Marvel has just recently launched the comic Silk, Issue One. Silk comes out of the pages of the Amazing Spiderman, which raises a few red flags. Typically, spin off comics are poorly written, have the B team artists working on them, try to be good but are bad. Having said all that, writer Robbie Thompson and Artist Stacey Lee have not followed the rules of a bad spin off comic but have set a new precedent of what every comic should be, regardless of it being a spin off or not.
Silk, Issue One immediately creates an attachment to the main character Cindy Moon, as she is the underdog. Cindy Moon has been bitten by the same spider as Peter Parker and as a result has the same powers he does. The difference is that she has had less time to utilize and practice her powers. When she begins to face the villain Dragon Claw he is beating her. As the fight continues you see that she is rough around the edges. Finally, signifying that she is the underdog, her web is cut and Spiderman has to come and save her while Dragon Claw makes his escape. Even though she has to be saved by Spiderman she still wanted to continue the fight, which earns the respect of Spiderman and the reader. Furthermore, even though her powers are not working she chooses to fight. She is the underdog but has determination, furthering your love for Cindy Moon.
The second element of Cindy Moon that classifies her as an underdog is the disadvantages that she has gone through. The primary disadvantage she has been exposed to is the isolation from the world. For ten years Cindy was held in a bunker for her own protection from a threat. In those ten years she was in complete isolation and did not have anybody to support her. After being released she is in a world that is semi-familiar and she does not have the social advantage that a person who was living in it everyday would have. As a result she is immediately classified as being an underdog from a social perspective. She is in the real world after being isolated. This exemplifies her underdog spirit and she refuses to let the fact that a good percentage of her life was spent in a confined area affect her.
The third classification of Cindy Moon’s underdog journey is for the ten years she had been in isolation she did not seen her family and they have disappeared. Now that Cindy is out, her family is not around and there are no leads to where they have gone. There are no leads and she is continuing to look for them. She has gone on to work for a newspaper so that she can investigate where they might have gone using tools that journalists are granted. This determination shows her true underdog characteristics, as finding her family is a long shot but she refuse to give up looking for them. Instead of giving up she is more determined to find them using her pool of resources, secretly of course, hoping to be reunited with her family.
These three-things lead to the determination that she is an underdog, obviousness statement. As a reader when viewing the art and the words you get the emotion that you want her to succeed in becoming stronger, more socially adept in the world, and reunite with her family. The comic evokes all of this and so much more.
The closest description of what this comic captures is Daniel Bryans journey and victory at WrestleMania 30 and where he won the world heavyweight belt as he deserved, his journey can be read here. This is the same emotion you feel for Cindy Moon, as you feel that she deserves to be stronger and achieve a level of social adeptness and she deserves to be reunited with her family. These three underdog characteristics make this comic so intriguing and you want to see how events will unfold and if she will achieve any of them.
