Tuesday, August 25, 2015

Marvel NOW! Moon Knight Review



Following it's big Secret Wars event going on that has effectively destroyed all things Marvel and is going to throw it right back at us, Marvel is going to put out dozens of brand new titles and #1s, even if the book was only on its fifth issue (i.e. Spider-Gwen, All-New Hawkeye, Howard the Duck). 

To do this, it cancelled everything. And as is usual, not all things get to come back, even if they were good and popular. I can't tell you why Moon Knight isn't getting his own series again, but I've done enough moping to various people about this so I've just learned to suck it up and rejoice that Jeff Lemire and Andrea Sorrentino are working on a book together again (Old Man Logan). 

So today, as this month draws to a close and Moon Knight won't have a new issue for the first time in seventeen months, we're going to take a look back at this most recent era for Marc Spector, and how it may be the best one yet. 

Certainly it's the most critically acclaimed one. The book was nominated for an Eisner, I believe, and was nominated on almost all other comic ballots, for it's first volume with Issues 1-6, which ran from incredible creative team Warren Ellis, Declan Shavley, and Jordie Bellaire--each of whom are now working with Image on Injection and it's also great! 

Even after this run, Brian Wood and Ron Ackins did a fantastic job telling a pretty good story about Marc and his relationship to Khonshu, through what we just had with Collin Bunn and Greg Smallwood (with Jordie Bellaire also on team) dealing with the church of Khonshu and Marc coming to grip with what what meant for him. 

I'll admit, I have more problems with the latter two runs because of how perfect the first arc is with Ellis and Shavley, but it's darn near perfect as well. Plus, each of them are different styles. Issues 1-6 tell an episodic journey for Marc but each dives us further and further into his insanity as he does this incredible tasks. Issues 7-12 take us down the dark path that is the relationship Marc has with Khonshu and how desperately the two need each other. Issues 13-17 rounds us out with more of the relationship, and does resemble "Shadowland" in some aspects that Marc feels jealousy, but we see Khonshu almost in his kindest role yet, with the final image of the series coming in him embracing Marc as he departs from the "church of Khonshu," a powerful image for fans of the character. 

I'd argue that the biggest selling point for the series is their relationship. It was the backbone of it all. One of Moon Knight's costumes sees him dressing up like Khonshu, but still in the white garb. Why? He feels empowered by one of the few people or beings left in his life to call friend. When he feels disconnected or betrayed by Khonshu, it's easy to see and his character visibly suffers because of this. Yet he's willing to jump out of a plane to get him back. Why? Well he has faith, and you can't really even call it misplaced faith as he serves Khonshu to the best of his ability and does it also on his own terms.

We see in this series that Khonshu is more understanding of Marc than in previous iterations. In the aforementioned "Shadowland," Khonshu demonstrated that he left Marc because he wasn't willing to kill people anymore and that he was settling down, thus allowing Randall to take over as ShadowKnight and only aided Moon Knight once he was willing to accept the madness. Here, though, we see that the madness has sort of saved him. 

He is the protector of nighttime travelers now. Through Khonshu, and through his madness, he is capable of doing things other people may see as ridiculous while still retaining the intelligence of Marc Spector as a person and mercenary. Without having to have different names, Marc Spector is still three completely different people. There's himself, Marc, who is conflicted over everything and seeks help when he can. Then there's Mr. Knight, the rational personality willing to look into these odd cases. Then there's the man himself, the Moon Knight, who is practically insane but is still a super hero at heart. Each of these three personalities comes into play at some point--mostly in Wood's run as he really examines Marc as a character to see what he's like at any extreme--and are done very well in all cases. 

Another big selling point? The situations Moon Knight finds himself in! He has to go into some sort of dream world. Then he has to scale a building to stop someone. Then he has to jump out a plane to test his faith, a literal leap of faith. He follows ghost footprints, fights a real-life Boogeyman. All this while barely being surprised and delivering classic lines along the way. "You're breathing in his dreams." "Night time traveler means travel, so leave me, now." 

Also, this is going to become a thing in future Moon Knight stories because of how awesome it is: why does he wear white, why not black? "I wear white so my enemies can see me coming."

So good 

The artwork is also consistently incredible. When he enters that dream world, everything is so vibrant, and so incredible. During a fight with men underground, it's made to look like blood is everywhere, but it's really only clay, and we see hints of that as the we build up to the fight. Moon Knight and Mr. Knight always stand out to bring the attention to them and what they are doing, which is the whole point of their character. Speaking of, all characters are drawn great and no characters look the same. 

The backgrounds are also well-done, even in smaller shots and detail is everywhere in this series. The third issue sees things take a mostly-white look to it but the issue stands out because of the great artistry done afterward to immediately pick up on that. Just, the artwork is so consistent. 

And that's what this book was: consistently incredible. Moon Knight saw a major spike in popularity with this book and its easy to see why. The book was well-regarded as one of Marvel's best and I hope anyone picking it up next can deliver just as well as this series has left it. Without a doubt I'd recommend this to anyone. It tells great stories, even some that feel like one-shots, through both its artwork and fantastic writing, and is probably soon going to be regarded as one of the best Moon Knight eras. If not, the best for the character. I wouldn't argue against it. 


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