In recent years, Moon Knight has been a recurring character at Marvel Comics, with different iterations of the character being frequent but short-lived. The most recent run of the series, by Max Bemis and Jacen Burrows, ended last October and the title has yet to be relaunched. For the next 12 weeks, in this summer plagued by a Moon Knight drought, I’ll be bringing you my thoughts on Bendis and Maleev’s run as part of our Summer Comics Binge.
“Moon Knight” #3Cover by Alex Maleev
Written by Brian Michael Bendis
Pencilled by Alex Maleev
Colored by Matthew Wilson
Lettered by VC’s Cory PetitYou’ve seen what insanity the new Moon Knight can do, but how is he doing it? Find out here! Plus, who is the kingpin of L.A.? And why do all the other criminals cower at his feet? And just how far is Moon Knight willing to take his new blood feud?
Bendis and Maleev have hit a hot streak with this week’s issue of “Moon Knight” (let’s hope that I haven’t jinxed it now) with the flashbacks making a triumphant return. Each issue so far has felt unique and shown different elements of Moon Knight and Marc Spector, which is suitable given the complex relationships with the different personalities of the character.
This week’s issue focuses on Marc Spector and we get a better understanding of how he’s operating as Moon Knight. ‘Legend of the Khonshu’ is revealed to only be an elaborate front for Marc, and presumably a helpful source of income to fuel his costumed escapades. Within the structure of the show, Marc has employed an ex-S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, Buck Lime, to work as a weapon and armory consultant, but spend most of his time assisting him with the aforementioned costumed escapades. It’s the relationship between Marc and Buck that this issue focuses on in its flashback to three months prior.
Buck Lime is a pretty serious individual and that much is made clear early on in the flashback. When Marc starts asking about his time at S.H.I.E.L.D., he’s quick to leave, which is understandable. From the outside, Marc just seems like a fancy rich guy wasting Buck’s time, trying to find out classified information, but he soon realises that Marc isn’t messing around and is going to be paying him incredibly well for his work. After agreeing to work with him, things take a suitably crazy twist. Bullseye turns up at Buck’s house to interrogate him, asking him about Marc Spector’s real identity. This sequence is good fun, even if I did see the twist coming a mile off and question the likelihood of a trained S.H.I.E.L.D. agent cracking quite so easily. I guess Marc is just that crazy.
The second new character involved with ‘Legend of the Khonshu’ is Amy, the producer (?) who, to our knowledge, has not been as thoroughly vetted as Buck. She questions the authenticity of the show twice in quick succession, the second time relating to the necessity for a consultant on the show if the show is genuinely “kinda-sorta” based on Marc’s past. Her intrigue may never amount to anything more in the series, but given the contrasting levels of trust with Amy and Buck from Marc, I wouldn’t be surprised if Amy figures out Marc’s alter ego soon, if she hasn’t already.
One of the major factors in this issue having such a different feel to the previous two is the amount of humour in it. The Bullseye/Spector sequence was amusing, and in fact, most of the scenes with Buck and Marc had some witty remarks. It even had some interesting twists on the usual dramatic irony that comes with superheroes, with Buck directly asking Marc if he was Captain America.
With the story continuing to feel unique each week, Maleev also mimics the same level of energy into the page layouts of the book, with almost all of them being unrepeated. This continued dynamism in the panels doesn’t make it difficult to read either with Maleev’s pencils subtly directing the flow of action aided by the Cory Petit’s placement of speech bubbles. Wilson’s colors provided a small but significant, literal highlight, with flashes of yellow in amongst the grey-blue panels jolting the action into life.
The issue closes with an update on Snapdragon, who has enlisted the Night Shift in her quest to take down Moon Knight. With their involvement, Moon Knight is clearly outnumbered and how he deals with them will be very interesting. Echo will be teaming up with him, but his changing personalities could complicate any major teamwork from taking place. Hopefully, any teamwork will see the Captain America personality manifest so that we can all find out if Moon Knight has his own shield. He must do, right?
Overall, “Moon Knight” #3 continues the hot streak that Bendis, Maleev, Wilson and Petit have started with the first two issues by delving deeper into Marc Spector’s life.
