Boom.
But onto the topic at hand this week, in which case Mr. Knight goes all Inception on a case to find out what's plaguing his client. I should note that like most of Warren Ellis's Moon Knight books, this one is mostly driven by its imagery and less of its dialogue. It's all about showing over telling, and in his case, the stories flow masterfully through it, as the imagery really leaps out at you.
I'll speak on that more later. The cover is standard Vol. 5 stuff, with half of it showing a real cover image and the bottom half giving the book's title and the Marvel NOW! imprint evident on almost all Marvel books...now. The image at the top does feed into what we will be seeing in the dream but isn't anything spectacular. Of the covers thus far, it is the one with the most on it, even if most of it is just Moon Knight seemingly prying himself from a wall of mushrooms. If nothing else the cover is interesting, right?
We open with a small narration giving the brief history of Marc Spector. "He went completely insane and disappeared. This is what happened next." It's all about the simplicity, man.
We really open on a four panel page of a guy bored out of his mind working at some place called "Odinburger" until he comes across a familiar white car and suddenly seems surprised. As it turns out, Marc Spector/ Moon Knight/ Detective Mr. Knight is the one in the car waiting for him, reminding our friend, who is Dr. Skelton, that they have a meeting.
Skelton explains he and his mentor, Peter Altraune, work in the dream field. Mr. Knight explains that he once worked with Peter Altraune, but their experiments ultimately helped lead to his death. One particular case led to a man named Robert Markham to a mutation, one that happened before the surge of super-heroes, alluding to a long history of Moon Knight prior to this reboot. Good, we know that all of his history hasn't been erased in a company-wide reboot.
*cough* DC *cough*
Anyway, Mr. Knight asks Skelton if he can go to his place as Skelton is having issues with his patients going insane due to them having the same dream constantly recurring. Skelton wonders if Mr. Knight is well-enough qualified to which Moon Knight reminds us that he is a guardian of the night, being his "specialist subject." And thus on the next four-panel page we are given a nifty, almost dream-like look, as well as the title of the issue, "Sleep."
To point the artwork before it gets beautifully bizarre, it remains essentially the same as the previous issues, but I always think of this one as the highlight of Declan Shavley's artwork for the series. His ability to show Mr. Knight's expressions despite him wearing a mask that covers his face is remarkable. It's almost like it's all through his eyes. We never see his mouth or nose move, but we do see his eyes change and with that we can see his mood. When he is shocked his eyes widen insane, and when he is anger his eyes sharpen distinctly. He also draws the expressions on Skelton to a point, too, even if Skelton sort of looks like your John Smith character.
Back to the story, Skelton says that all of his patients have been moved away from the building so it's just him and Mr. Knight. Mr. Knight tells Skelton that he's got this, that he's going to stare whatever is causing the recurring dream straight in the face and tell him, "Get yo butt outta here, I am the Moon Knight."
At least, that's what I would say...
Anyway, Moon Knight has Khonshu put him to sleep in a completely empty, boarded room and he immediately falls into the trippiest dream of his life. Actually, wait, Marc Spector is literally insane, so, maybe not. But for regular people, yeah, this is a heck of a weird dream. He also manages to transform into his typical Moon Knight gear, which Shavley draws excellently and is my favorite rendition, I might add.
The world he falls into is where we get our cover image from, as the place is overgrown with teal/ blue mushrooms and overgrowth. For some reason, Ellis/Shavley really wanted to get the message across about mushrooms. Maybe they'd been playing Super Mario Bros. or something.
Like I said, this issue, like most of the others, is heavily driven by it's art. In fact, it's easy enough to say that it's driven by it. Does that mean it's devoid of story? Heck no. Without words, the team is able to tell a story about Moon Knight traversing a strange, new dream world as well as uncover clues as to why he is having this dream. The art merely helps reinforce this.
The dominant color, as the cover indicates, is blue, which allows for our nearly all-white (with black as his shadowed body) Moon Knight to stand out easily in the dream world, as you can see below.
What really works about the artwork here is how detailed it all is. There isn't a single piece of overgrowth that isn't drawn down to the last minute mushroom, allowing the dream world to come alive. Even the backdrop of space, at least what looks like space, is very detailed. However, it does not take away from the still excellent design of Moon Knight.
As Moon Knight traverses the area, he cuts through some of the overgrowth to find a spirit wandering, saying that he can't sleep. The man turns and reveals that he has mushrooms all up in his eyes. Moon Knight is sucked through a strange plant and spat out, where the same voiceover wonders if he, the man we just saw, is dead or alive, or if possibly he's just dreaming.
The dream world begins to fall apart the more that the man wonders if he is dead or alive. Strange corpses begin to fly overhead and white starts to become the dominant color until we get a giant splash page of what I presume to be a...head?
You know what, it almost looks like Mother Brain if that helps you any. Except it has crab claws-ish and a spinal cord that goes up to what looks like it could be a brain...for a mushroom? Like I said, this is a heck of a weird issue in terms of the world designs, and this one took the cake.
As anyone would after seeing that, Mr. Knight gets up immediately. Again, through the artwork, we can tell that he is seriously thrown off. Shadows are cast along his face and he squints his eyes, signalling anger to the reader in a way that does not require his actual expressions. Mr. Knight drags Skelton out of his office, despite Skelton believing him to have gone insane, but Mr. Knight shows him just what has been causing the dreams this entire time:
The decaying corpse of a man that Skelton apparently found off of Craigslist to use a test subject. He had a fungal infection in his brain that was killing him, and unknowing of what to do with a body he pretty much bought illegally, buried him under the boarding. Mr. Knight then gives one of the weirdest lines you'll ever hear anyone in comics say:
"You've been breathing in his dreams."
Yeah, you heard that right, folks. The experiments mixed with the fungal virus of the dead guy's brain caused the people of the building to start breathing in some kind of toxin that forced them to have the dreams that he had been having before he died. If that's not disturbing in the coolest of ways then I don't know what is.
This comic is great, one of my favorites. Why? Because so many comics now a days are overloaded with dialogue, whereas this one tells a fluid, cohesive (albeit a little short) story about digging into the mystery of the dreamstate. It relies heavily on showing rather than telling and does so masterfully through amazing artwork and an intriguing development at the climax of the story.
It's also a great comic for Moon Knight as those just getting into the character get the chance to see the real extent of his abilities. Up until this point we'd seen him do great action stunts and even hang out with Khonshu a little, but we hadn't seen him go into the mind of someone else like the power of Khonshu could grant him. Plus it was a good contrast to the insane mind that is Marc Spector's. Perhaps the reason he wasn't freaking out too much was because he's so used to being crazy. Just a thought.
All in all, though, a great book if you're looking for wonderful, odd art to look at and if you're looking for a killer character design (seriously, though, it's great, man!). Highly recommend it, as well as the rest of the Moon Knight vol. 5 series--which is still ongoing, by the way.
Next week, we change gears from studying Marvel books and take a trip to the past. Batman's Zero Year may have just ended, but Futures End month will be in high gear, so why not look back at the Zero Year of another character? That's right, folks, next week is "Zero Year: Green Arrow #25!"
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