Silent Hill: Dying Inside
by: Scott Ciencin
Book:
A graphic novel exploring the world of Silent Hill (or so the publishers would have us believe). The plot focuses on a self help guru with a checkered past, and his attempts to reach an all but vegetative young woman who experienced some unknown trauma in a certain little resort community. This plot is somewhat interesting, so the author scraps it to focus on the harrowing adventure of a Linnea Quigley wanna-be and her dumb as soup compatriots.
Comments:
Everything about this book is wrong. Ok, review's over!
The ’monsters’ a soul encounters within the town are actually manifestations of the person’s own transgressions, drawn from the sub-conscious fears and hang-ups of the damned. Why then do these characters keep encountering other people’s demons? For example, this fellow:
“The hell is that?” you might ask, “An Abu Ghraib detainee with a flaming crotch?” Why no, silly reader! I know it’s hard to tell, what with the fact that the artwork sucks harder than Paris Hilton on Spanish fly, (more on this later, the artwork that is, not the two-bit whore) but that is supposed to be Pyramid Head, SH2’s own walking nightmare. “But Bog Man,” you might also ask, “ isn’t Pyramid Head just a representation of James Sunderland’s own guilt and self loathing?” Why yes he is! How very observant, hypothetical you! What he’s doing here, arm wrestling with punk rockers (yeah, these kids are about as punk as Will Smith, or Avril Lavigne for that matter) is anyone’s guess. You also spot in this book (If you can tell what the hell they’re supposed to be) the mannequins, the skinless dogs, and the insane cancers among others. Apparently to Scott Ciencin, the menace of Silent Hill is nothing more that blood and monsters.
Even aside from fan-boy nitpickings, this story is just sloppy. It has a lot to do with Faustian bargains, moldy grimores, and even a non-sensical sequence that involves the characters trying to hack some kind of demonic locker combination. Such tired old horror cliché’s have no place in the SH universe, and are used only as padding. The dialogue is pat, and if the author was forbidden from using his beloved F-word on every page, the script would be about half as long. The characters are very weak, and in many cases interchangeable. It’s not even as you can figure out who everyone is and what they are doing from panel to panel due to the craptastic artwork.
Ah the artwork! As I promised, so shall I deliver! SH:DI employs two artists to bring this spotty mess into being. The first, Ben Templesmith is tolerable. While his art isn’t exactly good per se, it does bring an appropriate Stephen Gammell-esque moodiness to the party (too bad he has no decent material to work with).
The second, Aadi Salman’s style can best be described as "monkey playing with own feces”. You think I’m being cruel? Why don't you take a better look and tell me if you could you follow this presentation?:
Just in case I haven’t made myself clear, don’t buy this book, in any form, or its follow ups (I heard one has cheerleaders fighting the monsters with automatic weapons. *shudder*). And Konami, get your act together and start making sure your officially licensed spin-offs aren’t giving your games a bad name. (Yeah, I'm sure they're reading this right now, and will be sure to get right on it. Delusion, thy name is Bog Man.)
2.5
All artwork used in this review is the property of its respective copyright holders. Used in accordance with fair use provisions. Any unauthorized reproduction in whole or in part is prohibited by law. Besides, it's quite bad, why would you want to copy it anyway?