Silk #1
Now
Silk is in the middle of a battle with a new villain named Dragonclaw. She enjoys every minute of it after being locked up in a bunker for over a decade. She has her foe on the ropes when suddenly she is struck by a massive spider-sense attack, a side-effect of her recent adventures across the multiverse.[2] This allows Dragonclaw to cut her web-line, sending Silk falling to the street below. Luckily, she is rescued by Spider-Man. In the meantime, Dragonclaw manages to get away. When Spider-Man tries to start a conversation, Silk takes off, telling him she’s late for work.
As Cindy Moon changes into her street clothes, she figures the reason she blew off Spider-Man was that she wants to try and have a mostly normal life. Being late reminds her of a day years ago when she was still in high school…
Then
Cindy had come home from hockey practice and her mother is furious. She wants Cindy to go on a field trip instead of wasting her time on sports. Cindy insists on going because she is also going on a date with Hector Cervantez. Her mother is about to protest this when her father gives her a look. When Nari Moon stops talking, Albert tells his wife that he likes Hector. That’s not the point for Nari, who is upset that Cindy started dating someone without telling them. Cindy says she kept it a secret because they wouldn’t have allowed her to date. Cindy is right as Nari is more concerned about her daughter’s grades. Cindy is then told to go on the field trip after dropping Junior off at a play date. Furious with her mother, Cindy tells her that she hates her before storming out of the house with her younger brother.
Now
When Cindy arrives at her internship job at the Fact Channel, J. Jonah Jameson notices that she is late. As Jameson asks for stories that “bleed”, Cindy’s co-worker Lola suggests that Cindy and Rafferty go see a show with her. Not used to social interactions due to her years in captivity, Cindy suggests that Lola and Rafferty go alone since Lola is trying to muster up the courage to ask Raff out. Rafferty thanks Cindy for finally pointing it out. That’s when Jameson notices that Cindy is taking notes on a pad of paper and commends her for being old fashioned instead of having a phone in her face like everyone else in her generation. When he asks her for a story idea, she shows him footage of Silk’s battle with Dragonclaw. Jameson is interested because he can spin it to make Spider-Man look bad. He commends her on a good job and tells her to find him more news on Silk, or she’s fired.
After Lola thanks Cindy for setting up her date, their real boss — Natalie Long — comes in for the story meeting. When Cindy says Jameson already finished it, Natalie looks at his segment on the television screen and feels like she created a monster.[3] Given a moment alone, Cindy uses the Fact Channel’s computer to try to find clues about where her family went after she went into the bunker. Unfortunately, she finds nothing.
Then
On the day Cindy said she hated her mother, she walked Junior to his play date. Along the way, he told her that she’s weird for saying she hated their mother. Cindy tells him he’ll understand it when he’s a teenager. Still, Junior doesn’t understand why she would say that when she didn’t mean it. Thankfully, her brother changes the subject to what he hates: white chocolate. She admits that it is gross and then tells her brother that she loves him, a sentiment that Junior returns.
Now
Cindy refuses to give up searching for her missing family. After work, Cindy goes back out on patrol as Silk. She runs into Dragonclaw again and when she hits him hard enough to knock him in a dumpster, she fears that she killed him. When she rushes to look all she finds is his helmet, leaving Cindy to wonder if her foe can teleport.
When she returns home to the apartment she shares with Lola, she overhears her roommate talking to Rafferty. She suddenly decides she needs a place of her own. Packing her bags, Cindy leaves a note telling Lola that she found a place of her own.
Then
Cindy went on the field trip as her mother insisted and is surprised to see Hector Cervantez waiting for her. He said he called her house and learned from her father that she would be here. He wanted to find her because he bought her a gift for their six month anniversary, an anklet with a small moon on it. Holding hands, the pair head for the radiation exhibit that would change her life forever.
Now
On the rooftops of the city, Cindy decides to call Spider-Man since he is the only one she can really talk to. She asks him if her spider-sense will ever quiet down because it’s noisy in the city. Peter admits that it doesn’t but you have to balance the bad with the good. When he invites her over to talk in person, Silk agrees at first then changes her mind then ends the call.
Meanwhile, Dragonclaw is drowning his sorrows at the bar as he watches the news of his humiliating defeat on the news. That’s when he’s called in to see the boss. His employer is the Black Cat who is not pleased that Dragonclaw failed his mission and had to ditch his gear. She orders his henchmen to send Dragonclaw to the “shop” and then find her everything they can on Silk.
By this time, Silk has returned to the bunker under Sims Tower where she lived for over a decade. Even though it’s empty with only a recording of Ezekiel Sims to keep her company, she welcomes it because it’s actually quiet.
At that moment, Dragonclaw arrives at the Shop, the domain of a guy who calls himself the Repairman. He doesn’t care to hear Dragonclaw’s real name and after getting a text from the Black Cat tells his client to get into his operating chair as he has been given orders to give Dragonclaw a complete overhaul.
Back in the bunker, Cindy sets up an internet connection and continues her search for her family. She wishes that Ezekiel Sims was still alive so she could ask him for his help, but Sims has been dead for a while.[4] Cindy webs up all the evidence of her family onto the wall for reference and vows to a family photo that she’ll find them again. Cindy is unaware that she is being watched by two individuals who are glad to see that she has finally come home.[5]
Recurring Characters
Silk, Spider-Man, Black Cat, Dragonclaw, the Repairman, J. Jonah Jameson, Natalie Long, Lola, Rafferty, (in flashback) Albert Moon, Nari Moon, Albert Moon, Jr., Hector Cervantez, Ezekiel Sims
Continuity Notes
Cindy mentions that she was locked away in a shelter for over a decade. See Amazing Spider-Man (vol. 3) #4-6.
When the Web of Life was damaged by Otto Octavius in Amazing Spider-Man (vol. 3) #15, the Master Weaver warned Silk and her allies that their spider-senses might not work properly until he fixes the damage.
After J. Jonah Jameson resigned as mayor of New York, Natalie offered him a show at the Fact Channel. See Amazing Spider-Man (vol. 3) #1.
Ezekiel Sims once sacrificed his own life to save Spider-Man when he had second thoughts about feeding the wall-crawler to a spider deity to keep his own powers. See Amazing Spider-Man #506-508.
The identities of those watching Cindy are revealed in Silk (vol. 2) #11.
Topical References
Dated pop-culture references: Pokémon
Real-World services: Twitter
J. Jonah Jameson refers to Cindy as a millennial here. Millennials are the generation born between the years 1982 and 2000. This should be considered a topical reference because as the sliding timescale pushes forward it will become impossible for Cindy to have been born during that stretch of time.
