This August, IDW is releasing Silent Hill Downpour: Anne’s Story. The book will serve as a prequel to the 2012 console game, Silent Hill: Downpour, giving us a backstory for villainess Anne Marie Cunningham, one of the guards who tormented the game’s hero, Murphy Pendleton.
From IDW:
“The nightmare-inducing series based on the hit video game series Silent Hill by Konami Digital Entertainment (“Konamiâ€) returns to IDW this summer with a brand new chapter, Silent Hill Downpour: Anne’s Story. Featuring the dark origins of Downpour’s enigmatic antagonist, this new comic book series will delve deeper into the history of prison guard Anne Marie Cunningham… as well as further explore the fog-shrouded haunted town that is caught between realities.
Introduced in Silent Hill Downpour, officer Anne Cunningham set out on a bloody quest for revenge. The mystery surrounding her journey to Silent Hill, and the terrors she faced upon her arrival will finally be revealed, giving readers an entirely new perspective on the acclaimed video game.
Having written both previous Silent Hill series at IDW, Sinner’s Reward and Past Life, as well as co-written the video game, Silent Hill Downpour, Tom Waltz returns to the foggy town that bleeds horror.”
Waltz is joined by Australian artist Tristan Jones who is handling both interiors and covers.
Sometime soon, I need to write a piece about the rise and fall (and continued fall) of the Silent Hill franchise (at least, in terms of the games). Downpour is, in a lot of ways, the nadir of the Silent Hill series, but had glimmers of interesting elements that were worth exploring in the ruined, haunted town. While the game’s protagonist was largely a huge, boring blank, some of the mysteries in this new version of Silent Hill (and the psychosexual trauma in and around it) were just intriguing enough to make the game not feel like a total mess.
Anne’s Story seems like the right place to start delving into some of that mystery and horror divorced from the same-y gameplay and awful, ubiquitous combat of the last couple of games. In the game, Cunningham is a hard-nosed prison guard who just won’t stop chasing Pendleton. We learn that she’s the daughter of guard Frank Coleridge who may or may not have been murdered by Pendleton.
Are you excited to dive deeper into Anne’s Story? Let us know in the comments below.
I didn’t know these existed. I love Silent Hill and while Downpour wasn’t my favorite I still really enjoyed the game. A better look into a character might give a better appreciation to the game as a whole