Starring in six different series over thirty years builds up quite a mountain (or pyramid, perhaps) of backstory and baggage for anyone looking to get started with the Fist of Khonshu. But “Lunatic” shows Lemire and Smallwood are making this new volume the Moon Knight book readers would be crazy not to jump onboard with.
Written by Jeff Lemire
Art by Greg Smallwood
Cover by Greg Smallwood
Collects Moon Knight (2016) #1-5.Marc Spector — a.k.a. Moon Knight/Jake Lockley/Steven Grant — has been fighting criminals and keeping New York City safe for years . . . or has he? When Marc wakes up in an insane asylum with no powers and a lifetime’s worth of medical records, all of his identities are called into question. He’s surrounded by faces: haughty doctor, hostile orderlies, vacant-eyed patients. But maybe those faces are just masks. Some might hide friends, others enemies. Or even worse: gods and monsters! Marc’s got to get out. The moon is high, the mask is on — but if he succeeds in escaping, will he find only a city of sand? And what will it mean when Marc Spector comes face-to-face with . . . Moon Knight?! Everything you know may be wrong — and you’d be insane not to find out for sure!
People consistently cite Moon Knight as Marvel’s answer to Batman. And while the two Knights have more than passing similarities with each other, the character Marc Spector feels as much or more akin to is Matt Murdock. They’re both explicitly religious (Catholic/Jewish), have complicated relationships with red-clad femme fatales (Elektra/Stained Glass Scarlet), and both recently took on business suits as costumes. But more than those, I consider both books to have a certain clout among comics creators, perhaps more than with the larger readership. In the same way Daredevil ‘gave’ us Frank Miller, Moon Knight gave us Bill Sienkiewicz. Everyone remembers his New Mutants run, but Sienkiewicz went from Neal Adams clone to Ralph Steadman/Bob Peak disciple by way of his work with Doug Moench on Moon Knight. It doesn’t get namechecked in reader lists, but that run has fans in professional circles, including Lemire and Smallwood.
From the solicit copy above, you can tell that Spector is in a bad way; waking up in a mental institution questioning your sanity can’t rank highly on anyone’s list of good times. Lemire uses this familiar trope to a few different ends that help new readers find their footing with “Moon Knight”. First off, there’s the inherent drama; is Marc Spector really crazy? Dressing up as the avatar of Egyptian vengeance clearly speaks to the answer being ‘no’, but that kind of insanity is par for the course in the 616. Is he REALLY crazy? That’s the question, and Lemire isn’t afraid to let the answer take its time in coming.
Second, it makes the stakes very personal very quickly. This isn’t beating up pursesnatchers or choosing which group of bickering superheroes you should stand with; its the fate of the world. His world. And readers can grab onto that personal story very easily.
Third, Spector’s questioning his new environment syncs up with the new readers trying to find their footing in the story. Lemire peppers “Lunatic” with Moench-era supporting cast and touchstones (Frenchie, Gena, Crawley, and Marlene), using Spector’s reconciling their new positions with his memories of their old roles to smooth over unwieldy-but-necessary exposition passages. It’s good to see the old crew again (for as long as we do) and Lemire makes theIr use here feel of a piece with the Moench run without being a slave to it.
Slavish devotion to that run, especially from an art standpoint, could be excused because of the Sienkiewicz connection; everyone chases after him when drawing Moon Knight. But while that has to be true from an intellectual standpoint, Greg Smallwood’s work on the book feels beholden to no one. Evocative, sure. A clear line from his predecessor Declan Shalvey’s take? Absolutely. But Smallwood takes it further, both in terms of page execution and, with the help of color artist Jordie Bellaire, texture.
It seems weird to praise the amount of nothing in this comics, but Smallwood/Bellaire’s fearlessness with white and negative space has to be mentioned. I always shudder when Moon Knight is mentioned as possibly being adapted into live-action because only in comics can you get so many of the visual tics making him special. The black-hole-of-a-face look from Sienkiewicz’s run has always been my personal dividing line between artists who draw Moon Knight and artists who GET Moon Knight. Shalvey & Bellaire’s white-on-white take from their work with Warren Ellis on the last run instantly became as big of a touchstone and as impossible to pull off in the real world. This commitment to pure white (Shalvey’s hero still had a little bit of Shalvey grit on the edges, whereas Smallwood’s looks polished to a blinding sheen at points) makes Moon Knight a hero you can’t take your eyes off of. Instead of a Dark Knight, he’s the White Knight questing in a world against him on all fronts. How is that not compelling?
Continued belowAnd if Smallwood & Bellaire weren’t enough, Lemire’s incorporation of Marc Spector’s multiple personalities (plus playing into the multiple phases of the moon motif) gives the book license to bring in some guest artists, like Wilfredo Torres, Francesco Francavilla, and James Stokoe. Let that sink in for a second . . . Marvel is publishing a Moon Knight book with art by James Stokoe.
“Moon Knight” is never going to be a massive success for Marvel. It’s just not the franchise-springboard-type of book like “Guardians of the Galaxy” or “Inhumans” (although you could make the case that “Inhumans” isn’t either . . .). But when it’s done right, the title and the character can give you a flavor and experience that you aren’t getting in “Batman” or “Daredevil”, especially these days. Smallwood and Lemire? They’re doing it right.
Score:: 8.5 – Smallwood & Lemire (et al.) give us a “Moon Knight” book to go crazy for, whether you’re an old fan or new reader.
