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” #4Cover by Alex Maleev
Written by Brian Michael Bendis
Pencilled by Alex Maleev
Colored by Matthew Wilson
Lettered by VC’s Cory PetitWith the aid of his Avengers allies, Marc Spector is one step closer to finding out who the kingpin of the super-powered LA underworld is, but the kingpin is one step closer to finding out all of Moon Knight’s secrets.
After making their appearance at the end of last week’s issue, the Night Shift faceoff against Moon Knight and Echo. This fight sequence dominates the comic and showcases Maleev’s pencil work once again, with him demonstrating that even with more people involved in the fight, the fluidity he has shown in previous issues is unaffected. One moment that stands out in the sequence is with Dansen Macabre. She starts to hypnotise Moon Knight (and the Avengers in his head) and Maleev’s panel captures the sense of Moon Knight freezing up while the fight continues around him whilst also making her ribbon seem to continue rippling. This almost slow-motion page in the comic is then suddenly broken away from with Echo shooting Macabre.
Beyond this moment though, there’s a lack of impact in the fight. The Night Shift haven’t been established as a major threat to our heroes, despite their numbers advantage, nor have they really been established as characters. It’s only Tick Tock and Dansen Macabre that are named and so the action was reduced because while I could see Moon Knight and Echo fighting different members of the team, I didn’t know who, or what their abilities, were. When a fight scene has a large portion of the issue dedicated to it, I’d expect it to have a greater emotional weight to it, but this just didn’t.
The second disappointing aspect of this issue was the lack of progression in the overall story. Of course, I’m aware that last week’s issue focused predominately on flashbacks and so the larger Mystery Power plotline didn’t really progress then either, but it did flesh out Marc Spector’s current set-up. This week’s issue gets incredibly close to Echo revealing a new detail about the club she was undercover in and then Tick Tock and the rest of the Night Shift arrive with the fight enduring for the rest of the issue. Perhaps the Night Shift being so easily dealt with will force the kingpin to take care of things themselves, but I expect Snapdragon will be sent after them personally before that happens.
On the positive side of things, this issue does tell us smaller details about the reality/non-reality of Marc Spector’s world. I’ve questioned in previous issues whether Marc is aware of the Avengers only being in his head and this issue confirms that he is and that he has control over them too. Interestingly, the trio of Avengers read differently in this issue and that’s a result of the lettering that Petit uses for them. In previous issues, their voices have been lettered in black and white speech bubbles and they blend in with the other characters in the book. In this issue, each character’s speech bubble is color coded to match their costume and this subtle difference gives each character an even greater sense of their differing personalities and opinions. It may only have been changed to make sure the reader is aware of them not being real, especially when we’ve just seen the real Spider-Man and Wolverine at the Avengers Mansion, but, either way, I really liked the greater establishment of their voices.
This issue’s cliffhanger ending leaves Moon Knight and Echo surrounded by police and I look forward to seeing how they escape although I expect Moon Knight will have something up his sleeve. Talking of sleeves, Moon Knight was wielding his Wolverine claws again this week and it continued to be awesome, although, with the spider-web sticks seen in issue #2 absent, there’s still no answer as to whether or not he has a shield like Cap. I must get an answer by the end of the series. I must!
Overall – “Moon Knight” #4 is an entertaining entry into the series, but it was disappointing not to learn anymore about the kingpin or his organisation.
