Daily Breakdowns 021 - If Khonshu Fits...

Vengeance of the Moon Knight #1
Written by Gregg Hurwitz
Pencils by Jerome Opena
Colors by Dan Brown
Published by Marvel Comics. $3.99 USD

I've given Moon Knight some chances over the years. He's not the greatest super-hero character, probably not in my Top 50, but there's potential there. He's most often compared to Batman, as both Marc Spector and Bruce Wayne are millionaires who fight crime at night with cool gadgets and vehicles, but comparisons pretty much end there. Marc Spector was a killer, a mercenary, and he fights crime both for personal redemption and as the avatar of Egyptian god of vengeance, Khonshu. It was that mythical hooey that often got in the way for me, the ankh-shaped weapons and the like. Plus, let's face it, the guy has a white costume and he works at night. There's something crazy about that. But that leads us to his greatest appeal as a character--he's kind of crazy. Marc Spector is just one of his personalities. He's also been Wall Street wizard Steven Grant, as well as cabbie Jake Lockley. Honestly, I haven't read any Moon Knight-appearing comics in years and can't recall how much writers have really done with his multiple personalities. So it's always been the potential for me.

Little did I know, but as I was checking out of the Marvel Universe during the Civil War/Superhero Registration/Iron Man's A Tool storyline, Moon Knight went and finally became something close to an A-lister, carrying his own fairly well-received series for a couple years and having Norman Osborn and Tony Stark after him. The credits page of this issue breaks down some of this recent history, with espionage and faked deaths and Spector burying his psyche in the Jake Lockley personality. Sounds great. Only as I started reading the issue, it felt like I'd shown up at a party to find the host cleaning up, pouring half-finished drinks down the sink and empties into the recycling bin. The chip clip was put on the Doritos, and...well, you get my point.

Through narration, we are led to understand that Moon Knight is back in NYC, where the action is, and he's mentally stronger. With one, "Forget the Left Coast. Forget Mexico. Forget Hiding..." we know that writer Hurwitz isn't interested in prior takes on Moon Knight at all, no matter how recent, and he's going in another direction. As I didn't know what I'd missed, fine. Go for it. But with the grim wisecracks, manga-inspired motorcycle and confusing storytelling (wasn't someone just decapitated? No?), it doesn't really come off. After a daytime adventure as Moon Knight, Spector takes a shower, and then he's back on the street as Moon Knight again, telling the readers about his old, dead enemy, Bushman, and how he sees him in every crook he fights. Not only is the plotting haphazard but the self-aware, endlessly Spector narration works against the parts of the issue where we know he's still unstable because there's a tiny little gremlin or something berating him that only he can see. It doesn't help that the cliffhanger of the issue is that The Sentry shows up to challenge Moon Knight's new pretensions to heroism. I'm supposed to come back next issue for The Sentry?

Opena can draw his ass off and is obviously committed to putting in a lot of effort on the book. Panel by panel, it's nice to look at, even if the uninked computer penciling overemphasizes texture over weight and depth. The storytelling is, as I said, sometimes confusing, but more often just drab, and the more realistic padding and seams of the costume interfere with the elegant, balletic movement one would expect a martial-arts trained superhero to have.

As an enticement, the entirety of 1980's Moon Knight #1 by Doug Moench and Bill Sienkiewicz is also included, which is a detriment to Opena, as Sienkiewicz' Neal Adams-influenced art is more effective than Opena's work. It doesn't do Hurwitz a lot of favors, either, as Moench gets through a lot of story in the same number of pages, but at least it helps Hurwitz fill in new readers on the character of Marlene Alraune, who appears briefly in Hurwitz' story. There is some potential here, but Hurwitz does not really succeed in telling an opening story of modest ambition.