Silent Hill Past Life

Nope, we aren’t going to dip into our past. That would just be weird and we would all be a bit uncomfortable and maybe even a bit confused and no one would walk away from the conversation happier for having been there. Or something… Actually, before I drag out this whole thing and take us in a completely different direction than what we might have intended, I should probably just step into the thoughts and see what happens.

Where were we? So, there is a game series of survival horror that came out a while back, Silent Hill. I never actually played any of the games. I know right, slacker. I don’t know what exactly kept me from the games, other than I have a certain range I like to stick around and I don’t really deviate too much from those. Yeah, I don’t have much information from personal experience to delve into in that direction. Instead, I actually slipped down the rabbit hole of some comics based on the game series.

When I say based on the game series, I don’t actually mean that they bear any semblance of similarity to the games that people might once have played. Maybe. See, in the comics the running theme all revolves around the area of Silent Hill and the strange happenings in the area. But it isn’t like they are tied together other than that.

Take for instance the comic series in question, Silent Hill:Past Lives (IDW 2014). The story takes place shortly after the civil war. It has a western feel to it, though the story actually takes place in Silent Hill (which is on the east side of the country). The lawlessness of the cowboy west is actually a moment of time in the past that we don’t actually experience.

We are taken on a ride through Jebidiah’s present as he tries to make a new life from apart from his past. Jeb was a bad man, the Hellrider, but all he wants to do now is settle down with his pregnant wife and live out a life in peace. It’s never that easy is it?

The surreal art for this storyline draws us into a story of a troubled past. We find ourselves piecing together moments of drunken evil just as Jeb is finding out the same things he has done to destroy the lives he once encountered.

This is a series that makes me wish I had found the games it branched from when they were out. The nightmare quality of the stories feeds are fears in a deeper level. There aren’t the jump scares that we see too often in today’s horror movies but the creeping dread that sticks with you for a while after you have put the book down.

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If you enjoy these stories, consider leaving some coffee money in the jar or you could buy a book or two. Either way helps keep the stories flowing.