Silvershore Islands
| Silvershore Islands | |
|---|---|
 | |
| First appearance | Arrival, page 4 June 8, 2008 |
| Related characters | Mike, Lucy, Tess, Daisy, Paulo, David, Sue, Amaya, Zachary, Catherine, Yashy, Chirpy, Lily, Blur |
Silvershore Islands is a tropical island resort destination, reached from Roseville by passenger plane. Tess’s parents paid for the whole gang’s weeklong stay there as her senior year gift, and the resulting vacation fills the four chapters from Arrival to Return.[1]
Description
The islands are built around a crescent-shaped bay, with a sandy beach on the water, a solid wall of luxury high-rise hotels directly behind it, and low green mountains further inland.[2] It is a proper resort city, with dozens of multi-story buildings crowding the shoreline.[2]
The beach has umbrellas, lounge chairs, a volleyball net and a lifeguard chair, and the surf gets rough enough to endanger Yashy.[3] Large jagged rocks sit near the waterline, big enough to climb up and sit on.[4] A boardwalk runs behind the sand, with a slatted railing, globe-topped streetlamps that come on at nightfall, and a wrought-iron street clock.[5][6]
The group’s hotel has an elegant lobby with chandeliers, flower arrangements, a long front desk and a uniformed bellboy.[7] Its rooms hold a queen bed, a flat-screen TV and an en-suite bathroom.[8] Elsewhere in town there is a busy burger restaurant that Zachary swears makes the best burgers around, and a brick public restroom on a back alley with a wall spigot and a stall window just big enough to climb through.[9][10]
Inland, a palm-lined hiking trail passes a grassy plateau overlooking the ocean, a small cave with a resident bat, and a waterfall.[11] The most dramatic feature is a natural rock bridge spanning a river valley, wide at both ends and alarmingly narrow at midspan, high enough to sit level with the low clouds.[12] Locals cross the valley on a sturdy rope bridge instead, and Zachary calls the rock formation the dangerous “old way”.[13]
Zachary and Catherine are the islands’ two named residents. Zachary is a 21-year-old failed band musician turned would-be talent manager who, despite living on a tropical island, cannot swim.[14][15] Catherine, his friend since middle school, grew up a few blocks from the beach and claims to know it like the back of her hand.[15][5]
History
In Invitation, Tess writes to invite the whole group on “a weeklong vacation to the Silvershore Islands”, all expenses covered by her parents.[1] Mike, Lucy, Paulo, David, Sue, Amaya and McCain take her up on it, pets in tow,[17] while Daisy stays home and meets them at the Roseville airport when they return.[18]
In Arrival, the group is split between non-coed hotel rooms, to Paulo’s loud disappointment.[7] During their first day at the beach, Lucy shields Yashy from a huge wave and faints outright, since deep water terrifies her.[3] Zachary hauls her off the beach anyway, non-swimmer that he is.[19] The group is slow to warm up to him, but Catherine vouches for him over dinner at his favorite burger restaurant.[20] Zachary ends the evening on the boardwalk a hundred dollars poorer, scammed by Lucy with the promise of a song she never sings.[5]
In Search and Rescue, a hike into the mountains goes badly wrong. Paulo and David’s horseplay cracks the rock bridge at its narrowest point, and Mike throws Lucy to safety before falling alone into the raging river below.[21] Lucy breaks down completely, convinced that he is dead.[22] Zachary leads the search downriver until Mike finally turns up on the bank, battered but calmly fishing.[23]
Intervention picks up the fall’s aftermath in the alley behind the public restroom, where Lucy strikes Mike and screams “I DIDN’T WANT YOU TO DIE TRYING!!” while he flatly repeats his apologies.[24] On the boardwalk afterward, Mike tells Zachary that Lucy doesn’t love him, only needs him, and that this is where it begins and ends.[25]
During truth-or-dare at the campfire that night, Tess admits she’d have preferred Paulo for her first time but refuses to date him, and Paulo storms off in a fury.[26] Back in their hotel room, David talks him through his feelings, and the conversation lands, of all places, on Daisy.[27]
Return covers Lucy’s last night on the islands. Out on the beach rocks, Zachary tells her that Mike sees her as “a chore”, and that one day he will leave her. Her answer is her first spoken confession of love in the comic, “Dammit, Zach, I love him..”[28] Zachary promises her that things get better, and that if anything ever happens to her, he’ll be there somehow.[29] Lucy spends the night in Mike’s room and kisses the sleeping Mike’s forehead before dawn,[30] and at sunrise the group flies home, leaving Catherine and Zachary edging toward a romance of their own.[31]
The comic has never gone back to the islands, though they survive in flashback panels, from Mike hanging from the cliffside to the group setting out on their hike.[32][33] Their only later mention comes years down the line, when James learns at a New Year’s party that the trip ever happened and is beside himself with envy. A return visit is out of the question, though. As Paulo shrugs, “our ride kinda graduated.”[34]
Trivia
- Nobody actually says “Silvershore Islands” while standing on them. Locals just call them “the Islands”,[36] and the full name only appears off-island, in Tess’s letter and in later Roseville scenes.[1][34]
- The islands were called Acapulco before the Omnibus. Veronica picked the real Mexican city because it “sounded cool”, and did no research on it, assuming “It’s an island with a beach, right?”[37] The site’s archive page still summarized Arrival as “The group arrives at Acapulco” right up to the Omnibus-era archive rebuild in May 2021.[38][39] The Omnibus rewrite, which Oliver’s commentary on Invitation calls a heavy job on that chapter alone, replaced it with the invented Silvershore Islands.[1]
- Veronica notes that the hotel bellboy was drawn with Ace Attorney’s Mike Meekins in mind.[7]
See also
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 Chapter 41: Invitation, page 1
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Chapter 42: Arrival, page 4
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Chapter 42: Arrival, page 21
- ↑ Chapter 45: Return, page 1
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 Chapter 42: Arrival, page 30
- ↑ Chapter 45: Return, page 9
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 Chapter 42: Arrival, page 6
- ↑ Chapter 42: Arrival, page 7
- ↑ Chapter 42: Arrival, page 24
- ↑ Chapter 43: Search and Rescue, page 27
- ↑ Chapter 43: Search and Rescue, page 3
- ↑ Chapter 43: Search and Rescue, page 4
- ↑ Chapter 43: Search and Rescue, page 16
- ↑ Chapter 42: Arrival, page 25
- ↑ 15.0 15.1 Chapter 42: Arrival, page 28
- ↑ Chapter 42: Arrival, page 4
- ↑ Chapter 42: Arrival, page 5
- ↑ Chapter 45: Return, page 16
- ↑ Chapter 42: Arrival, page 22
- ↑ Chapter 42: Arrival, page 26
- ↑ Chapter 43: Search and Rescue, page 10
- ↑ Chapter 43: Search and Rescue, page 15
- ↑ Chapter 43: Search and Rescue, page 22
- ↑ Chapter 44: Intervention, page 1
- ↑ Chapter 44: Intervention, page 5
- ↑ Chapter 44: Intervention, page 8
- ↑ Chapter 44: Intervention, page 14
- ↑ Chapter 45: Return, page 7
- ↑ Chapter 45: Return, page 8
- ↑ Chapter 45: Return, page 12
- ↑ Chapter 45: Return, page 13
- ↑ Chapter 47: Pick Me Up, page 3
- ↑ Chapter 67: Fade Away, page 2
- ↑ 34.0 34.1 Chapter 119: New Year’s Resolution, page 39
- ↑ Chapter 45: Return, page 1
- ↑ Chapter 43: Search and Rescue, page 20
- ↑ “Ask response on the Acapulco setting”. 2018-02-27.
- ↑ “BCB archive page before the Omnibus rebuild”. bittersweetcandybowl.com. Archived from the original on 2021-05-14.
- ↑ “BCB newspost on the archive transition”. bittersweetcandybowl.com. 2021-05-24. Archived from the original on 2021-07-20.