Silencers # 3
Written and Illustrated by: Fred Van Lente and Steve Ellis
Released by: Moonstone
This is an interesting series. It’s a combination of X-Men meets the Godfather, with just a splash of the X-Files thrown in. The world has metahumans or mutants or whatever that you want to call them and they’ve taken over the mob and are running organized crime. Its a multi-part series and if you were to judge by the cover you would have no idea what the book was about since its just a flashes of characters and scenes. It’s a good thing then that you don’t judge by the cover because this is a well done issue.
The story begins and we see what appears to be a clandestine meeting and a sting operation all wrapped up into one. One of the metahumans, identified as Euphoria, is turning on her group, the Silencers, and giving information to the feds. They want to know what her group was stealing and why. Much to the surprise of the fed Euphoria begins her tale at the meat packing district to give the story some background. We’re told the tale of at least two break-ins as the Silencers try to trace where a drug has come from that the rival gang, the Syndicate, has been distributing. They even go so far as to break into a superhero hideout to use their computer. And they discover it’s literally from out of this world. Euphoria completes her tale and starts to leave only to be told she’s being arrested and she’s taken down by a hidden sniper….and is revealed to be Stiletto in disguise. In the end she’s told she will cooperate with the feds and help them bring down the Silencers.
This is the third issue in the series and under normal circumstances it would be a bit difficult to pick up the flow of the story. However, these guys provide us a nice summary of what’s happened in the previous issues as well as headshots of the characters and their names so that we can identify them in the story. It still doesn’t tell us everything, but it’s a nice start. The story is well told and engaging, and although it jumps back and for a few places while Stiletto is telling her tale they easily identify the places with word boxes to let us know what’s going on.
The artwork and character design are ok. The characters seem to be a mix of spin-offs or crosses between X-Men and gangster comics of the 1950’s. The characters are pretty easy to identify and you can tell pretty easily what their superpowers are by the way they move and the type of costumes that they were. The color palette is fairly standard although it is a bit muted, although that could really be due to the type of paper used vs. the colors chosen. It does bug me a bit that on the first page we’re shown the fed sitting on a park bench and you can see what looks like an old school phone cable coming down the side of his face. It’s supposed to be a hidden earpiece, but it’s clearly not well hidden. Overall though there isn’t anything that really stands out with the artwork or makes it different from any number of other comics that you pick up. Its standard fare for superhero comics, which isn’t bad, I just wish they had tried some different things in creating the artwork for this issue.
Overall this is definitely an engaging series and I look forward to seeing where it goes. I would recommend the series to anyone that likes gangster/cop genre or likes superhero/metahuman genre.
