The Allies have already invaded Normandy. Paris has been liberated. The Battle of the Bulge began at least a month ago. It’s early 1945. A small unit of U.S. soldiers faces a small hold-out of German forces in the Italian Alps. A snowstorm threatens to overtake the soldiers when a strange, little coin seems to become strangely important in The Silver Coin #12. Writer Stephanie Phillips, artist Michael Walsh, and colorist Toni Marie Griffin take the cursed coin back to World War II in a grizzly and largely satisfying fusion of horror and war that continues to build on the strengths of the series.

The snow is thick. The unit didn’t have much trouble taking out a straggling group of retreating Germans. A German machine gun blew a hole in the face of one of the soldiers, but they won the battle. They set up camp for the night. It’s as cold as hell in a snowstorm. A fire might be nice, and there’s a good chance that the Germans wouldn’t see it, but they don’t want to risk it, so it’s going to be a cold night. One of the guys thinks that a dying German soldier tried to give him a coin to spare his life. The coin’s his now. If he’d known it was the Silver Coin and about its curse, he might have let the soldier die with it.

Phillips weaves war with horror in a story that allows a hell of a lot of weight to fall on the shoulders of the artist. There are a few moments of dialogue here and there, but the bulk of the story plays out in the panels of action in the snowy Italian Alps. The 24-page story is a study in minimalism. Phillips puts just enough dialogue on the page to set the mood and tone while establishing the plot. From there, it’s a matter of letting the action play out into its inevitable ending with just a small verbal exchange at the end. It’s a remarkably well-composed script.

Walsh works with some pretty crude images. War is hell. The ink is scratched along the page with a brutal grace. It’s not pretty, but it delivers a remarkable chill...especially under the influence of Griffin’s color. The snow is everywhere, with whites fading into gray and the occasional splash of red. All the clouds of condensation coming from the soldiers kind of feel missing too, but that little bit of atmosphere never seems to make it to the comic’s page when winter fills the panels. The action in the combat hits the page in brutal bursts of static visuals. The freeze frame of the action feels right at home with the blur of Walsh’s rich and hazy ink work.

The issue wraps up with the second part of Adam Gorham’s “Dark Passage” serial. It feels a bit strange having the “B” feature in a series be the ongoing episodic bit while the main feature is a series of one-shot stories. The serial feels like a weird 4-page afterthought that isn’t allowed to make enough of an impression to carry over into the next issue, which is a pity. It looks like an interesting story, but it doesn’t seem to work in little 4-page bursts once per month. 

Grade: B