Monday, October 19, 2009

Silent Hill: Dying Inside #5


This whole thing should've been about Hogg. He's like a girthier Bruce Campbell!


44 comments:

  1. Jesus, this comic is bad. I can kind of see what they were aiming for here- the games themselves often had many ambiguous and unexplained elements, but in this case it's not creepy or mysterious, it's just confusing.

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  2. Awesome!

    Not only was the review awesome, but you had an epic fight with Pyramid-head, even though like ya said goes agienst what the core basis of Silent Hill. Anyway, I'm looking forward to next week's review with baited breath.

    Good ending? Does that mean there's a bad ending? And an alien ending? There were aliens in the title page.

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  3. Good review and great finished to the series review on Silent Hill Dying inside. Whatever happened to Hogg though in the comic, because I am really confused about what happened. Then again, you may not know since you were baffled by this comic as well.

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  4. Pure Win and awesomeness as usual, I do particularly love how Lauryn kind of sounds like the female version of Christian Slater.

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  5. The name "Whately" (pronounced WAIT-LEY) is most likely a reference to the Whately's from H.P. Lovecraft's "The Dunwich Horror."

    Which only adds a whole new set of questions about his appearance in the comic...

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  6. Guess that ancient Japanese haiku was true:
    The Man who owns
    A Minigun
    Fears not

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  7. So apparently this is a Cthulhu Mythos/Silent Hill crossover.

    Given that, you'd think it would be...you know...scary or something.

    As for the details (SPOILERS), the Whateleys live in a New England town called Dunwich. The patron of the family (nicknamed "Wizard Whateley") used ancient texts to make contact with an extradimensional being of god-like power, known as Yog-Sothoth. He allowed said being to *ahem* have knowledge of his daughter, producing one sorta-kinda-almost normal son named Wilbure (not quite normal, though), and another son, who resembled his father more than his mother...

    Anyway, if you did this right, I can't help but imagine that a Lovecraft/Silent Hill story could be AWESOME. This comic, of course, does NOT do it right.

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  8. Congratulations on getting through one of the worst series I've seen in awhile, made particularly offensive because I love Silent Hill so much. Nice reference to the Origins game with the mirror, by the way.

    Also, YES! When you broke out your gatling gun, I knew that song was from the Maximum Carnage game. Absolutely fantastic!

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  9. Red white and blue? Soooooo, now Silent Hill is supposed to be some kind of symbol of small town America?

    ...This is a dumb comic.

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  10. I didn't even realize that the auto-focus was unintentional. It worked well after you said that the electronics weren't working anymore; I just assumed that the affect that you were going for was that camera wasn't working correctly because of the fog.

    Anyway, awesome review as always, Linkara. The artwork on those last few pages is really unbelievable. I had no idea what I was even looking at!

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  11. First off, Dan, that's not a haiku, so I guess I hope you're being ironic. If so, very funny. :D

    But Linkara - were those Xmas lights on your potted plant? Not cool, my good sir, it's only October!

    Meanwhile, I now DEFINITELY need to see one of these walk-throughs or Let's Plays, these games look like a lot of fun.

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  12. Great ending man. Still, no UFO ending? Oh, well ^_^

    Though seriously the last pages of the comic with all those splotches...did a kindergartener paint this?

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  13. black rock shooter much XD
    joking. doubt you got the idea from that. anyhoo, great prop, and a nice way to end the set.

    looking forward to the day that you use that pyramid-head XD

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  14. Great job on sillent hill. I have one question, could sombody tell me what is the name of the music playing over the end credits? Ive heard it befor and i would love to find out what its called. Thanks

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  15. Excellent ending to a great series of reviews. One to make even Raimi proud. Whew boy, that was a stinker of a comic. Glad your sanity remained intact (for the most part seeing as how Silent Hill kinda showed up at your doorstep). I am curious as to how you got those getups together. Great job on the Pyramidhead costume. The feel of Silent Hill 2 was just there. Loved it.

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  16. Yeah, I figure Whately is a Lovecraft reference, but this comic has fuckall to do with the Dunwich Horror (just like it seems to have nothing to do with Silent Hill).

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  17. Perfect Ending, I think this review was the best of the SH vids. Keep it up!

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  18. Wha......Wh....I.....Th.....Who......

    For godness sake! This comic makes Full Life Consequences look coherent!

    Well, it's all over at least........

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  19. THANKS FOR UPLOADING TO BLIP
    my drunk friends,and uncle and dad all love your shit.
    keep on pimpin

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  20. As the series progressed I noticed how the art work devolved into something a ravenous monkey would do after eating all the pencils. Good lord was that comic awful, awe inspiringly so.
    From what I've read (and like you I've just never had the time to play the games) this is nothing like the games. If it were I don't think they'd be very popular.

    Two things I want to ask the first is about the artwork. I've noticed that while American comic artwork seems to lean in the direction of pencil and ink (drawing and then filling in) British and more continental art is painted from scratch. This comic seems to be the latter, if so it's not a good example of the form (the question by the way is "am I right?")
    The second is why do you keep the auto focus on? The function is never right anyway as it try's to find a focus on your nose (little detail there and it can't really tell anyway, which is why it was floating during the review). Sit Poyo in your seat and focus off that. Trust me it's far better.

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  21. When the Otherworld took over, I was expecting you to go through your bookcase to find all your comics were of the Silent Hill miniseries. Or get a mysterious phone call. Still, though, very awesome.

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  22. Wow... Thank you for reading this so that we might not suffer.

    As a comic creator it must be so frustrating to see such dreck conceived and produced. How did Konami allow this abomination to be created.

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  23. "The second is why do you keep the auto focus on?"

    A few weeks ago I switched it over to Manual Focus. At some point, the camera's focus became totally and completely blurry and I accidentally recorded my footage for the upcoming Superman 4 video ENTIRELY in the blurred vision as well as the review of Issues 3 and 4. I had to go back and rerecord ALL of the live action footage from scratch because at some point it got blurred.

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  24. good as always Linkara but you missed thge perfect oppertunity for the UFO ending, the weridest of the weird of Silent Hill the silent Hill 3 ufo ending is still the biggest WTF in the series for me.

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  25. Silly Linkara! The Pyramid Head you caught was Lv. 10! The second Pyramid Head was Lv. 30! Now you caught a Pyramid Head, better raise him well so he can become stronger and a valiant ally against Mechakara. Calling it, Bad Ending involves Zero Suit Linkara. Cause that is just bad...

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  26. "I had to go back and rerecord ALL of the live action footage from scratch because at some point it got blurred."

    Believe me I know how that feels. I recorded a whole series of interviews one time for my college work and discovered that the eye piece wasn't focused and the Macro was on. Needless to say I was not happy that a whole day's worth of unrepeatable footage was lost. At least you could go back over it.

    If your focus is drifting when on manual something has got to be wrong with your camera. It could be either of the problems I mentioned above (those are fixable) or your zoom lens could be rubbing on the focus. If the latter I'd have it looked at by a professional.

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  27. You know, when you asked for more appropriate music for this inappropriate comic book series I honestly thought you were going to Rickroll it. Footloose waws funny but I think "Never Gonna Give You Up" might have been funnier.

    Excellent, funny ending and I loved the 'Evil Dead' references.

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  28. Whatever you say about these comics, if it weren't for them (or more accurately, these reviews) I wouldn't have discovered Mary Elizabeth McGlynn. I am currently playing to death One More Soul to the Call.

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  29. All right, you threw in Green Jelly's awesome song, "Carnage Rules".

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  30. I think that one page(or couple of panels) when you didn't know where Clown or Payne were, was actually the inside of that one car they got attacked in, judging from the broken window effect in one of the panels.

    But anyway, this really was a horrible comic and even though I haven't played any of the Silent Hill games(only watched play throughs and whatnot), I actually found it a bit offending. I'm pretty surprised they even got the rights to put the name on in... and it really does make you wonder why so many comics get released without some kind of proof reading. But eh...

    Keep up the good work!

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  31. "L. Lovhaug?" You actually talked your dad into dressing as Pyramidhead? That's some dad you've got.

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  32. Oh, and I guess Pyramid Head does not need to worry about the giant Pyramid on his head, seeing that the person he is chasing is a pasty clerk.

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  33. This might help regarding Whateley (I dug it up out of curiousity since they seemed to emphasize him so damn much)

    http://silenthill.wikia.com/wiki/Whately

    Apparently he's a recurring villain for the comic series...which gets progressively worse from here. At least he seems to get his just deserts at the end of it all though.

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  34. I'm rather offended that the writers tried to imbue some sense of Lovecraftian horror by pillaging Whately, to try and give it some literary credibility. If you're going to have references to Lovecraft in the story, at least have the decency to have the story be GOOD.

    Also, I'm tickled pink by the idea of catching PH in a pokeball. Now I have the horrific idea of a Silent Hill/Pokemon crossover.

    You are challenged by ALESSA!
    Go! CLAWFINGER!
    ALESSA sent out PUPPET NURSE!
    CLAWFINGER used SEISMIC TOSS!
    It's SUPER EFFECTIVE!

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  35. I sure felt a small part of myself dying inside, and that was just filtered through the brilliance of the review. I shudder to think liquefied my brain would be if I had sat down and read through it on my own.

    Bravo, sir. Bravo. *salute*

    I mean, really, though. HORROR. UR DOIN IT WRONG. SO VERY WRONG. It was confusing to the point of being nonsensical. And "confusing surrealistic slop" does not mean the same thing as "horror." ARGH ARGH ARGH.

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  36. unrelated shout out

    I used to read comics a lot in my teens but at one point shunned them simply because of the 'geek' label I assumed they inflicted.

    I've been a big fan of these videos since day one and seeing how much people love the medium has changed my perspective. I've joined the local library and have been borrowing graphic novels continuously even reading books I would never normally read to give them a chance and ending up loving them.

    I realize now that most comic books are an amazing combination of brilliant artwork and gripping story-lines centred around compelling characters. AND IT'S AWESOME!

    I just wanted to say a big thank you, you've let me get in touch with my inner child again.

    Recommendations:

    'Birds of Prey '
    (female super heroes that can kick serious ass but with a engaging emotional human angle)

    'Tom Strong'
    (Alan Moore. A modern age silver age comic)

    'Bat Man - Detective'
    (art Deco / nouveau art work. Batman solving crime through detective work. Solve it yourself murder mysteries feel)

    'Old Time Radio' http://www.radiolovers.com/
    ( as good as any pod-cast to listen to at work)

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  37. Great series of videos. I like the ending - it parodies where the comic went wrong and gives us the thought of Poke-fighting with Pyramid-heads. And I like the lights on the palm tree.

    This comic was pathetic, like whoever wrote it had no idea what makes horror work. They just grabbed whatever ideas they recognized from movies/TV/books without noticing the difference between sub-genres (i.e. slasher films, Lovecraftian cosmic horror, psychological horror). Horror is probably one of the hardest genres to get right.

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  38. The "Have you seen a little Girl" part reminds me of a particular "LP'er"... Though, Then again he probbly was not the first to use that.

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  39. Whately (spelled differently in some cases with other comics from this company) is an other dimensional being who can apparently clone himself and has a few other powers. He supposedly is clearing the way for the appearance of another being known as Samael. He is part of a larger storyline across almost all of the SH comics from this company (Hunger and Grinning Man for example). More or less they threw out the canon from the games and created an alternate reality version of Silent Hill. Most of what IDW can be considered utter garbage in relation to the primary canon of Silent Hill, not to mention most of it is just garbage anyway. I would seriously love to see you ripping apart Paint it Black. Seriously, a busload of survivalist-trained cheerleaders. Ugh. Love your work though. Great reviews of this mini-series of SH comics!

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  40. Funny fact, according Bulbapedia, in the beta version of Pokémon Gold & Silver, the starting was not called "New Bark Town". It wasd called "Silent Hills". Catching Pyramid Head in a Pokéball now seems to make a lot more sense.

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  41. I always thought of horror protagonists as divided into two categories: the terrified character with psychological problems, who is pushed to the point of mental collapse, and the bad-ass fighter who fights monsters with anything they find (like the guys from Dead Alive, Chris Redfield, and Ash Williams among others).

    Anyway, that was a groovy review on this lousy horror comic. The end sequence with Pyramid head ranks as one of the grooviest, most epic battles in the series.

    I mean, anyone can sit down and struggle to hold on his or her sanity as he or she tries to finish a particularly bad book. You are the only one who actually caught a Pyramid Head and blew it to smithereens with a huge arm Gatling gun. I salute you, king of bad-ass reviewers!

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  42. I've actually done some research into Silent Hill now (because of these reviews), watching a playthrough of the original game and reading the wiki summary of the others, and now looking back these comics are actually even worse. It actually wouldn't have been too hard to make this story into something more like Silent Hill.

    Try this:
    Lauryn travels to Silent Hill to lay flowers on her sister Christabella's grave on the little girl's birthday (or anniversary of her death). She's totally alone because after moving away her parents have split up and the only thing they can agree on anymore is that they want to pretend Christabella's death never happened, and none of Lauryn's friends were willing to come along for such a private thing. After visiting the grave, Lauryn makes her way into the town to see old friends, only to find the town strangely abandoned. She sees a ghostly image of her little sister walking along in a blood-soaked white nightgown and chases after it, only to be confronted by monsters. Lauryn searches the town, trying to find an explanation, encountering some typical SH monsters but also monsters unique to her - monsters that somehow represent her feelings of guilt over "letting" Christabella get killed. Maybe they represent corrupted innocence or maybe they're smaller, harmless monsters constantly being terrorized by the bigger monsters. Along the way, she meets up with Lynn, a filmmaker traveling through town on her way to make some stock footage of the hills or something (which would make more sense than the town being known to be abandoned) and Lynn's boom operator Hogg (including him just because he's awesome) who tell her the town is completely cut off with no way out. While looking for a way out, they get separated once again, and Lauryn again sees her little sister. This time the ghostly sister asks why Lauryn let her die (or if Scott Ciencin had to have a foul-mouthed little girl, hurls verbal abuse at her for letting her die). After some more searching, Lauryn discovers that (sinister music) the people who murdered her little sister were not in fact child molesters but ... members of the Order! Somehow, a demon is now possessing Christabella, and Lauryn has to take on the demon to let her sister's soul rest in peace. If he wanted to do something along the lines of a typical good ending, Lauryn defeats the demon and thereby either gets her sister back or at least sets her soul free, learning to let go of her own guilt in the process, and then escapes the town with Hogg and Lynn. Or if he wanted to model the ending on a typical bad ending, Lauryn wakes up in a mental hospital with a forced thorazine drip, where she sees that Lynn is one of the other patients, and Dr. Troy Abernathy talks sadly with another doctor about how the two have a case of folie a deux he can't quite explain.

    You see, Scott Ciencin, was that so hard?

    Then again, if it was still the same artwork, a better story might not have done much good. Ink explosions are not exactly scary.

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  43. Hey, Linkara, I know something that you should watch since your a fan of the Silent Hill series. I don't know if you've heard of this, but there is a series of videos made by these people on YouTube. The series is called "The Real Silent Hill Experience." I'll link the playlist of the series here. I hope you enjoy.

    http://www.youtube.com/user/TwinPerfectChannel#grid/user/87676CF7D0B816B4

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