Thus far Maurene Goo and Takeshi Miyazawa have done a good job building up to the finale of Silk. The story around the demonic Kasha and how it forced Saya Ishii, the other villain that Silk was originally after, to team-up with Cindy Moon was an unexpected swerve. Now the question is if Cindy and Saya can put aside their differences long enough to fight against Kasha? Let’s find out if that is possible with Silk #5.
Writer: Maurene Goo
Artist: Takeshi Miyazawa
Colorist: Ian Herring
Story Rating: 4 Night Girls out of 10
Art Rating: 7 Night Girls out of 10
Overall Rating: 5.5 Night Girls out of 10
Synopsis: In Cindy Moon’s apartment Saya Ishii convinces Cindy to team-up to fight Kasha together. Cindy calls Spider-Man (Peter Parker) and Mockingbird to see if they can help but both are busy fighting various villains. Cindy then calls on her brother, Albert Moon Jr, to help out.
With Albert’s help Cindy and Saya are helped out by Lola, who uses her credentials to get them all in the United World Defense Council headquarters. There Saya uses the equipment to build technology needed to stop Kasha.
A few hours later Silk and Saya head towards Kasha’s hideout with Albert and Lola backing them up by using remote control drones.
Seeing Kasha conducting her ceremony Silk attacks Kasha. As the fight goes on Kasha starts overpowering Silk. Saya uses one of the devices she created to cause Kasha pain due to a high frequency pitch.
With Saya distracting Kasha, Silk goes to fight the other demon that Kasha was using her ceremony on. As soon as this fight starts Saya directs the drones she created into Kasha’s head and causes it to detonate, killing Kasha in the process.
Silk is pissed that Saya used lethal force. Saya and Silk go back and forth about how they each are built differently as people who were harden by their respective experiences.
As they exit Kasha’s hideout Silk tries to stop Saya from walking away. Saya’s gang suddenly appears and attacks Silk. Silk quickly defeats Saya’s gang.
Max (Cindy’s therapist) shows up in a car and it is revealed that he is Saya’s brother. Saya gets in Max’s car and drive off together much to Silk’s shock. With Saya and Max gone Silk is just left with a scarf Saya left behind with the message “We’ll always have the cave” written on it.
Over at Threats and Menaces, while writing her story on her latest Silk adventure J. Jonah Jameson surprises Cindy. Cindy tells Jonah about the story of Silk and Saya. Hearing the whole story Jonah reminds Cindy that their job is to tell the story and to leave stopping the villains to Silk.
Taking what Jonah said into account Cindy swings through the city as Silk to celebrate with her brother and Lola for defeating Kasha. As she swings through the city Cindy reflects on how she can’t let the experience with Saya keep her from letting people she trusts into her life. She goes on to think how much better it is to live in an open world rather than the closed off bunker she was once in. End of story.
The Good: Silk #5 gets the job done when it comes to wrapping up the plot around the demon Kasha. Outside of that the entire way this ending is structured came across as an ending for a series that has been cancelled before completing a creative team run. There isn’t a great sense of accomplishment even when the final page of Silk #5 tries to convince both Cindy Moon and the reader otherwise.
The big positive for Silk #5 was how Maurene Goo does continue to write Cindy Moon as someone who is still getting used to the life of a superhero. The end results with how Kasha was dealt with reminds the reader that Cindy is relatively new to being a superhero. She hasn’t faced the win-lose scenarios that Peter Parker, Miles Morales, and Gwen Stacy have gone through that do feel more like loses.
Gaining this experience and finding it within herself not to let the betrayal of Saya and Max Ishii keep her down is important character building. Turning this experience to reaffirm how Cindy should not give up on opening herself up and allowing herself to find people she trusts is good long-term character development. It is a characteristic that can be further picked up on by Goo or another creative team down the line when writing Silk’s character.
Takeshi Miyazawa once again keeps up the consistency in the art style that this Silk mini-series had to make the finale so eye catching. Miyazawa does a very good job in showing how Cindy as Silk continues to fight even when overpowered by Kasha or Saya’s gang. It does make Silk’s own spider abilities shine even in such a supernatural setting.
The Bad: This final issue of the latest Silk series did not come across as an ending for a mini-series. Instead, it felt like we were still in the middle of a story from an ongoing series. Because of this the final two-pages ended up coming across as something that was a last-minute rewrite to make it appear that we got a satisfactory ending. The disconnect between how the story went and what the final pages want you to believe about Silk #5 being concluding a complete story is extremely visible.
It doesn’t help that the whole turn of Cindy Moon’s therapist turning out to be Saya Ishii’s brother did not hit the dramatic noted intended by the twist. Max Ishii just lacked any sort of character to make this reveal something that left you as shocked as Cindy was. Everything about the connection between Cindy and Max just felt completely forced by the narrative rather than be a natural development with the story.
Which all goes back to how due to this being the final issue of this series that Goo made this more exposition heavy. This exposition heavy direction ends up just making a lot of the action come across as boring. Because we are just coming off the previous issue that had a lot of explanations being done by character to create the dramatic tension for this finale. It would’ve been more effective if more of a focus was placed on the action that Silk was in the middle of and saving the dialogue heavy scenes for the final pages. That would’ve made Cindy’s character arc much stronger.
This direction also makes Saya Ishii come across as a weaker character as we are just back to square one with the character. There isn’t anything about how things went that showed us that Cindy is going to be motivated to take down Saya for everything that happened. Which you would expect given how things are left off. Not having the way things went in Silk #5 drive home how Saya is now Silk’s personal nemesis was a major missed opportunity.
But even worse off was the Kasha cat demon. At no point in this story did Kasha appear as the terrifying villain that Goo tried to convince us her to be. The character was just a one-note villain that you know is going to be defeated by the end. There is nothing to make what Kasha did stand out as making her any sort of threat that could have long-term future. Kasha was just a throw away villain whose only role was to give us someone for Silk to fight in the middle of all the exposition heavy scenes.
Overall: Silk #5 ends the latest series starring Cindy Moon’s character on a disappointing note. There were some good character beats to build on for Cindy’s character in the future. Unfortunately, the way this ending was structured caused the conclusion of the story for this Silk mini-series to miss the mark. The ending just came across as an ongoing series that was re-written to fit a five-issue mini-series format.
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