In the grisly third installment of Image Comics horror anthology The Silver Coin by artist and creator Michael Walsh and writer Ed Brisson, after a home invasion goes bad, the mysterious coin helps its new owners outrun the law. But it’s leading them down a much darker path.
Mark Turetsky: Hi, Armaan! Weâre back for a chilling third installment of this five-part miniseries. Whatâs new since the last time we met?
Armaan Babu: Hell if I know, Iâve been stuck at home, eagerly staring at the ComicsXF Slack for the announcement of new review copies to get to work on to distract me from the lockdown. As always, The Silver Coin has granted me my desires in the most horrific ways. Iâm going to be up now worrying about both home invaders and their souls in case they find any evil coins lying âround my mess of a place.
I hope youâve been having a considerably nicer time of things.
Mark: Well, on my end, Iâm trying to find the time to read all these comics and to write about some of them. So, basically the opposite.
Speaking of home invasions: Iâm not especially familiar with Ed Brissonâs non-superhero work, but I listened to a bunch of interviews with him back when he launched his Kickstarter. He mentioned that he writes crime comics because he was something of a juvenile delinquent and itâs a world that he knows. He also mentioned that his neighbor committed a home invasion where the homeowner ended up getting killed, which immediately popped into my mind when I saw the opening page of this comic.
Armaan: Thereâs a certain mold of young crime stories â ones of pure adrenaline â where the focus goes from how one small mistake or impulsive act of violence can transform a simple act of youthful rebellion into something disastrously worse. I donât think anyone involved here could have predicted just how bad things could get, though. Shall we get right into discussing it?
Emerging Patterns
Mark: Well, weâve got three teens here: Lisa, our point-of-view character; Vic, her boyfriend; and Bobby, the wild card who takes things too far, gets someone killed and would likely betray Lisa and Vic if he survived long enough. Every crime story needs one of these guys.
Armaan: I actually feel like Bobby would do much worse than betray Lisa and Vic, had things gone differently. He seems like the type whoâs desperate for followers â people he can force into rash decisions, who he can keep bound to him through guilt, fear and blackmail. People to validate his love for violence and chaos, if only because they have no other choice. We donât get to find out either way, but it certainly seems like The Silver Coin needs one of these people every issue: an unrepentant monster.
Mark: And yet itâs Lisa that the Silver Coin calls out to. Itâs interesting to see whom the coin chooses in each issue. With Fiona in issue #2, she finds it after fighting for her life, but it doesnât seem to have any pull on Ryanâs father or bandmates in issue #1. And here, Lisa doesnât find it; it finds her and calls out to her, and just to her.
Armaan: I have a theory about that.
At first I just thought the coin went after those with the strongest sense of desire â Fiona wanted to get back at those who were bullying her, Ryan wanted stardom â but in this issue itâs clear that Bobbyâs desire for violence is second to none.
What Iâm beginning to think is that the coin seeks out those itâs able to corrupt the most. Those whose desires are strong enough to awaken it, whose minds are weak enough for it to take control over, and whose souls have something within them it can rot.
Trying to corrupt Bobbyâs soul would be like trying to sully sewage. Thereâs not a lot the coin can do to make things worse.
Mark: Itâs weird to me that itâs been eight years since Louis found the coin at the end of issue #1. And yet, it doesnât seem like the coin ever sent him on a killing spree or anything. Speaking of, this issue really provides a bridge between the two previous issues, giving this series a throughline that I wasnât sure weâd be getting. It shows us how the coin goes from where it was in issue #1 to where it ends up at the beginning of issue #2.
Armaan: I was surprised, too â I was beginning to think we were in for a series of random stories loosely held together by a coin and a raven, but this issue really ties things together. It also deepens the mythology behind the coin â it feels like this is the least passive the coin has been, overall. It doesnât just corrupt Lisa, sheâs given specific orders. The raven doesnât just watch â it attacks the cops chasing her to help her fulfill her purpose.
As for Louis being able to carry the coin with him all these years without things ending in disaster â I wonder if he was able to resist the coin, or if it simply ruined his life in more subtle ways.
Mark: Or, you know, it got him killed in a home invasion. Remember how it was Lisa âwho knew about the house?â Seems like maybe the coin planned the home invasion just as much as Lisa and friends.
Armaan: Or maybe itâs been calling out for years, waiting for someone corruptible to finally answer the call. Either way, I definitely think it was Louisâ sudden cause of death.
Poor Lisa, though. It seems like her life is filled with nothing but bad influences, one nightmarishly worse than all the rest. What do you think about Lisaâs gradual corruption throughout the book?
Chew, Chew, Chew
Mark: What we see is a lot like what happens to Fiona in Issue #2. The eye of the coin opens, and sheâs completely under its control. With Ryan in issue #1, it just influences him until he begins playing music, at which point it completely takes over.
Armaan: The possession isnât immediate and absolute, however. She still has enough awareness to say âsorryâ for the violence she commits, which to me, is a lot more horrifying. A lot of good horror can be generated from implications, and her apologies imply to me that sheâs not been fully turned â sheâs just been given a goal inside her head. One thatâs consuming her. A goal, a desperation and bloodlust â without being told, clearly, how to achieve that goal. That âsorryâ is the difference between Lisa committing the horrors we see on the page and some other entity just taking her body for a ride.
Unlike Fiona last issue, Lisa isnât given a weapon to work with, and that makes the violence here increasingly barbaric.
Mark: Yeah, she rips out that copâs throat with her teeth, and then she wanders to the cabin in the woods with the flesh still hanging out of her mouth. You figure the coin just isnât used to observing social mores when possessing people (See also it causing Lisa to pee herself), but then she starts chewing on the throat flesh, which ⌠yikes.
Armaan: Itâs rare that a comic book brings a physical shudder out of me, but that âchew chew chewâ sound effect really got to me. Itâs the point of no return. Maybe Lisa felt she had to use every weapon at her disposal â from a shard of glass to her own teeth â to get to her destination. But the chewing â itâs the coin in charge there. Thatâs a choice.
Mark: It almost feels like the coin is just bored and chewing the flesh to pass the time while it waits for whatever is in the cabin to wake up. And wake up it does! In the final few pages, we meet the master of the coin, or at least see their silhouette.
The Master of the Coin
Armaan: Yeah, the existence of this master of the coin certainly changes things, doesnât it? From what little we see of their silhouette, and the cut of their glove, they certainly look like theyâre at least a few centuries out of place, donât they? Someone ancient, or immortal â possibly even the coinâs creator?
Mark: He looks like heâs wearing a ridiculous pilgrim outfit, which, if you look at the cover to issue #5 (the one Michael Walsh is writing himself), it shows someone who definitely fits the bill. Weird, though, that the figure who attacks Fiona in the cabin doesnât look a thing like him. It, quite frankly, looks like a double of Fiona. Iâm wondering if the coin turns on its creator between Lisaâs story and Fionaâs story. And thatâs why it decides to leave the cabin and get away from the area at the end of #2.
Armaan: I canât get those strange, unexplained, creeping figures that accompany Lisa out of my head, and begin to wonder whether the coin can create shadow selves of a person. Iâm equally tempted to think that this master of the coin left it behind as a trap for whoever came next â spreading the curse, before leaving it behind.
I wonder if Fiona, after activating that trap, empowered the coin just enough for it to be able to seek its master once more.
Mark: The unexplained figures also show up on the cover to #5, so I think youâre going to have your questions about them answered.
The ending to this one seems kind of like a fusion of the endings of the first two issues: whereas the coin just kinda ditched Fiona with her guilt, here it leaves Lisa having the same confusion and guilt, but then sets her on fire, like with Ryan at the end of issue #1. So weâre starting to get a much better understanding of the coinâs modus operandi here: It takes over vulnerable people, it likes fire and blood. Itâs kind of a jerk, if you ask me!
Armaan: Someone needs to throw that thing into Mount Doom, stat.
Speaking of fire and blood, though, I want to talk about the color choices in this comic for a bit. More than any other issue before it, thereâs a clear division between the blues and the reds here, both bringing their own flavors of horror to the story. The cold, lonely fear and dread that the blues bring out. The reds, coloring the violence â the gas canister, the getaway car, the blood, the more grisly panels, even Bobbyâs hair. Chilling dread and visceral violence â the feelings evoked here are strong.
Mark: Thereâs also the yellows and oranges from the cabin in the woods and the fire that ultimately consumes Lisa. Theyâre distinct from the reds that Walsh uses to color the violence. But yes, the color choices in this issue are the most stark out of any of the issues weâve seen, by far. Likely, this has to do with the much more limited time frame that this issue takes place in. Itâs all at night, so much of the lighting is just the ambient blue we get throughout most of the issue, and then the red just pops against that background, especially in the most graphic of panels.
Armaan: Itâs beautiful, and, like you said right at the top â itâs chilling. Iâd say itâs done its job well.
Loose Change
- The police only chase them because Bobby runs a stop sign right in front of a police car. What a jerk!
- Since our last review, this series has been upgraded from a mini to an ongoing. It looks like weâre damned to repeat this same cycle of horror and reviewing horror for the rest of eternity now.
- Or until 2467, at least â which is when the next issue is set, hopefully giving us a glimpse of our eventual release.
- I canât tell how intentional this was, but with all of the other nods to preceding issues, the âdead as discoâ callback to #1 was definitely the most fun.
