Previously in Shadowland: Moon Knight: Jake Lockley, one of the splintered personalities of Marc Spector, was hitting it big in life. He just got hitched, was gonna be a daddy, and Daredevil became possessed! Wait...okay yeah, that Daredevil thing is bad. BUT through the power of plot, Jake found a way to defeat The Beast within Daredevil: the Sapphire Crescent. However, Marc Spector's brother, Randall, has returned to town as Shadow Knight, bent on killing Moon Knight and retrieving the Crescent because, um...he was told to? AND NOW THE FINALE!
Things have sort of taken a bit of a nosedive in the story since the beginning, haven't they? I tried to simplify things as much as possible for you in that intro, but there are still many story beats that I didn't want to touch on and make things overly complicated (see: Marlene's near-death experience, Shadow Knight being used by the Profile, and Jake going to fight Daredevil at the start of last issue). The tie-in with Shadowland has become far more relevant now than it was at the start of the last issue and while this final issue does deal more with the personalities of Marc Spector beginning to collide, it's still a choppy mess of a narrative.
It would also appear that some story bits were just sort of forgotten about, or at least have far less weight to them. Most of this concerns Marlene, but Khonshu is also far less dire than he was in the previous two issues. The dude was ravenous for blood, driving Jake Lockley insane by invading his mind and trying to get him to kill anything that moved. In this issue, Khonshu seems to show compassion for Daredevil and does have that urge for Jake to kill, but he's not as obtrusive about it.
Sadly for this review I couldn't get scans for the issue, so I'll make do with some examples for the artwork and story. I do, thankfully, have a copy of the cover or us to examine at the start.
It's probably the worst of the bunch, just filling the page with Moon Knight and Shadow Knight's heads. For some reason Shadow Knight has red eyes, unlike in the comic where they're meant to be white (although he shoots out blue blasts/ lightning bolts, so it's easy to get him mixed up with Moon Knight). Sure Shadow Knight looks gruesome and all that, but it's nothing that we haven't seen before. At least the other covers were cool and had Shadow Knight or Moon Knight perched in an epic pose on a rooftop. Those are unoriginal, but still look decent given the artwork.
Normally I wouldn't touch on the opening scrawl to get the readers caught up, but I'm going to dedicate a few moments to it. Because it's kind of weird and a bit wrong. First, it mentions that Daredevil is ruling Hell's Kitchen with an iron fist. I know that this is just a figure of speech, but when there's a character in your universe, in this story I believe, it just automatically makes me think that this guy
is the one that Daredevil is using to rule with.
It also mentions that Randall uses energy blasts out of his eyes to attack. While we have seen that, we have also seen them shred through people and are always looking like lightning bolts. I don't think "blast" is something so appropriate. Iron Man uses "blasts," but they look nothing like what Shadow Knight is able to blink out of his face.
The comic begins right where Issue 2 left off, as Moon Knight and Shadow Knight are squaring off. And immediately something feels off, and it has almost everything to do with the dialogue.
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| Again: what part of those look like "blasts" to you? They're lightning bolts! |
Moon Knight does get a goofy line in at the end when he calls for Shadow Knight rather than Randall specifically. I'm not sure why he does that, since for the rest of the comic he refers to him specifically as Rand. Weird.
Ah, but now we get a stranger part. Jake returns home and Marlene is there to comfort him. What? How? She was in the hospitable, in death's door basically, the last time we saw her and now she's up and walking around just fine? Not to mention that she has blonde hair rather than brown and seems to be in a pretty chipper mood after just having her unborn child killed and she was brutalized by her brother-in-law. Not sure why you're smiling, Marlene, if that's even who you are.
Jake ditches her and heads to Mardi Gras, where Khonshu says that the Sapphire Crescent is located. Apparently it was moved away from his staff and was bought by someone that is at the festival. It makes me wonder if Khonshu said to Marc, "Yeah the thing's in Mardi Gras, okay? You know, the place where we go to party all the time?" I feel like Khonshu would party there. Seems like a festive kind of god.
We get more of that over-realistic artwork in the scene where Jake arrives to get the Crescent from a fortune teller. I know it's probably used to emphasize how weird she looks, or at the very least just her age, but it's also just flat out weird. Are we supposed to be creeped out by this woman? It seems that way, until Jake pays her off. The scene itself is weird as well, hinting at the return of Marc Spector by the end of the miniseries.
This entry into Mardi Gras highlights a negative throughout this issue, which is that the artist, Bong Dazo, just draws some weird faces. In the fight scenes they're pretty okay but when the characters aren't moving the faces are often very round and disproportionate, either with foreheads that are too big, eyes that are too separated, or things of that nature. The artwork never quite gelled for me throughout this miniseries and it quite honestly seems like they gave up with this last issue.
Anyway Randall arrives and Jake finally learns that the Profile is behind all of this and tries to convince Randall that the Profile is playing, but Randall won't listen and begins firing into the crowd. Of course when he does so Jake runs away to change into Moon Knight, I suppose to get into the persona, but he was holding up just fine against Randall as Jake Lockley and it put far less lives at stake.
Khonshu, all the while, is egging Moon Knight on to finally dig deep and do what it takes to permanently take down Randall. Randall begins to murder innocent civilians, for some reason (his target, and only concern, is Moon Knight, and he hasn't had much other motivation to kill other than to draw Moon Knight out, so what's he doing now?) and one of them forces Moon Knight to remember how he found Marlene (again, apparently blonde now) almost dying at home. This is an incredibly jarring moment as it almost seems as if Marlene is actually there, but of course, she isn't.
Also, another thing: where did Randall get the crescent darts? Up until this point, it was Moon Knight who used them while Randall used his eye beams. Has he had those all along? Why didn't he use them in previous engagements?
Moon Knight manages to push Randall away from the crowd and near the water, where threatens to blow himself up. Yes, apparently he had tons of dynamite strapped to him, despite Jake punching him before and probably being able to notice "huh something weird and cylindrical is sticking out of his chest, wonder what that is?" Also where did he get all that dynamite? It's fitting for the character to do this for "his god," whom he thinks is Khonshu, but why wouldn't he just blow himself before this?
Randall said before that his ultimate goal was to kill Moon Knight and break the Sapphire Crescent. Well, when Jake was walking away with the Crescent and then returned to get it, why didn't Randall just blow himself up when Moon Knight retrieved it during their fight? It's the same situation that they're in now and guarantees both of his objectives are reached. Was he really waiting for Moon Knight to run out of darts like he said? Randall, despite being crazy and all that, knows his brother, and is well-aware that his brother always has something up his sleeve in a fight between the two. Instinct should've kicked in.
And for Moon Knight, it does, as he throws his last dart and kills his brother, dropping him into the waters. Khonshu stands with a smile on his face while Moon Knight sulks over the loss of his brother. Sadly, there is a great disconnect. Moon Knight and Shadow Knight only really interacted in this issue, and so there wasn't enough time for us to really feel any former bond between them besides what was shown in flashbacks in the first issue. Sure it makes sense for Moon Knight to be sad about it, but for the reader, Shadow Knight ruined Moon Knight's life and then died, and Moon Knight is sad about his brother's death.
It's a problem with this issue as a whole. There's never any time taken for Jake/ Moon Knight to sit on the fact that his brother is, right now, his greatest enemy. Instead, because of the hunt for the Sapphire Crescent, we're thrust right back into the Shadowland material so that Jake can retrieve a MacGuffin and not think about Randall at all.
Thus, the story comes to a close as the Khonshu statue is reconstitued at the Grant Manor, and Marlene calls out to Jake Lockley, only for him to turn around and reveal that Jake Lockley is gone and that Marc Spector has finally returned.
So...did killing his brother bring back Marc? Did accepting Khonshu bring back Marc? Did Khonshu ever really leave? Was Marc always still a part of the subconscious? Did Khonshu always want to bring back Marc Spector? Why is Marc Spector drawn like a total maniac on the final page? Why did Jake Lockley die? How did Jake Lockley die?
This issue is easily the weakest of the bunch, ending the miniseries on a serious whimper. The art is probably the worst of the three issues, there is no time dedicated to the hero and villain besides the fight at the end, we don't actually get to see what happens with the Sapphire Crescent subplot, and Marc Spector randomly returns at the end. You know: the main character of the entire Moon Knight mythology. Imagine if Peter Parker returned in some tie-in miniseries to an event of Superior Spider-Man. Or if Steve Rogers came back in a lame crossover eve--
Oh wait that happened.
But you get what I mean!!
Shadowland: Moon Knight is really only a good series if you want to follow the character of Moon Knight, as it brings an end to the Jake Lockley story until Jeff Lemire would revive the character starting with his run, and even then as only a part of Marc's subconscious, still. As it stands on it's own, it hardly makes any sense and is bogged down by being a tie-in. This series, like I've said from the beginning, would've been exponentially better off as it's own small run, but instead, we got much more of a mess. Such a shame.
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