By Cat Wyatt

To recap, the Silencer is a new DC series about a woman named Honor (ironic, I know) who is a retired assassin. In the last issue, we were introduced to her quiet home life, which was then rudely interrupted when her ex-organization’s enemy decided to try and go after her again. The second issue continues showing us the fallout from those actions and events.

In the last issue, Talia and Honor were in the same car, having a mostly polite chat about what was going on. Honor was of the belief that she could somehow find a way to stay out of this, while Talia was very concerned (and rightly so) that their enemies would respect or appreciate the fact that Honor was retired (and therefore would consider her fair game). Which as it turns out was pretty accurate, considering the ended up getting attacked. I had honestly thought that Honor had dispatched all the (current) attackers at the end of the last issue, but apparently, there were even more of them than I thought.

One of the enemies left standing is called Breacher. He looks like a pretty typical heavy armor attacker, and Honor seems to agree with that assessment. He’s noisy and messy, which work fine when he’s not up against a smarter and faster appointment. Unfortunately, that’s exactly what he is up against, so he gets a little bit destroyed.

The other enemy still standing is a dude called Bloodvessel. Yeah, you read that name right. He’s even more ridiculous than the name implies too, which is saying something. Apparently the only part of this guy that’s alive is his blood, the rest is a cyborg. Don’t ask me how that all works, or why they bother keeping the blood when he’s mostly metal (I mean, it’s not like he’s a vampire where his entire essence is in the blood, is he?). I got the impression he’d be really hard to kill, because of the whole ‘living part being only the blood’ bit, but apparently all you really have to do is beat up the host body (again, cyborg/metal) until it can’t get up again. So not that difficult of a task for somebody in an enhanced suit.

You’re probably wondering how the hell Honor is having this fight in the middle of a suburban neighborhood without being noticed. Remember, one of Honor’s abilities is to silence everything in the immediate area; which is pretty convenient for covert ops, but also apparently for covering an ambush. I can see why the League of Assassins didn’t want to let her go.

From there Honor’s only problem is cleanup. Talia vanished during the fight (surprise surprise) so everything got dumped on her. She’s got to get the bodies and the cars gone asap, as well as make an excuse for the sounds created before her silence bubble was put up (mostly the car exploding bit). Thankfully she has contacts she can call for that, though they may have been miffed that she didn’t feel like hanging around to chat.          

Oh, she’s also got to clean up her hair, which got burned in the explosion. But apparently short hair is a preference for her husband, based on his reaction to her new looks. On the bright side at least that distracted him from asking too many questions about Talia and everything else going on there. Though I’m still worried he’s going to end up getting killed (that would explain why she starts hunting everybody).

To Honor’s credit, she did try and convince the enemy that she was no longer involved with the League of Assassins, and would prefer to be left alone. Not that a group of killers would really care about anybody’s preference on that, but we can at least say she warned them. I’m not sure how she’s going to get out of the fight she wound up in, though I have no doubt that she will.

This series is trying so hard to be unique and stand out, despite the pretty basic plot behind it. I want to like it more than I am, because the idea of a female Punisher is pretty cool, but I’m having trouble caring about Honor or her situation. She’s just too overpowered for my liking (she’s a meta human with access to tech and weapons? Seriously?).

I still can’t stand the look of her high tech suit. It honestly looks like a full body puffy jacket. Once I realized that I couldn’t NOT see a poofy marshmallow-like jacket every time I saw it. Though I like the rough style for everything else, and Honor’s new hair cut is actually pretty cute.

Score: 3/5

The Silencer #2
DC Comics