Written by Brian Michael Bendis
Illustrated by Alex MaleevYou’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 fued? (Hint: pretty damn far!) From the Eisner award-winning team that brought you Daredevil, Halo, and Avengers.
At Multiversity we used to do a big draft to determine who would review what title. Now we essentially just pick and choose what we want, and usually we don’t overlap. Yet somehow, the one book I’ve been itching to put some commentary on always gets snatched up by one of my – erm, “wonderful co-workers.”
Not this week! Today I finally get to review Moon Knight by Bendis and Maleev, a title I have been anxious for since it was announced at last year’s NYCC.
Check behind the cut for some thoughts (and look for my new term for the book so you can start tweeting it and making it a trend).
I guess to start the review I should point out a few biases that I have. First of all, I love Moon Knight, absolutely unabashedly. The Huston/Finch title connected with me very strongly, and since that first issue I’ve been working my way around the world of Moon Knight as much as possible, never stopping. My second bias is that I am rather unshy about my love of Bendis and Maleev’s work in comics, with their run on Daredevil being an all time favorite and their new title Scarlet turning out quite well. Heck, I even have a Halo comic in my collection, so I guess that says something, right?
With that in mind, I don’t think it’s a huge shock that I’m loving Moon Knight right now. The book came right out of the gate swinging, and so far it hasn’t let down. This issue sees a short drop in pace as it shies away from what has been a fairly action heavy title so far, but in it Bendis gets a chance to do what he does best: talk. Some of the best issues of New Avengers see the characters sitting around and debating, and generally some of my favorite Bendis stories (in books like Alias, Ultimate Spidey, or even Jinx/Goldfish) are all exposition heavy. Now it’s Moon Knight’s turn to get a talky, because there is certainly a lot to talk about (what with him being crazy and having the head of Ultron in a box). So Bendis writes a dialogue heavy issue, expands the new LA-based universe of Moon Knight, and continues to solidify that corner of the Marvel U as the quiet migration from New York begins. Right on.
That’s when it hit me. Maybe it’s because I’ve been watching a lot of it since it’s on Netflix now, but this comic seems like Bendis’ own Sport’s Night. For those that don’t know, Sport’s Night was a highly underrated and criminally short show helmed by Aaron Sorkin that took place on the set of a sports talk show and wasn’t really about sports. (As the promos read, it is a sports show in the same way that Cheers was a show about beer.) What it was was a show about the characters, their lives and their interactions, and it was a fast paced and quickly spoken show that helped launch Sorkin’s career. It was a show full of character about characters and, in a way, that’s what Moon Knight is. It’s a bit of a warped comparison, but the connection is there regardless: Marc Spector is now a TV show producer who also happens to be schizophrenic, thus literally made up of characters. That and the dialogue is fast paced, witty, and sometimes absolutely irreverent to the issue at hand (the issue being the mysterious Ultron head in LA and the mysterious kingpin). So, it’s Sport’s Night!
It’s really apparent at the beginning. Spector calls Echo to ask her out on a pseudo-date/team-up, and the dialogue in turn ends up centering more on the fact that he’s asking her to get a hot dog rather than the fact that there is a great and immediate danger looming in the distance. The elements of Spector needing her help are still there, but not in the usual fashion – it’s pretty ouch about the hot dog here. For a while now Bendis has been writing such action-heavy titles with Siege being an event and Avengers/New Avengers both beginning with big action-packed arcs before getting sucked into Fear Itself. Even Ultimate Spider-Man was having it’s own event-esque arc. The days of Bendis writing books about superheroes that aren’t specifically about superheroes (Alias and the Pulse for example, or even Powers to a smaller extent) seemed done and over with. But now we have Moon Knight, and while it’s still an action heavy title (at least, for two issues worth it is) and definitely a superhero book, it’s still rather different from the modern Bendis norm. In fact, it’s going out of it’s way in the story to show that it’s distancing itself from all the other superhero books, and if this issue is any indication of what’s to come then there is absolutely no reason why everyone objectively sick of the hoopla of superhero comics shouldn’t be reading this instead.
Continued belowI don’t think that at this stage in either of their careers it makes sense to say that a title like this is going to make the career of Bendis or Maleev. The duo is so accomplished in the realm of comics that a phrase like that is pretty irrelevant. However, if they weren’t accomplished creators, I would happily throw that phrase around with a book like this. Maleev is flawless in this title; it’s an absolute beauty to behold. His line work and coloring are so intense, and the gritty quasi-pulpy nature of the book rings through on every page and in ever panel. Bendis tones it down a bit with the big sequences for this issue, but he does what we know and love him for, and as he does he’s on the top of his game. The dialogue reads quick and sharp like a razor, and we get an issue that fills in a few gaps of the back story without becoming excessively tedious. Yes, it’s a slower pace in the grand scheme, but not every issue can have Marc Spector blowing something up.
So there you have it. This issue of Moon Knight is the Sports Night of comics. Whether the whole series stays like that is debatable, but it’d be nice to see Bendis return to that vein of writing permanently. As it stands now, Moon Knight has consistently been the first book I read in any given week it comes out, which I guess isn’t saying much since it’s been three issues but even so. Again, I’m admittedly biased, but even with that element out of the way I can see this title sneaking up as one of Bendis best post-Siege works (I’d classify it as part of the Heroic Age, but I think that’s done with?). It’s toned down, streamlined, and a highly enjoyable read, and with Maleev on art detail it stands out as one of the most enjoyable books on the racks from Marvel.
Final Verdict: 9.0 – Buy
