The fear of blood tends to create fear for the flesh. The fear of coherence tends to create this mess.
Monday, October 12, 2009
Silent Hill: Dying Inside #3 and 4
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60 comments:
XD @ 18:39
Oh, Linkara. ;)
But seriously, the intro was pure awesome. I always like these multi-part comic reviews and can't wait to see how it ends.
God, you don't know how long I've been anticipating this installment.
Alright, as "previously" instalments go that was a chaotic mess of... well what ever it was. I loved it!
Still compared to the art work it was down right transparent.
The last two issues (or volumes) looked half finished, as if the artist couldn't be bothered. (I know that was the style but still) this one is the polar opposite. It looks like the artist couldn't stop himself from over doing the work.
You mentioned this as an aside but honestly how hard would it have been to have a Editor in charge of this god for saken pile of retarded rubbish.
I've seen fan art with more cohesion, and that is saying something.
Hair fetish moment: Lauryn's one-panel cameo in issue #2 had her with strawberry blonde hair & a punk style. Here, it is bright red & is slightly longer!
Christabella also regenerated her lost eye!
J.A.P.
Awesome review Linkara, can't wait for the ending.
-Also, on an unrelated note, love the Star Trek Models.
Loved the intro.
Years later and I still think that the Silent Hill 2 trailer is the best game trailer ever made. Your parody of the trailer definitely works.
But the girl supposedly didn't even believe in the supernatural! And now this was all her plan? ACKKK!
The intro made more sense than the comic! D=
Good Review
Forgive me my idiot moment, but it's been years since I saw the intro. How much of the opening was a sendup to the Silent Hill 2 opening?
Excellent as always, well done.
Wait, but I thought the little foul-mouthed ghost girl DID have internet access. Didn't she post footage of Silent Hill on the internet to attract people to the town in the previous issues? So she could have just bought the book off of E-Bay herself? What a load of crap.
really good review even though I don't like Silent Hill
There is ONE way which Crystabella and all the crap from parts 1 and 2 DO make sense... And that's if none of 1 and 2 were actually REAL. If everything we see in the first two comics except the last panel was the 'video' and what you're REALLY seeing is Silent Hill itself reaching out to our 'protagonist' here to get her to come to the town to begin with. With Crystabella not being there to torment Lin, but her. I can't really see any OTHER way this would make sense, and even that is immensely stupid, so I'm probably giving the writers too much credit.
I went to show my friend this episode, and thought he wouldn't understand the beginning (plus I wanted to show him the usual open, and not having seen the episode yet, I didn't know it was coming), so I showed him the Countdown preview instead.
He may be back for more.
Is it just me, or does Luaryn look like Judy Nails' slutty younger sister?
Wow, I wasn't sure what you ment when you said the art would get worse last vid, but wow. I know I could draw better than this.
Great vid, Link. Can't wait for the conclusion.
Possibly the weakest previously you'ved done. Really missed the interaction with you with the rest of the TGWTG crew.
Loved the review but the previously was 3.5 minutes long. It didn't have the energy necessary and you allowed scenes to go on for too long. Especially the Ninja.
That being said awesome use of Nineties guy and pretty spectacular use of green screening the both of you together.
It's kind of a moot point because you do GO THERE (kinda), but The Room wasn't IN Silent Hill. It was a few towns over I believe.
Forgot to mention that Christabella COULD have been an attempt to tie into Silent Hill 2 and what brought James and the others there. Until the "editors" got a hold of it I guess.
Wow, I had a hard time trying to follow the comic even with your narration. And this is from someone who sat through Inland Empire and Naked Lunch.
Great episode, by the way.
A MENSA member who thinks evil clowns should rule the world isn't unheard of.
Wouldn't Harley Quinn qualify?
I am so, SO glad to see Pollo in ome of your videos. I'd been meaning to ask if he would show up.
So is Talks With Signs Ninja one of you latest characters?
The really weird thing about the cover to #4 is that it looks like Lauren has completely twisted around her spine in the middle, or at least twisted it 4/5 of the way around anyway. Her head and upper torso are facing towards the "camera," as is the exposed part of her posterior. This in an owlish amount of rotation for a body to go through.
I'll give the series this. As an idea, bringing people for the purpose of becoming zombies is kinda interesting. It isn't, though, the action for a hero, as you said.
BTW, was that Voyager between Deep Space 8 and the Enterprise-E on the shelf over your shoulder in the introduction? (On the mater of an old subject, you should probably read Star Trek Countdown if you're going to get involved in Star Trek Online. There are spoilers for that comic that are relevant to what seems to be important elements of the STO storyline.)
I see you're not a fan of Ashley Wood. (All the non-alternate covers.)
http://ashleybambaland.blogspot.com/
To each their own. But I do agree with you on the unnecessary cheesecakiness.
This might be pedantic in the extreme, but strictly speaking "Payne" isn't necessarily a purr lytirissee iz kewl moment: it's a fairly common surname deriving from the French Payens, which in itself is derived from latin Paganus. It might just be a case of the author slipping in a meaningful nickname of some sort.
Then again, this is probably giving the comic way too much credit.
Okay, people let me clarify something:
THE OPENING WAS NOT A PREVIOUSLY ON SEGMENT. If it was a Previously On segment, it would have opened with "Previously On Atop the Fourth Wall." It was simply a parody of Silent Hill 2's opening. I also only do Previously On segments for two-part episodes, otherwise I'd have to do one for the third part of a three-part review, as well. ^_~
Also: "So is Talks With Signs Ninja one of you latest characters?"
This would be Ninja-Style Dancer, introduced in the Nightcat #1 review.
At some point you MUST look back over your reviews and tell us which is really the worst comic you've reviewed. I would love to see a side-by-side with this, Warrior, or what.
And maybe reassure us that you've not had to pay full price from some of this drek.
Hey, that's a remix of "True" that I haven't heard before!
Also, for someone who hasn't played any of the Silent Hill games, you sure know a whole lot about the little things, such as the "hold it to your head and...pow" comment.
Lewis you did make 12 1/2 issues of a comic book that looked 1million times more coherent then this P.o.S.. If you'll excuse me my eyes must be flushed out with acid to get that random blurring unburnt in my eyes.
Out of the Silent Hill comics I've seen, the only remotely good one was Paint It Black, and only because it had an interesting premise that they managed to pull off: What if the protagonist thought horrific monsters were cool? Of course, it was still sort of bad, it barely followed the mythos, and there's a panel at the end that is either an OK twist that's reasonably sensible, or an annoying cliche that spits in the face of every single plot point before it.
As for the review, I do have a few things to mention.
I thought you were wrong about the cover to issue 3, and they were just using a sexy pose and "creepy" artwork to try and create horror. Then the fourth cover came along and proved me wrong. I'll guarantee you that neither of them helped sells though.
As for the artwork being hard to follow, I honestly didn't have as much trouble as you did with some of those panels. For instance, when the one guy is supposedly "tripped," that was actually the little girl stepping out of darkness. And when the little girl gets hit with a "bat," that's the book (turned sideways) she's getting hit with. Still, almost all the panels are impossible to really understand until you see the later panels. The sad thing is I think that some of it was intentional, and they were trying to create tension.
Also, I just love how they imply one thing, then blatantly contradict it later just to create a plot twist. For instance, the protagonist supposedly was a cheerleader one year, a math nut the next, and this is just her next phase. She only even WENT to Silent Hill to make some money selling weird pictures. Then it turns out that her little sister has been bothering her long before you arrived in Silent Hill, she was actually planning to take her down this whole time, and she actually believed all the magic she so proudly denounced earlier.
There's absolutely no way that plot point could have been planned from the beginning, unless all of her dialogue and inner monologues were completely faked, which just means the author is an asshole who isn't even TRYING to write a logical or cohesive story.
But then again, I bet that's what they think Silent Hill is, which is the main problem. They seem to believe it's just a series of mindscrews for the sake of mindscrews, strung together for the sake of being scary. They look at all the symbolism and atmosphere as just random bullshit tropes Japan uses, not being smart enough to understand how everything is tied together. It's obvious this is how they feel, considering they believe Silent Hill can easily be Americanized by just making a slasher comics, and using those hideously wrong interpretations of it's "themes" and "tropes" as I described above.
This comic has one of the greatest sins and that swearing makes your comic mature. The Christabella angle had a lot of potential under a better writer like have Lauren so full a guilt that she's become frigid and fooled herself into thinking her sister is only "missing" and has dedicated her life to finding her. Her Silent Hill could have images of the thousands of possible futures Christabella could've had if she lived (prom queen to junkie to a serial killer to first female president, etc) so she doesn't know if having her die was for the better or not. Instead of mini-Freddie without the charm, Christabella is more of an angry child who feels cheated from having her life cut short and missing out on so much due to her sister's neglectance with a minion representing her molester and killer who hunts Lauren down like Nemsis from Resident Evil.
you should do a review of the resident evil 1 and 2 comics, they are awfuly rushed and lack any kind of narrative
I'm tempted to say the art in this thing vaguely reminds me of Bill Sienkiewicz, but he actually knows a thing or two about panel composition and layout.
Linkara... I... I think I love you.
That opening was hysterical.
I remember these comics. They gave me one of the worst migraines I have had in my life.
Just want to add how much I love Finevoice as a character and hope you do more with him. It's so fresh compared to most of the characters that a lot of video reviewers invent for themselves.
Ninja-style dancer. Got it. Sorry I'd forgotten that one. Thanks for the reminder.
Linkara, this has got to be the best review you did ever.
It helps that I'm SH2 fan, but the opening was too awesome for words. All those characters. Ninja-style dancer is back. 90s kid was genius...
And the review itself was great. Oh my god, the artwork. Ashley Wood seems photorealistic after this...
Anyway, Linkara, thanks for choosing being awesome as a career.
Wow. These are the worst comics you've ever read. This makes Countdown look coherent.
What in the world was I watching?
I don't even know what to say!
Awesome review of a totally incoherant mess....you got balls to try and take it on!
So until Mickey Mantle saves us from this mess, MAKE MINE LINKARA!
Always wondered where you get the pictures...scanning them by yourself maybe...no I know 05:56 - shame on you.
Regardless love your work, keep it up!
"Always wondered where you get the pictures...scanning them by yourself maybe...no I know 05:56 - shame on you."
As you may have seen from my request for the Doom comic, I do want to have a physical copy of it on hand, but it's a heck of a lot easier trying to gather panels if they're already scanned and ready.
However, some comics I have not been so fortunate to find online, like Nightcat. And that's a prestige format book with a SPINE to it, so you can imagine my irritation in having to scan it.
I loved the zero punctuation reference
Cthulhu: I missed that one. Where was the ZP reference?
If there was a reference in there, it would help support my theory that Linkara and Yahtzee were separated at birth.
Come now, James, Linkara is a far better reviewer than Yahtzee. I like Yahtzee, but some of his reviews like the one for Brawl were just embarrassing. I don't think I've read or watched a single AtFW review that I disagreed with, or had reason to fault.
Now, now, Yahtzee is entitled to his opinion on Brawl. We can disagree with him about it without being jerks about it.
After all, at the same time, there are plenty of comics that I despise that others really enjoy.
@3:45 Yes thank you I enjoyed that a lot.
While there are many of Yahtzee's reviews that I disagree with, he still makes some damn good points in them. Brawl is one of my favorite games, but I can see why Yahtzee hated it. (I knew that he would not like it, I don't know why everyone kept pestering him)
The only complaints of his I really disagree with are the one on the Mario Galaxy waggle, the Arkham Asylum dialouge and most of the Ghostbusters review.
Still, he's a great reviewer. Hell, he turned ANIMAL CROSSING into Silent Hill, in one of his stories.
But anyway, it's a shame that this pile of garbage did this to Silent Hill. It would be like if someone made a Bioshock comic that ruined Rapture.
Gee, Glames... you don't think that her disbelief of the supernatural was some sort of front to stop her sister from haunting her via an elaborate zombie related plan?
Let's look at Kathryn's actions and see how they reflect her true intents.
She said that she and her friends could make some easy money getting... something in Silent Hill related to a book she got on eBay. This was to draw them in unsuspectingly. Think about it: why would a cheerleader date a guy called clown? He's either a millionaire or cannon fodder. Never trust cheerleaders. Ya think, maybe, she didn't get that book on eBay and it was part of the ruse meant to stifle a line of inquiry?
Notice how generally badass she was in contrast to the rest of the Scooby gang? Ya think maybe she anticipated something freaky happening when they got to Silent Hill because years of her ghost-sister's torment gave her a sneak preview?
That hellish vision Lauryn had I'm guessing that refers to the "torment" and "dying inside" she referred to near the end.
Does anyone understand how a plot twist works here (I'm talking to all ya now, not just Glames)? After the big revelation you have to go back and reconsider what happened with your newfound awareness of the altered context and you have to accept that, due to misdirection there might be some ambiguity in motive.
It's not always simple. Brad Pitt will not always explain what happened up to this point with amusing quoted and artfully filtered jump cuts.
This is a bad Silent Hill comic don't let it out-think you. Hit it where it's vulnerable: questionable art, ho-hum characterization, bad similarity with the game series, annoying antagonist, that sort of thing. Getting confused by intermediate story structure is not a valid complaint. I didn't even read the comic but I could read between the lines and say "Oh, that makes sense now... kinda."
As a plot twist, it was a pretty sorry one. First of all, when did she first start believing in the occult? When she saw the videotape? Maybe so, but she seemed unnaturally calm when seeing a videotape featuring her sister with a big wound in her getting her eye shot out and commanding a demon horde and etc., etc. And considering it's been a few years since her death, it'd be more likely for her to consider it a coincidence that she looks KIND of like her sister, unless Lauryn has a photographic memory of what her sister looked like even years after her death.
But let's forgive that for a second - seriously, a magic book off of ebay? Even if such a thing were likely, how the hell did she know that the thing actually worked before buying it? And I doubt the thing was going cheap - it's obviously an authentic ancient book thousands of years old; I doubt it went for penny change.
And why go after Christabella at all? I imagine laying her demons to rest might be good cause, but it's not like Christabella was actively haunting or pursuing Lauryn - she went out of her way, blindly charging into an unknown situation without so much as a care for the potential harm to her friends. Frankly pretty damn sociopathic behavior.
But let's forgive ALL of that, but there's still one teensy tiny little problem... TROY FLAT OUT STATES THAT SHE DOESN'T BELIEVE IN THE SUPERNATURAL. Being a ghost as well as a psychologist, I'd say he's probably got some insight into Lauryn's brain and it's unlikely that she's trained herself so well as to fend off the mental trickery of the supernatural entity floating with tentacle chest hairs.
What's MORE likely is that the writer either screwed up and never realized it or he decided halfway through writing, "Say, you know what would make a good plot twist?" and didn't go back and change the things that would contradict the plot twist.
Lewis: Definitely agree with you. Lauryn's sudden revelation that this was all a plan to put her sister's spirit to rest, after a shoddy and contradictory build-up, was not a "shocking twist"; it was an ass-pull. Pyramid Head only knows how this tripe will end.
Also, I apologize for opening a can of worms earlier.
what I ment was he worded that silent holl was atown that hates you in avery passive aggresive way
p.s does anyone know how to get pepsi out of your keyboard it is so sticky
I like this very much.Not the Comic but your acting-skills.Please keep up the good work.Looking forward to the next one.
Greetings from Germany
How's this for coincidence? I buy myself an old copy of SH4: The Room at a used computer store, flip open the manual, and see an ad for the Dying Inside trade paperback on the second-last page!
The real irony is that, compared to the knobs we've been following around for the past two weeks, Henry Townshend comes off as sympathetic. (Sure, he may be a plank of wood, but at least his actions made some sense.)
Silly Lauryn. Getting all your friends killed is only a viable strategy if you're John Constantine.
I love this opening bit... If my gf would agree i would reinact this as well... Cept ya know not nearly as good... and without 90s kid.... or the robot..
too bad teh comic sucks.
Apologies for bothering you, but I'm having a bit of trouble playing some of your videos, from 'Blood Pack #1' to 'Silent Hill Dying Inside #5'. They just refuse to load. Is this deliberate, or just my browser messing up?
Just tested some of the vids and they seem to be working fine. My recommendation is to either update your flash software or try in a different browser... maybe download the FLV from Blip itself.
Excuse, that I interrupt you, but you could not paint little bit more in detail.
Very funny review. This comic is terrible - it makes my eyes bleed just seeing the panels you highlight on the show. Geez.
But I take issue with your statement about Clown putting on country music. Country's not all Achy Breaky Heart, you know! Of course, most of the eerie country I can think of is regiospecific and wouldn't work in this setting ("You'll Never Leave Harlan Alive" "Midnight in Montgomery") but, for some strange reason, country is full of deceptively cheerful songs about murder. For instance, "Papa's in the Pen" (which I refuse to listen to because of the lyrical dissonance-induced creepiness) by Garth Brooks sounds like a light and cheerful country song but it's actually borderline misogynistic lyrics about the point-of-view character's father catching his mother in bed with another man and killing her, which becomes even creepier when you think about the fact that the point-of-view character is a son singing about his parents. Cheerfully.
Then again, I'm gonna go ahead and give you the point since the joke was really darn funny and it's probably giving Clown way too much credit to assume he's taking advantage of lyrical dissonance, so they probably are wandering Silent Hill to "Achy Breaky Heart" or "All My Ex's Live in Texas." Actually, picturing that makes the comic better because it makes the wretched panels that follow hilarious.
Awesome intro -- it is a great homage to the intro to Silent Hill 2.
I don't know what this comic was trying to do with the terrible artwork and the abrupt change in the plot. What I DO know is that this is not a Silent Hill comic. It's like it's written by Uwe Boll or some moron who has no concept of psychological horror.
I know it has been years but I was just going over some of the old videos but about Payne being spelt with a y and an e. That is an actual name, it also happens to be my mothers maiden name, so that probably doesnt could as a poor literacy moment.
Great intro man, it was awesome :'D
Huh... funny little congruity. I'm pretty sure you didn't mean it this way when you wrote it (unlike the Pollo stuff), but having 90s Kid talk about being 'real' is an interesting statement in light of later events.
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