The wait is over! Moon Knight is here...like you've never seen him before! And we mean NEVER! The Eisner award-winning team of Bendis and Maleev tear into the mythos of Moon Knight with the same verve and derringdo they brought to Daredevil. A MARVELOUS reinterpretation of one of the most enigmatic characters in Marvel history starts right here!

Collecting: Moon Knight 1-7.
Shrinkwrapped, near mint 1st printing!

Publisher : Marvel
Language : English
Hardcover : 176 pages

I love the way Brian Michael Bendis is able to take under-used Marvel heroes and put a new spin on them. HIs twist on Marc Spector's schizophrenia is what really makes this book fun, for me. Moon Knight is, on the surface, a Barman rip-off. His mental illness is what makes him so potentially interesting and rounded as a character, and Bendis does a great job of putting a new spin on Moon Knight's multiple personalities. And the contrast of his "day job" against his night time vigilantism adds another layer of humor to what is already a fun and funny book. A definite must read for any Moon Knight or Bendis fan.

Since his creation back in the 70's, the character of Moon Knight has gone through a few different incarnations. First, he was just a gimmicky vigilante with crescent moon-shaped darts and Daredevil-esque fighting sticks. Once he was a little more fleshed-out, he was a former mercenary named Marc Spector who was mortally wounded at an archeological dig site, betrayed by the man he worked with when he had a crisis of conscience. Dying, he was draped in the shroud of the statue of the god Khonshu, and he came back to life to be Khonshu's avatar of vengeance. With that in mind, he travelled back to the States with his lover, the beautiful Marlene and his best friend and partner, Frenchie, set himself up as a wealthy playboy named Steven Grant, who financed the Moon Knight activities, and also as a lowly cabbie samed Jake Lockley, who kept his ear to the ground for crime on the street. As time went by, he started having an identity crisis as far as who he really was: Spector, the cold-blooded merc; Grant, the suave playboy; Lockley, the street-wise cabbie; or Moon Knight, the Fist of Khonshu.

The character had his own comic for a while in the 70's and early 80's, but sales fizzled out. Later on in the 80's, they tried it again with MOON KNIGHT: FIST OF KHONSHU. It didn't last. In the late 80's, they tried to revive interest again and made Moon Knight a member of the West Coast Avengers, and gave him his own series again, this time called MARC SPECTOR: MOON KNIGHT. This comic had a pretty good run into the early 90's, but it died again.

Back in 2005 though, crime novelist Charlie Huston and rising star artist David Finch teamed up to create a very new, very VERY dark interpretation of Moon Knight in a new self-titled series. Marc Spector was no longer a man merely confused by his multiple identities: he was consumed by them to the point of madness. He cut off almost all ties to his friends and lovers after he killed his mortal enemy and had his legs shattered. This introduced a gritty and more "controversial" restart to this character, with another major issue ending up being the sexuality of Frenchie going from straight to gay and Marlene seeing his madness first-hand. The book ended up going from dark to darker as Moon Knight became increasingly violent and increasingly insane, and eventually, that book fizzled as well after a few dozen issues. It also didn't help that long-time fans of the comic hated the direction it took. They felt that it wasn't true to the character and that the book was more about Marc being crazy than it was about Moon Knight.

All of these iterations of the character have started out cool, but ended up fizzling out mostly because Moon Knight was seen as Marvel's answer to Batman, but also because there just seemed to only be so much you could do with the character. Some characters are beloved because they're timeless, but some characters, like Moon Knight, are beloved because they only appear from time to time and only a few fans think the character is really cool.

Apparently, Brian Michael Bendis and Alex Maleev are fans of Moon Knight. While this comic started coming hot on the heels of Moon Knight's introduction into the line-up of the Secret Avengers, aka the black-ops Avengers, it's clear that this wasn't just a series to help set that return up. This was a series that was written and drawn by an extraordinary partnership to give us another different iteration of Moon Knight, and the book they've given us is pretty extraordinary too.

This time, Marc Spector has made camp in Los Angeles, and he's producing a hit TV show based on the adventures of his life. He's also still Moon Knight, and since the West Coast Avengers broke up, there has been no significant super-hero OR super-villain presence. Still, Moon Knight is determined to make a difference, and fortunately this time he's got three other Avengers on his side: Captain America, Spider-Man and Wolverine. Unfortunately for Spector, they're only in his head. Yep, it seems that Spector is still very much in the paranoid schizoprenic "Beautiful Mind" end of the pool. He hires a 'bodyguard', Buck, who actually happens to be a former agent of SHIELD. Buck becomes Marc's new Frenchie by helping him to develop tech based on the characteristics of Spider-Man, Cap and Wolverine. He wears gauntlets that give him web-shooters (that were reverse-engineered by SHIELD), Cap's hard-light shield, and... well, claws that unfortunately are not Adamantium. Moon Knight's first major case involves the head of an Ultron robot and its sale. Moon Knight tries to break up the sale but is thwarted by an unknown enemy. Soon, an underling of that enemy (referred to as The Kingpin of Los Angeles) called Snapdragon looks to kill Moon Knight. As we see Moon Knight in combat, he utilizes moves and techniques used by Cap, Spidey and Wolvie and even takes on the personality traits of those characters as he uses their techniques. Sometimes, this works, and sometimes... it doesn't.

Enter Echo, a creation of artist David Mack prior to Bendis' terrific run on DAREDEVIL. She's completely deaf, but she can read lips and has "photographic reflexes", which means anything she sees, she can replicate in her movements, and more specifically in her fighting ability. She was also once an Avenger under the identity of Ronin. For Spector, she acts as a partner, an equal, a foil and a potential love interest.

Bendis and Maleev have created comic magic before with their run on DAREDEVIL, as well as the creator-owned Icon series SCARLET, and here, they do the same thing with MOON KNIGHT. As opposed to Huston's approach to the character, Bendis embraces Spector's madness and turns it into a strength rather than a weakness. The voices in his head no longer truly haunt him but rather act as a Greek chorus of sorts and also act as guidance, either personally or in his "hero" mode. Echo and Buck are very cool characters to have alongside Moonie in this series. They're unique and they're strong. It also doesn't hurt at all that the book does make you laugh from time to time, especially when a lesser writer would find a way to mire it completely in darkness. Maleev's art is gorgeous here as always, and gives the reader enough of a sense that something is off-kilter, but still is dynamic enough to make regular comic readers happy.

The tragedy of this comic is that even this latest MOON KNIGHT title, with a superstar writer/artist team at the helm, is ending after issue #12. Get it while the getting's good.

Moon Knight is an upcoming American television miniseries created by Jeremy Slater for the streaming service Disney+, based on the Marvel Comics character of the same name. It is intended to be part of the television series in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) produced by Marvel Studios, sharing continuity with the films of the franchise. Slater serves as head writer with Mohamed Diab leading the directing team.

Oscar Isaac stars as Marc Spector / Moon Knight. The series was announced in August 2019, with Slater hired in November. Diab was hired to direct four episodes of the series in October 2020, with directing duo Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead joining the series in January 2021 to direct the other two; Isaac was confirmed to star at that time. Filming began in late April 2021 in Budapest, followed by production in Jordan, which concluded in early October before moving to Atlanta, Georgia.