Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Silk (Vol. 1), Issue #2! In the previous installment, we learn a little about Cindy Moon (or at least I do). She spent 10 years isolated in a bunker shortly after turning 18. She has all the same powers that Spider-Man has. She’s looking for her long-lost family. She’s getting used to normalcy, whatever that is.

Cindy returns to her bunker, having spent a third of her life there she finds it more comfortable than sharing an apartment. There’s not much going on yet. Some shitty villain named Dragonclaw is going to be turned into an actual dragon courtesy of Black Cat. We’ll get to see how that pans out!

Silk (Vol. 1), Issue #2 [May, 2015]
Written by: Robbie Thompson

Silk is moving through the sewers like she thinks she’s the coprophiliac Batman, ruminating upon her mission as the good guy (stop the bad guys, bing bong so simple). THEN SUDDENLY A SKULL-HEADED OCTOPUS WRAPS IT’S MANY TENTACLES AROUND HER.

She dies, the end.

Two hours and twenty minutes ago at the Fact Channel building, Cindy Moon is delivering mail around the office as an intern, then she goes out to be Silk. She talks about how she was bitten by a spider, which she already mentioned about twenty times in the previous issue. Then she talks about how she was locked in a bunker for ten years to keep everyone around her safe, which she already mentioned about forty times in the previous issue. But now her family is gone, and she’s gonna go look for them bah gawd.

An old woman told her that the Moon family moved about nine years ago. Moving to a new home was a cash transaction; no forwarding address. They didn’t move any of their stuff. They paid all their bills in cash. Their bank accounts have been closed for years. “Clearly they had help, and there’s only one person we knew who had that much money and influence. Ezekiel. My savior. And my bunker-slash-prison warden.”

He’s dead now, though. OR IS HE?

And everything about his many, many businesses have been closed up. Shell companies. Fronts for “extracurricular” interests. All gone. No records to be found.

So, in short, she ain’t know nuthin’.

Interracial coupling??? FOR SHAME!!!

She returns to her old neighborhood to see how things have changed. She buys a can of iced tea and sits glumly on a park bench. Nobody in town has been around long enough to know the Moons, and everyone who SHOULD remember the Moons don’t for some reason. Maybe the Moons went to the moon! Now there’s a lead you can take to the bank.

Shit, even her favorite pizza place is gone. They had the best pineapple-papaya-pistachio pizza. Nertz.

She had some good times in the pizza place. For example, she broke up with her boyfriend Hector Cervantez there! It’s for bunker-related reasons, but he wouldn’t understand. “You never once mentioned anything about Oxford. Oxford?! They don’t even play hockey over there!” he cries indignantly.

Hector begs to come with her, but she tells him to go to Boston College like he had planned. Oxford is on the other side of the pond, bro, and she’ll write to him “every day”. Hector is sad. She touches his hand and tells him that she loves him (boo) and that she has to go (yay). And she doesn’t want to waste her last night with him fighting (double yay). So they probably bone (triple yay). And then he prematurely ejaculates (quadruple boo).

We’re almost to the point where we began! Cindy hears cries for help as a young fella gets chased down the street by a dang octopus with a skull for a head!

These new-fangled electric cars are looking weirder and weirder every year.

Cindy immediately gets Silky and attempts to fight Skulltopus. It steals an ATM machine and crawls down a manhole into a sewer. Fine, then! Into the sewer we all go!

And here we are now.

“Thick walls. Water rushing. Sound echoing. And my Silk-Sense is still off. Well played, tentacle-monster-robot-thingie. Well played.”

THEN SUDDENLY THE SKULL-HEADED OCTOPUS WRAPS IT’S MANY TENTACLES AROUND HER.

She dies, the end.

But she doesn’t, of course. Silk wriggles herself free and punches the skull in the… well, the face. One eye pops out. “HAIL HYDRA!” it belts out pathetically. Then Silk whips one of the robot tentacles right at the skull and breaks everything into smithereens. And I’m not talking about just ANY smithereens. We’re talking hella smithereens!

Silk emerges from the sewer covered in rank feces. “Good news,” she thinks. “No one can recognize my Silk suit–”

“Cindy?” calls a voice from behind. She whips around and stares Hector right in his sad-ass face. She gibbers about working on a story for the Fact Channel, that’s why she just climbed out of a dang sewer! Heh heh.

Hector is a master of the People’s Eyebrow. “…Cindy… Where have you been?”

“…Oxford, mostly.”

Uh-huh. You never even applied to Oxford. Hector checked. Cindy sweats and looks like a nervous, smiling anime character for panel and tells him that she transferred. But she’s back now!

Look, let’s just agree that there are two liars in the conversation and move on, shall we?

Suddenly, a blonde woman pops up next to Hector. He introduces them to each other. “Cindy, this is Audrey. My fiancée.”

Cindy beams a big, wan smile and congratulates them and excuses herself and walks away embarrassed and stinky. Hector looks on slightly melancholy and puzzled.

Later, in the bunker, Cindy is on the horn with a woman named Natalie from work who confirms S.H.I.E.L.D.’s assessment that the robot octopus was leftover from a failed mission and it became active and, luckily, Silk the Superhero was there to make short work of it! See you tomorrow!

She sad-sacks around about Hector, her first love, being engaged to another woman.

Unknown voices are watching Cindy under surveillance.

“She’s good.”

“Indeed. Faster than I thought. She’s magnificent.”

“The bot was sloppy. I should have updated its software. My apologies.”

“On the contrary. It served its purpose.” The two shadowed figures look at the remnants of the robot’s bloody scrap. “Take Cindy’s blood sample to the lab. Run every test.”

EPILOGUE! Silk thinks she might be getting the hang of this superhero stuff.

And then a big dragon-type beast emerges from the sky behind her. Her Silky-Sense goes haywire.

Final Thoughts

WHO ARE THESE MYSTERIOUS PEOPLE SURVEILLING THE BUNKER? Ezekiel and Cindy’s mom? Nick Fury and Maria Hill? Beavis and Butthead? Time will tell.

Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Silk (Vol. 1), Issue #1!

Silk intrigues me because, based on what very little I’ve read, it appears to be a Spider-Man-like coming-of-age story? Only it’s a girl this time?

That’s all I’ve got. I don’t know anything else. And that may not even be accurate anyway! Let’s see…

Silk (Vol. 1), Issue #1 [April, 2015]
Written by: Robbie Thompson

As a teenager, Cindy Moon was bitten by the same spider that bit Peter Parker, giving her powers similar to those of the Amazing Spider-Man: powers of adhesion, a unique precognitive awareness of danger, and the ability to weave spider webs with her fingertips. She now swings through the skies of New York City as Silk.

Oh, ok, so it’s exactly like Spider-Man. Right down to the spider. Got it.

Oh, there’s more! Apparently, I should be reading this after some other storyline, because Silk was locked in a bunker as a safety measure to prevent her presence from being detected by spider-hunters and murderers! Spider-Man unwittingly opened the bunker, setting off the events of the Spider-Verse! Then she thwarted the spider-hunters, and now we’re back in New York!

OK, let’s get started proper now. Jesus.

“Finally,” Silk thinks, punching a face. “Finally, I’m in the game.”

She says she was locked in the bunker for ten years, which sounds like some Hitler shit to me. And now she’s free to do as she pleases, and that means punch alleged bad guys so that they don’t do bad things anymore. This guy is named Dragonclaw, which Silk says sounds like a Pokémon.

“So tell me, Pokémon-Dude, why’d you try to burn that delivery truck?”

“GAH!” he responds after Silk scratches his arm with her, uh, spider claws. Her spider-sense (Silky-Sense) starts a-tinglin’! It proves to be incredibly distracting. The matter at hand is important, but she’s hanging on by a literal thread and keeping her eyes closed. And that gives Dragonclaw plenty of time to attack! He chops her silky strand, sending her plummeting to the earth below.

Then Spider-Man grabs her out of the air and Dragonclaw is like “grrrr, you win again!” and leaves.

It’s me, your Friendly Neighborhood Sex Offender!

Spider-Man asks Silk out for a date, but she leaves before Spider-Man can finish his sentence. And good for her, because Peter Parker is supposed to be with MJ and Silk ain’t MJ. MJ has red hair! That’s the only difference. Also, super powers.

“Am I ok? Maybe I just need time to adjust to normal life,” Silk thinks, turning back into Cindy Moon. “Whatever normal life is, anyway.”

Flashback to an 18-year-old Cindy’s parents nagging her about shoving off to a hockey game in lieu of participating in an extra credit field trip. Plus, it’s not just a game! It’s a date with local stud Hector Cervantez, whom she has been seeing for six months, Mother! That’s like 15 years in teenage time. Her dad approves: “I like Hector. He’s got a wicked wrist shot.”

Mom doesn’t care. Dating? In Biden’s economy?? There’s a quick row that ends with Cindy telling her mom that she hates her before she drags her little brother off to his play-date.

Flashforward to now, where Cindy Moon arrives at (I think) her first day on the job at the Daily Bugle. After 10 years of isolation, this would put her at 28-years-old? I think? J. Jonah Jameson is a large butthead, as usual.

Cindy finds herself to be socially awkward, as 10 years of bunker life would make one. I don’t even have a bunker excuse for my social awkwardness. A woman invites her to a viewing party of a new show at a bar downtown, and Cindy is like “GO WITH YOUR LESBIAN CRUSH INSTEAD”. Very tactful.

J. Jonah Jameson perks up at Cindy’s pad and paper. “Analog! You’re not one of those millennial crybabies, are you? I like you, Analog! What have you got? Pitch me a story!”

She knows exactly what not to say, but she says it anyway. “How about… Silk.”

Killing it in the real world already! Kudos to you, Bunkerface.

Later, Cindy finds her pitched story on the big screen in the office. “SILK WEAVES WEBS AROUND WEB-HEAD” on the Fact Channel. Cindy didn’t get this job for the money, she got this job to use the channel’s resources to find her family. So far, she has found nothing. Nada. Zippo. They disappeared shortly after she started her bunker adventure and hasn’t heard word.

Flashback to Cindy taking her brother, Junior, to his playdate.

“You’re weird,” he says.

“No, I’m not. You’re weird,” she rebuts.

When asked if she really hates Mom, Cindy makes a troubled face but stays silent. Then they both say they love each other. Junior calls Cindy a weirdo again. It’s very touching. Too bad Junior was MURDERED or something. Who knows?! We gotta figure this shit out!

But, between work and crimefighting, there’s not much room for family-finding. And with her Silky-Sense all out of whack, giving her made-up problems or tiny, trivial issues. A college kid crying because her friends ditched her. That kind of thing. Not exactly worth kicking someone’s ass to hell and back over. “I prefer it when my Silk-Sense just finds me stuff to punch.”

Silk finds Dragonclaw walking around again, so a fight ensues. He’s got blaster-palms. She’s got a silk shield, which she whips at his face like she’s Captain Dumbfuck America. Then she uppercuts him “gently”, and by “gently” I mean “enough to send him flying 70 feet high and then straight into a dumpster! “Please don’t be dead. Please don’t be dead,” she says as she checks up on Dumpsterclaw.

The Dragonclaw suit is an empty shell. Dude’s gone.

Oh well. Mission accomplished, sorta! And there’s security cam footage to send over to Fact Channel, which is not the Daily Bugle as I had originally assumed. I gotta keep up with these newfangled 2010s comics.

If this apartment’s a-rockin’, don’t come a-knockin’!

Cindy decides to move out of her apartment since having a roommate after 10 years of alone time blows chunks.

Flashback to Hector Cervantez, who arrives at the Moon home with a little gift. He’s not planning on playing in the hockey game after all, because there’s something much more important going on today! Like a colonoscopy! Barring that, it’s the six month anniversary! He bought her an ankle bracelet with a moon pendant. “A moon for my Moon,” he says dopily. She blushes.

Flashforward to Silk sitting atop a building roof, giving Spider-Man an old ringy-dingy on the phone. He’s busy though, but he’ll make time.

“Spider-Man and I had a thing. It was… weird. And awesome. But now… I’m not sure what we are. Friends? Charter members of the spider-bite club? I don’t know. I just know he knows about this stuff. Spider-bite club stuff.”

She asks how he deals with his Spidey-Sense. It’s like a constant din of harsh noise. So much quieter in the bunker. It’s almost like she misses the alone time, the peace and quiet, the 10 years of bunking it up. Spider-Man merely tells her that the city is loud, but the pizza is good. Does that help?

“You’re gonna be okay, Cin. You just need time. … Wanna come over?”

“Yes. No.” *click*

Snubbed again! The life of a Spider-type Man.

Meanwhile, in a bar, a drunk young man is watching Silk footage and laughing. Then he gets sad again. Another man puts his hand on his shoulder. “Boss will see you now.”

The drunk young man is out-of-costume Dragonclaw, and the boss is not happy with him.

Now it’s into the torture chamber with you! An eight foot by six foot room playing Anne Murray over the intercom.

His boss is a white-haired woman with a black eyemask who I think might be Black Cat. She sends Dragonclaw to “the shop”. And she needs to learn everything there is to learn about Silk post haste!

Cindy, having moved out of a comfortable apartment with, like, a kitchen and a bathroom, finds herself in her bunker. “Say what you want about this dump. It is quiet.”

She turns on the TV and finds the face of Ezekiel Sims, the man who convinced her to stay in the bunker for ten years “with nothing but his prerecorded messages to keep me company”.

Dragonclaw, in the shop, which is manned by an individual who fancies himself as The Repairman. He looks like Carl from Aqua Teen Hunger Force and he holds a crowbar menacingly. Black Cat wants Dragonclaw to get the full makeover, which Mr. Repairman seems very pleased to do. He motions the poor sap to a very dirty dentist chair with chains and limb straps. “I have to warn you, my methods are… extreme.”

“Look… I really need this gig.”

“That’s the spirit. Now, how do you feel about being an actual dragon?”

In the bunker, Cindy sets up some electricity and gets a Fact Channel work laptop plugged in. Apparently, a nameless “private contractor” set the bunker up with unlimited juice until the end of time, so that’s a sweet deal. “So, I guess I’m back. Back in the place where I was locked away for ten years.” Yeah, yeah. We get it. A decade in captivity. Cry me a river.

So she thinks Ezekiel is still alive somewhere, buried in one of his endless, faceless companies. And he knows what happened to her family.

“I’ll find you guys,” she thinks, setting up a collage of photos, newspaper clippings, and papers. “I promise.”

THE PLOT THICKENS!!!

Final Thoughts

A good start! Compelling. Different. Interesting. What will happen next to ruin my mood? Stay tuned!