The Silencer #1 Review

Silent But Deadly!

Written by: John Romita Jr and Dan Abnett

Art by: John Romita Jr, Sandra Hope, Dean White and Tom Napolitano
Cover Price: $2.99
Release Date: January 31, 2018

The New Age of DC Heroes is in full swing, with the first title, Damage, setting quite the stage in terms of artistic quality. Here the forefront creative force is none other than John Romita Jr, a generally lauded artist who, frankly, I'm not a big fan of. Similarly to Damage, The Silencer feels mostly unoriginal in terms of its conception. But I'll get into that later. Do Romita Jr and Dan Abnett manage to add a new twist to a tired concept?

Our main character is Honor Guest (or Honour Guest to all the Commonwealthers out there), a retired assassin living a normal life with her husband and son. Herein lies one of my only problems with this issue, which is that I've seen this story told before a thousand different times, in every kind of popular entertainment medium. The only wrinkle that the creators infuse is that this is very much set in the DC Universe, which is made clear from an appearance by a certain female assassin.

Honor is accosted by a rather huge biker-looking deviant who Honor gets into a fight with, which is when she first demonstrates what seems to be a power of hers. She has the ability to create some sort of bubble around herself that silences whatever's happening in that bubble. That's an interesting power for an assassin to have, and it's honestly a fun and creative way to have a fight scene right behind her kid.

Honor and her son Ben make their way home and we get another delightful scene, where Honor and her husband Blake have some fun banter. The three of them make a really charming and cute family that I could relate to, which will obviously go to hell as the series goes on. And I think this is where I'll end the spoiler-related talk.

My main problem, aside from the tired premise, is the wordiness of the first nine or so pages of this issue. We have John Romita Jr, a controversial yet still competent and professional artist, who is able to convey a story just fine without the use of words. Instead, Dan Abnett has mostly every single panel of the aforementioned silent fight scene riddled with thought boxes, which I decided to skip over on my second reading which made the fight a much more pleasant experience for me as a reader. 

Thankfully the wordiness comes to a halt very shortly after this scene, and I still found the issue very compelling. You don't get this kind of personal, grounded storytelling in DC Comics and I think this is the Marvel style that Romita brought over into this title.

Speaking of Romita, how does the art fare? I wasn't as annoyed as I normally am when it comes to his art. The usual discrepancies are present, but I can't deny the pure energy he puts into the fight scenes and the last few pages looked very impressive, mostly due to Dean White's extraordinary colouring. 

Bits and Pieces:

I was quite honestly taken aback by how much I enjoyed this issue. While it's not like we haven't seen this kind of story before, I think that the creators have infused just enough to keep it fresh and exciting, especially since its portrayal of Honor's family feels very genuine. Romita's art has improved over the past couple of years, and I think that this series is definitely worth checking out.

8.3/10