from Silent Hill 1 and making her a movie and music icon in pink?!
2) What!? Jason, that was a poster. It was a poster that was watching you sleep. A poster of Dahlia, not the actual Dahlia. What is wrong w/ you?

Jason gets dressed and heads up to some mountain to kill himself. Along the way he meets a woman that looks kind of like Dahlia, but their encounter is brief. He starts driving when suddenly night attacks! Jason crashes his car and thinks that he saw something dart in front of the car so he goes looking for help. He wonders into Silent Hill and gets chased around by some monsters. Then he freaks out like he has never held a gun before and starts screaming about no one having his back.

While he is having his freak out, Dahlia wonders in for no apparent reason. He chases her down— like the stalker he is! His encounter with Dahlia really calls into question his mental state. Fist he thinks that that Dahlia sees him through the poster on his wall, then he sees her in Silent Hill and is compelled from the depths of his soul to chase her down and protect her. They hide inside a shop (I remember once upon a time when over %70 of the doors in Silent Hill were inoperable. Just once in these comics I’d like to read “The lock is broken. The door won’t open.”) and Jason does his best to protect Dahlia when she turns out to be a Demon!

Amazing! I don’t care. She scares the monsters back for a bit when a pack of random people appear and rush them into The Sanctuary.

Who are these people? Where did they come from? Why are they here? Why does the leader known as Leo look like Joshua Grahm from Fallout: New Vegas? And why does The Sanctuary have some lazy-ass symbol that kind of looks like a child’s finger painting of the Halo of the Sun

Seriously. Look at that! It looks like a flower or something. And I don’t think that that is how the Halo of the Sun works. In Silent Hill 3, there is a book you can read that tells you that the Halo of the Sun, can appear in almost every color except blue and blue has the opposite effect of the spell. So that doesn’t mean that it has to be red and it definitely doesn’t mean it has to be blood like Leo says it does. And on top of that, it was meant to be a way to CALL GOD, not ward off monsters (and if blue is supposed to be a curse upon God) although to Leo’s credit he does say that he doesn’t actually know for sure if the symbols do what they think they do.
Jason tries to give Dahlia a gun as he apparently had a case of temporarily INEXISTANCE when she went all demon-faced earlier. She decides that she’ll pas on the gun, but wants his guns. GET IT? GET IT?! They have sex—NOT THAT WE GET TO ENJOY IT.

THANKS
Bad art and then you cut to black like a dick. Not that I was expecting graphic detail (even though these artists have no problem drawing detailed boobs), but something other than a solid black square would be nice. They bump uglies and wait a minute… if Among the Damned the backstory to zombie aviator dad from Dead/Alive?! Military guy falls in love w/ a demon in disguise, they have a kid, then give it up. LET’S READ MORE AND FIND OUT!
They decide to leave The Sanctuary and try to make their way out of the town. While they are roaming around, Jason’s war buddies turn up, zombiefied and tell him that they have unfinished business. Jason has another full-on freak out and starts shooting them for no reason.

Jason runs off w/ Dahlia in tow, but she reveals herself as a demon-tentacle-head-stick-thing and tells the monsters to “Bow down. Worship me! Worship me!” Jason, what a shock, freaks out and tries to run away. She gives him something… uh, jello? And tells him to run.

She throws him out a window where his zombie troop is waiting for him. They tell him that they want to protect him and they tell him this as they guide him out of Silent Hill. They say that when the monsters attacked, they were given the opportunity to chose who would survive and they choose Jason for… some… reason… and that they want him to “…Live. Really live for the first time.”
He makes it to the border and finds Dahlia waiting for him. She asks if he kept what she gave him and it turns out she gave him her heart—no like literally, her heart. She took it out of her chest and put it in his hand. I have no idea what that did or why she had to, especially since she screams to some unknown entity that they “… told me it wouldn’t hurt. You told me I wouldn’t feel anything!” Whatever. I guess they are in love so they walk away together into the sunset.

THE END

This comic sucked—but not as bad as I thought it would. It was way better than Dying Inside and way, way better than Dead/Alive. Jason is a bit like Kenneth Carter in the fact that he suffers from a lack of personality. He sort of has the “good guy” aura to him, but he doesn’t do much to achieve appreciation from the reader. Especially since he freaks out and runs away all the time.
I think most of that comes from his PTSD and Survivor’s Guilt, which a very severe conditions for soldiers and would have made an amazing backstory for the character of Jason, but it is basically ignored. He doesn’t go through anything that would press upon those stresses other than the 2 encounters he had w/ the zombies of his former troop mates.
Dahlia also has basically no personality other than the fact that she is some demon. I get the feeling that Ciencin got bad feedback about his characters in Dying Inside and Dead/Alive, so in order to avoid Single Personality Disorder, he stripped all his characters of ANY personality. I’d complain, but I rather like no personality over a single obnoxious personality. Also, there is hardly any swearing in this comic. I’m not condoning swearing, I swear a shit-ton, but not when it comes to writing a story or detailing vocabulary of characters that would not swear.
As for the idea that Among the Damned is the backstory for Dead/Alive’s Kenneth Carter/Joshua Reynolds… I don’t know.

We don’t ever know Jason’s last name nor do we know what outfit of the military he served in. They don’t look all that similar, but w/ the constant changes in artists I could forgive that. Dead/Alive makes it seem like they met each other at a park or something, somewhere out in the real world and not in Silent Hill, but I can’t tell if those are supposed to be Ken’s father’s memories or Ken’s idealistic manifestation of how his parents looked and met. I don’t think that one could argue either way, aside from the fact that this is considered a “stand alone” comic and that would entail it not being connected to the other—which is proved wrong by Paint it Black. Paint if Black is about Ike the painter from Dead/Alive, but Paint it Black is still called a “stand alone”.
Whatever, it doesn’t really matter to me. I kind of like keeping Among the Damned as far away from Dead/Alive as possible.

SILENT HILL: AMONG THE DAMNED RATE: 5/10

It wasn’t bad but it wasn’t compelling either. It was not one way or the other. If you are considering getting any of the comic’s I’ve reviewed so far, I’d go for this one.

Dead/Alive #5


I actually kind of like the guest artist’s cover. That is all I can say that I actually like about this series. Ok, this is the final stretch. Let’s get this done!

Troy and Christabella get this ball rolling when they see Connie going all goddess on their asses. She eats Troy’s soul out, which is weird considering that I thought he lost his soul at the end of Dying Inside Issue #2. He gave up his soul to spare Lynn but whatever. I’ve not come to expect anything remotely resembling continuity by now.

I actually kind of like this panel, even if his “soul” looks like marshmallow filing. The Goddess Connie eats out Troy’s soul and then tries to eat Christabella’s soul but Christabella makes a deal w/ her to which she gets a look at comic living!

Kenneth is talking to his zombie aviator dad about his past and why he was drawn to Silent Hill. Turns out that Kenneth’s father met a demon-woman once upon a time. The bumped uglies in the name of the cult and intended to use the baby resulting as a tool to spread the evil of Silent Hill. Which brings up another problem! Let’s say Ike was their first choice. They spend all that time sending him visions of monsters and whatnot to get him to paint them and spread the evil, then he fails and is killed. Then Lynn is called on to film the monsters as the cult believes that photographic evidence is going to have a bigger impact than some paintings. Lynn does what she is supposed to but Lauryn’s buddies intercept the films. Finally Kenneth is called upon, a famous actor that everyone seems to know. He is tainted and then set loose on as a vicious serial killer. As direct an influence as the order can think up. Now they are saying that he was bred to spread evil?!
That means their plan started, let’s call it, 25+ yr.s ago. Long before Ike or Lynn were called on. I get that supposedly Kenneth’s parents went rogue and sent him away so he would not be used, but the order was able to call him anyway and even use Ike’s paintings to intrigue him. Seems like a lot of work put into one plan to have so many backups.

Kenneth freaks out by the fact that he is only half human and that he is a monster. His dad tries to cheer him up. While that is going on, Lauryn and Whately are doing battle. Eventually the fight is taken to Christabella, Kenneth and The Goddess Connie. They are all yelling at each other to kill one another, but Kenneth decides that he loves Connie so much he is going to destroy her body so that he can free her soul in case it is trapped. He hits her and AH! ACTION PANEL!!!

Turns out that by destroying the goddess w/n Connie, everyone is thrown into different dimensions.

Kenneth wakes to find that he lives on a ranch w/ Connie and most importantly, BEAR THE DOG LIVES! He asks Connie about the other dimension, but she doesn’t know what he is talking about, she gives the same answer when he asks if she remembers any of his movies.

Lauryn and Ike are shacked up together in France. Lauryn seems to remember the other dimension, but Ike only mentions in passing that he seems to remember the name “Kenneth Carter”, though in Lauryn’s univers, Kenneth and Connie where killed in bed together.

Christabella is placed back in control of Silent Hill and all the poorly rendered Trapezoid Heads. (so sad) Even after she has a deep conversation with Bear the Dog about how no one is born evil and that everyone, even she could choose their own path and be good. Guess that was for nothing.


And that was Dead/Alive.
How did it do?
WORSE THAN DYING INSIDE.
At least Dying Inside TRIED to tell a story. It tried to link the characters together like links in a chain, even if it was badly done. Troy was connect to Lynn who was connected to Christabella who was connected to Lauryn who was connected to Lynn again. It was roundabout but at least it was a try.
Dead/Alive was not even trying. It kept throwing in new characters, new plot devices and all while boring me w/ the same old problems of me not giving a crap about anyone in this series.
I will admit, thus far Kenneth is the character I’ve hated the least, but in the last issue of Dead/Alive he goes all whinny and suddenly losses his bland non-personality. He whines about his father using him and that he isn’t human then suddenly decides that he wants to do his own thing because he owes it to himself.

Don’t read these. If you have started Dying Inside just, well one… stop. Why? Why would you read them?! And if you really just want to get through them, go for it. But just stop at the final issue. It isn’t worth it to go into Dead/Alive. It effectively renders Dying Inside pointless. Dead/Alive not only tells the same story of Dying Inside again, but does it in a more roundabout way than the first time!

SILENT HILL: DEAD/ALIVE RATE: 1/10

I can’t wait to get into the stand alones. I bet it’ll be like pulling off band-aids.

Dead/Alive #3


I am beginning to think I was wrong. Maybe each issue features a guest artist or something, because yet another artist is credited for the cover art, Chris Bolton this time.

We open w/ Ike, Kenneth and Christabella standing around talking. Ike talks about how great of a lay Lauryn is and Christabella tells him that he is actually dead and that Lauryn just enjoys “mercy fucks”. Classy. Ike refuses to believe he is dead and amidst his whining Christabella gets sprayed by some demon blood as they hack and slash their way through the streets. Ike is really irritating.

For whatever reason Christabella becomes a vampire and starts eating the blood even though the synopsis in issue #2 states that she is alive and eats “greasy hamburgers”. She gains enough power to kill everything in sight, including Bear the dog’s demon dog posse that “he made his bitches”. I hate Ike. And then Kenneth has this inner monologue in which he talks about the fact that Ike was the town’s first shot at trying to popularize the horrors of Silent Hill and that Kenneth is their second choice but that isn’t right. Lynn from Dying Inside was one of their choices! I don’t know if she was before Ike or after as it never states any sort of timeline, but we know that Kenneth was called after Lynn made her tape because her tape was used to get Lauryn into Silent Hill! This series can’t even keep its OWN HISTORY STRAIGHT!

Elsewhere, we see Connie being bathed by sexy nurses who are quoting old movies like Snow White and The Wizard of Oz. Lenora tells Connie that she made the monsters talk because she thought it would be entertaining.

Man, I wish I was making this up. She tells Connie that she is the “Empty Vessel” that we’ve been seeing messages about since the first issue. She suggests (and Kenneth also mentions in Issue #2) that he and Connie he been expecting a child together, but that the child was lost, by choice or not is unknown. Lenora tells Connie that she will be filled again but “who or what will play daddy” should be her main concern.
Back w/ Ike and Kenneth, the group come across a festival.

Apparently Lenora is also known as Jezebeth, the demon of falsehood. They travel through the fair and into a shop in search of something specific. Ike finds some special dagger which he tells Kenneth is the only way to kill Lenora—and Christabella. Ike also starts dropping hints that Lenora looks like a grown version of Christabella. Ike gets cut by the knife and that apparently calls attention to them from the monsters. Kenneth picks up a gun and starts gunning down the monsters, which physically turns him into “the blonde-hair, blue-eyed, blood-stained boy next door” that Lenora want him to become to spread the evil of Silent Hill.

He realizes he is changing and sees a vision of himself killing a detective and a corner that were investigating Jess’ death in the real world. He is unable to tell what is real and what is not, but it doesn’t matter (a common theme in these comics) as Lenora has an ultimatum for him. He has to kill one of the “innocents” around him. He must chose between Connie, Bear the Dog and Christabella.

She tells him that if he kills one or… I don’t know. At first it seems like he has to kill one of 3 to save Connie, but she is included in the sacrifice list. Then I thought maybe it was a deal that if he killed one of them, she would erase the crimes he did/will do in the real world, but she tells him that no matter what he is going to be her emissary. So it is a pointless deal and there is no reason for him to even chose. He can’t possibly kill Christabella— and the dog is the best character in this series!

I would almost care but then I don’t. And Ike made me really not care. Did I mention that I didn’t like him yet? Because he is an ass. He is like a 90s cartoon that just pops up for no reason.

2 more issues to go!

DEAD/ALIVE #2

This comic is horrible. Even worse than the other ones. It is so bad, the artist from issue #1 did the cover, then they got another artist to make another cover and continue the series. And it wasn’t like the new-new artist was any better. Nick Stakal’s style is almost identical to Ted McKeever. Seriously. The cover that looks like it was done by someone else, was done by the same guy as the first issue, but the entire issue looks like it was done by that guy, but is done by another guy! The story behind these comics is almost as confusing as the actually fucking story!

Speaking of the story, Kenneth and Christabella continue to roam around Silent Hill. For whatever reason the monsters are not attack them but they decide they need to hide. They duck into a movie theater where one of Kenneth’s movies is playing. Inside he finds some paperwork about him as a child before he was adopted and his name was Joshua Reynolds. He starts reading about his past but doesn’t make it far before Christabella runs off to watch a movie.

The movie is briefly an excerpt of Kenneth’s “future”. And what is w/ that 70s groovy font?! I couldn’t even read the damn thing. Anyway, I guess he is going to get the same treatment as Troy and become a tentacle chest. Suddenly Connie appears and shows him an image of his girlfriend Jess dead, an ax buried in her head. Above her body the message states that Jess was “… a whore that got what she deserved. Kenneth with blood on his hands.” I guess the implication is that they are setting him up for murder, but there is nothing in the note like “I am Kenneth Carter and I kill dis bish.”

The movie cuts back to Connie who’s eyes start bleeding and Kenneth realizes it is Lenora. Lenora tells him that he should just give up, and then Troy comes in out of nowhere.

Troy tries to drag Christabella back to her limbo-like world but Christabella magically gains some powers back. She says something about feeling “a gift” inside, a “family inheritance” that she “had to be alive to get.”
Wait, so she IS alive?! No. How is she alive? Her stomach has been ripped open for an unknown amount of time, unless you are going to say that she is living around that giant wound. WHICH IS STUPID. Also, why is she magically getting Lauryn’s powers? Other than a single panel in the beginning of issue #1, we have not seen Lauryn at all. Is she dead? Did she disappear, blink out of existence and there was some sort of weird delay and Christabella JUST NOW got her powers?
You know, I don’t even care. She gets her power and is able to summon some Pyramid Heads (yes, multiple Trapezoid Heads again) to slow Troy down, but she does not have enough power to go after Lenora. He drops to the ground and Kenneth picks her up and carries her out. I would’ve left her but I guess Kenneth is a better person than me. Lenora screams at him, asking him why he is helping her and he replies “Because you are scared of her. That is enough for me.”
They make it outside and then suddenly some guy named Ike Isaacs shows up and says that some “goth-chick” called him in to help Kenneth because Kenneth bought all his paintings.

Oh yeah, and not only do the monsters talk BUT THE DOG GETS AN INTERNAL MONOLGUE!

I-I can’t. I just can’t.
This comic is so bad that I was almost sure I actually died of boredom, was sent to hell and had someone flipping through this comic and forcing me to read it.
Kenneth is the best character so far, but mostly because he is the only one w/o a personality, which is a double-edge sword. He isn’t suffering from the Single Personality Disorder that all the other characters in the Silent Hill Comics seem to suffer from, but on the other hand, he has no drive. He keeps talking about wanting to find his parents and that he wants to find Connie, but he doesn’t seem to be really going after either. He just sort of sticks next to Christabella even after he realize she isn’t a normal 8 yr. old girl—YEAH. SHE IS SUPPOSED TO BE 8! This is the first comic that has a little synopsis at the beginning that not only wraps up what happened in the last issue, but tells me what is supposed to be happening in the coming issue.
The only problem is the stories do not match up! I am tempted to not even look at the synopsis because I like trying to figure out what is happening for myself, but it is so hard to figure out what the hell is going on that I have to read the synopsis. Which is really frustrating.

Dead/Alive #1
BLARG

Dead/Alive is a follow up to Dying Inside though there is supposed to have been some time passed between the two. Christabella is in some form of alternate reality but is able to see into the normal reality in which Lauryn rules over. Christabella still has her lovely little stomach wound and claims that she has tried to kill herself but was unable to actually do it and that she just hung there and nothing happened. 

At first I figured she was in some sort of limbo, unable to pass on no matter what happened, but then she gets attacked by a demon dog and says that she has a pulse! You can’t have a pulse w/ a gapping stomach wound!

She says that she doesn’t want to be a real girl and runs off. Which is weird because I thought she was real. I thought she was the remains of Lauryn’s younger sister. Lauryn made a big deal about not being able to tell if Christabella was the real Christabella or something that was just pretending to be her, but now we have not!Christabella herself saying that she is not real and doesn’t want to be real, so mystery over. It isn’t Christabella which means Lauryn can kill or unkill her or whatever now, right?

We shift to some woman named Connie.

Connie is shopping and talking about how she loved someone “it cost a piece of me”. I am going to guess that piece of her is going to be her personality. She starts talking to some old lady about her ex-boyfriend’s dick because he is some star in Hollywood and just did a porno. Then all the sudden what I think is supposed to be Valtiel pops up between the boxes of Captain Crunch and drag her off.

Because that is how Silent Hill works. It just kidnaps people from states away.
We have another shift to another main character. Kenneth Carter is Connie’s ex-boyfriend. He is currently shaking up w/ some woman named Jess who doesn’t seem to matter because she says so herself. He gets a call from a detective he’s hired to find his parents when the detective asks him about Connie. I guess the detective knows Connie is missing even though the OLD LADY SHE WAS TALKING TO DIDN’T EVEN NOTICE. He starts seeing shit and then goes through a painting on a wall and ends up in Silent Hill where he meets some woman named Lenora…

…who looks exactly like Christabella. Seriously, unless it does a clear, zoomed out shot, you cannot tell who is Christabella and who is Lenora. They even both have blood pouring their right eye for no reason. Lenora tells Kenneth he has to go to Silent Hill if he wants to save Connie and then drags him along before he even gets to make a choice.

And can I just talk about the art!?

YEAH
YEAH
YEAH, you see it too?!
We have yet another artist, this time it is Ted McKeever. He is actually a step back from either of the first 2 artists we had. Look at that Pyramid Head! SO SAD! The art is messy and the story does not make up for the messy art. Once again, all the characters act the same and the swear has been kicked up a notch. And I am almost sure that Christabella’s age keeps raising. In Dying Inside #1, she seemed like 5 or 6, #5 made her seem about 10 or so and now she looks like she is 15 or older! We know she was no older than 13 when she died, so how is she aging?! Ghosts don’t age!

I got excited when I read that there was another artist as the shift last time was a small step up, but nope. Didn’t make up for jack.

Pink and zombies! Nothing says “Silent Hill” like pink and zombies!

This issue picks up with Christabella and Lauryn having a little power struggle. They both have hoards killing each other but neither of them seem to be able to gain a direct advantage over the other, so Christabella strikes Lauryn where it really hurts—her boyfriend of course! Cause no woman can think clear when a man or two is around! She wastes all her “god-like” powers trying to protect Clown and Payne.

Leaving her defenseless.  What a shock. Christabella makes her a deal, stating that she brought Lauryn to Silent Hill to go into some building and unleash a weapon for her. Something about Lauryn not having blood on her hands—which is total bullshit. She brought like a dozen of her friends to Silent Hill for the sole purpose of killing them. She has blood on her hands so I don’t know what the fuck this comic thinks it is pulling on me.

Lauryn goes into the school and the entire time, her zombie minions cheer her up.

I will not even lie. I died a little on this page. Ok, a lot. I died a lot. DIED ON THE INSIDE—GET IT! LIKE DYING INSIDE… no. This comic uses the title as a pun 4 times and then uses the opposite as a pun too. I will not stoop to its level.

Once inside Midwhich, Lauryn finds some numbers written on a door. While she tries to figure out the numbers, since you know she was a cheerleader math genius a yr. ago, her zombies stand around in a mystical circle which summons somebody called Whatley. Whatley brings w/ a horde of MULTIPLE PYRAMID HEADS, sexy nurses and what I can only assume is a pack of The Rake…s.

What ever lived to this point curled up into a small ball and rocked itself to sleep, weeping for its lost love.

I cannot even put into words how wrong this is. The fight has left me. It has literally left my body.

Let’s just get through these last few pages.

Whately starts talking about how he controlled the town forever and that it is Lauryn’s fault for killing Christabella and letting her get so much power because “I (Lauryn) was born here, Christabella died here” I have no idea what she is spouting on about. Tory pops up w/ the last single survivor of Lauryns buddies, Hogg and they start mowing down Whately’s minions, killing Whately in the process. Christabella makes a move to get the upper hand, but for some reason Lauryn decides that the power was in her all along!

And apparently that power is literally 666.

NOPE

NOPE

NOPE

I have no fight. Just hold your breath and lemme get through the last page. Lauryn opens the door just long enough for Satan??? to get out and that triggers Christabella to fall from power. She loses her grip on the power in the town and Lauryn takes her place as Queen Bitch of Silent Hill. Troy takes Christabella off for therapy and Lauryn tells Clown and Payne to GTFO. THE END

This comic is HORRIBLE.

It isn’t good on its own.

It isn’t good as part of the Silent Hill mythos.

It isn’t good for anything!

Bad story telling, characters all having the exact same personality, so many shifts in protagonist I am still not sure I know who actually is the damn protagonist! Not to mention art that is so heavy and abstract you can’t tell what the fuck you are looking at. I don’t know if it is usual practice to suddenly change artist half-way through your series, but Dying Inside did. Ben Templesmith did the art for the first 2 and Aadi Saleman took over for the final 3. The marked difference in art style seemed to seep over into the way the story was told, so there was a huge break. I almost wonder if this series wasn’t meant to be 2: Troy’s story and then separately Lauryn’s story. The only thing that ties their stories together currently is Christabella. 

I just don’t get it. I’ve seen fanart and fanfics (even am currently writing on) that puts more thought and originality into themselves than this professionally published series.  

 DYING INSIDE SCORE: 2/10

AND WE AREN’T EVEN REALLY DONE!

Dead/Alive is next and that continues the story of Lauryn and Christabella. I can’t wait.  

As you can tell from the cover alone, Dying Inside #4 decides that art doesn’t really need to be clear or anything for you to get what the hell is going on.

#4 begins w/ Lauryn doing some kind of magical spell on Christabella to kill— uh, “unkill” her? Whatever. Christabella goes all spazzy and then pulls that obnoxious SPD (Single Personality Disorder) card and tells Lauryn she was kidding and that she had no power in the town.

She attacks her but Lauryn and Clown are able to escape. Clown tells Lauryn, in the middle of a life or death situation, that Payne (his older brother and Lauryn’s boyfriend) that he knows Clown and Lauryn have been sleeping together. I don’t care if love triangles are in a story, sometimes the can build great anticipation and force readers to take sides they would not have previously taken— but when you have the main character standing in the middle of Silent Hill worrying about her boyfriend finding out she is sleeping w/ brother, it gets really aggravating. 

Lauryn and Clown meet up w/ Payne and at about that time, we see some of her friends being cornered by Troy on a subway. He went from a bad therapist w/ a dark past  to some sort of Call of Cthulhu Dr. Phil and psychodiagnosis his victims as he is killing them.

W/ his chest tentacles. Of course. Hey! Remember all those tentacles in all the Silent Hill games?! Right—no. No you don’t. There was only the few times in Silent Hill 1 that there were tentacles AND THEY LEAD TO NOWHERE. They weren’t there because tentacles are cool or supposed to be scary or something. They were there because they unnerved the player as they were just a portion of something large that the player was not able to see. Like evil icebergs! Ciencin seems to just think tentacles are really cool and they should be everywhere or something.

Anyway, Troy kills some of Lauryn’s friends and then calls her to tell her about it. After that Lauryn goes all retrospective and talks about how Christabella was killed. Apparently Lauryn wanted to talk to a boy she liked, so she let her go off w/ some random boys and “they” killed her because “they” were using kids to lure other kids. Who “they” are, fuck if I know! 

Christabella pops up again so she and Lauryn can get into a name-calling contest to which Lauryn reveals that she is even more of an aseehole than we had previously believed. She lied to her “friends” to come along under the claim that they were going to make money, but Lauryn brought them to Silent Hill to die so she could turn them into zombies and wage war against Christabella.

I shit you now, Zombies… in Silent Hill.

I-I have no words.

This comes so far out of left field that I don’t even care. Sure, whatever. Zombies. Why not?! 

As you can plainly tell, the art in #3 is very different from the first 2 issues and that can be credited to Aadi Salman taking over for Ben Templsmith. I can greatly praise the different style and say that I actually like the art in this issue and would and could easily hang posters of this caliber on my wall w/ pride.

Color is used for its intended purpose and not just to detail the difference between an action scene and a less-action-y scene. Unfortunately, the action scenes are not improved, in fact I think they take a step back. 

Good luck trying to figure out what the fuck is going on there! All I could see was a lot of red and orange smeared all over the place.

So when begin issue 3 w/ the group from the end of issue 2. Lauryn and her band of… friends, have decided to go to Silent Hill because Lauryn gets the fabulous idea that if they go to Silent Hill, they can copy down the graffiti the saw on the tapes and sell it to rich people. 

Yeah, I thought the same thing. But Lauryn picked her dumbasses—I mean, “friends” well and they go along w/ it willingly. They decided they will go to Silent Hill, except one guy that decides that he has a brain. Too bad, cause he dies.

I thought the implication was that they were watching the tape and ON THEIR WAY to Silent Hill, but because Smart Guy gets attacked by Christabella that means they are already there? I don’t know. He gets killed them Lauryn starts having some weird insta-dream sequence where she is talking to some therapist about her past. Lauryn’s younger sister was killed not too long ago ans since then she has blamed herself. Then suddenly the therapist goes all tentacle-chest on her and then she blinks and is standing in some… place.

There is no transition, just the last panel on page 15 and the first panel on page 16. Really jarring and it seems to be a pattern in this issue. No time between transitions to breathe.

Someone in the group starts up some music and some Mannequin monsters from Silent Hill 2 drop through the glass ceiling.  Lauryn doesn’t seem phased by it at all and just tells everyone to get weapons. The fight and in some indecipherable action scene, Lauryn disappears for a few moments while she is trying to read some of the spells in some magic book she got off eBay. 

 Christabella pops up and starts talking, then gets hit over the head. Lauryn reveals that Christabella is her (dead) younger sister and that the magic book is going to be a tool for her to kill Christabella so she will stop haunting her dreams. Apparently, Lauryn’s plan all along was to use the Magic eBay Book to kill her dead sister and she just brought along her friends for shits and giggles.

Aren’t you glad she is our main character?! I know I am. On top of being an asshole, she is a Mary Sue of epic proportions.

She is an ex-cheerleader, genius that is cheating on her boyfriend w/ his brother and has the ability to read some magic book so she can kill her dead sister. Swing and a miss, Ciencin. I give you an A for effort in trying to build up a character unlike just throwing in random facts like you did w/ Troy and Lynn, but this is not a real character. This is a Mary Sue. I think this may be the definition of “Mary Sue”. 

Lauryn is almost, if not more-so, unlikeable than Troy was. Magic eBay book?! Really?

The only thing I can figure is that she lied about where she got the book just as she lied about her true intent behind going to Silent Hill.  Either way, it still isn’t a compelling story. I almost miss Troy and Commando Lynn.  

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.