Moon Knight Primer Part 6

Moon Knight (1998) #1-4, Moon Knight: High Strangeness (1999) #1-4, Moon Knight (2006) #1-30, Annual #1, Moon Knight: Silent Knight

Prologue

Part I

Part II

Part III

Part IV

Part V

So, after the abysmal horror that was Moon Knight vol. 2? Time to get into a roller coaster of emotions. Because we’re going to get back into high points with great stories… and then back into something so dark and so edgy that even the rest of the dark-edgy-grimdark comics of the 2000 were telling Moon Knight to take a chill pill.

I wish so much that I was kidding, this is the era that claims that Frank “I will kill every single person who so much as jaywalks in front of me” Castle is better balanced than the Moon System that includes at least TWO people who don’t kill.

This era is, by the way, when we start having the very problematic idea that Moon Knight IS a violent dangerous vigilante BECAUSE of his mental health issues. It starts with Moon Knight (2006) and won’t be completely shaken off ever again, although I have hopes for Comic/TV synergy in a future run. 

I would love to put the two minis in their own sidebar, but they’re too short. And I will be honest, while High Strangeness WAS written by Moon Knight creator Doug Moench… it wasn’t as strong As Volume 3 so… putting them all alone without the horrible contrast of the 2006 series would very,  very, very unfair. So… I took the psych damage and got through the full 2006 series for you. But seriously, avoid the 2006 series like the plague. Marc Spector: Moon Knight was better and THAT was the series that gave us “Marc Spector, Half Demon” and Super powered Frenchie.

Anyway, let’s start high with Volume 3 which is, in my opinion, one of the best minis to start with Moon Knight if the Lemire run is too esoteric for you (It also got in my hands in the weirdest way possible, as a gift from a couple at a sushi place because it arrived to their house by mistake and they couldn’t find the original owner, so since they knew me as a costumer of said sushi place, and knew I liked comics… well, it was a good match. Sent by Khonshu, if you ask me).

We start where we left: Marc dead, buried and his friends in mourning. As a poor archeologist finds a Set statue in Egypt, we see Marc being resurrected while he has a vision of himself being dug out from his grave by Stained Glass Scarlet. The resurrection itself should dispel any doubts of Khonshu’s real status, by the way: Marlene and Frenchie are at the mansion, since Marlene had a “feeling” and looking at the statue which EXPLODES to reveal a naked Marc. Marlene kisses him, and he comes back to life, at the same time the statue repairs itself.

HOW do anyone who knows the System still doubts Khonshu’s godly status and The System as his avatar? Beats me.

Anyway, during the vision that brings them back to life, Moon Knight meets again with Marc, Steven and Jake, telling him he must become all of them again, which brings back the question of who the hell is fronting at the time, and that will be a question that will plague us forever, I’m afraid.  But hey, after 30 issues of not seeing our boys? It’s good to see them all back.

By the way, we’re reminded YET AGAIN, that Marc is the mercenary who killed for money, while Steven and Jake have their hands clean.

Also, despite the fact that we spent 30 issues with Marc fronting and no mention of the other guys? Marlene IMMEDIATELY calls him Steven and will keep calling him Steven at all opportunities during this mini. Marc notices, of course, because by now he knows she only cares about the rich guy and not the others. Still, is funny that Marc is trying to find ANY explanation to him being back from the death that is not Khonshu, while Marlene is now a firm believer in the god -and will remain so until the next mini. Because continuity is a thing that doesn’t exist in Moon Knight. But seriously, she is so happy that when Marc wants to give her credit for bringing him back to life with a kiss? She corrects him and tells him that Khonshu did it, and she keeps calling him Steven because that “Feels right”, and thank goodness Marc sort of agrees as he decides to take Steven’s name -not sure if that means Steven begins fronting as to be fair, Moench was never that good differentiating Steven and Marc. BUT he also renews Jake Lockely’s cabby license, and tells Marlene to put all the money from Spectorcorp back into Grant’s accounts as “Spector was never suited for the millionaire life” and it’s better if everyone thinks Marc is dead anyway. So in one issue we’re back to the status quo of the original series: Marc fronts whenever Moon Knight is needed, Steven during pretty much all day activities at his mansion and next issue he’ll hire Samuels and Nedda too so the team is back together, and Jake patrols the streets as a cabby while spending time with Gena and Crawley who are ALSO back.  Hell, even Detective Flint is back!

Unfortunately, this brings Khonshu god of Vengance back too, as no one ever calls him God of Justice, which is a serious loss if you ask me (And we will feel the consequences of that in 2006)

Oh, Black Spectre, Bushman and Morpheus are also back, as Set’s followers, but hey, this is Moon Knight and it’s actually a surprise Randall didn’t come back too just to make a complete “Set”. Ok, that was a bad pun, sorry.

Thing is, Black Spectre claims a lot, both in strange dreams that Steven has and in reality, that Moon Knight really has no faith in Khonshu (Which… uh, WHY? I mean, the guy has resurrected you three times, System, and you can ask about… five people, including Clint, about how real he is. Hell, he could call Tygra or Damion Hellstorm, since Mockingbird is dead at the moment, or Dr. Strange, who must remember about the ancient priest of Khonshu who was ALSO inside the System’s body! By now, They should have a full scrapbook of “all the times Khonshu was so real, we could’ve had tea together”), while Black Spectre still has faith in Set, so he is stronger and will defeat Moon Knight.

But of course, Moon Knight defeats him at the end and yep, the mini just restores the Status Quo of Volume 1 completely, even making Marlene go back to “But I just want you to be Steven” just in time for the end.

High Strangeness, also called High Strangers, is still written by Moench but it’s… weird. For one, we still have Steven insisting Marc is dead, but Frenchie refuses to listen and keeps calling him Marc. Marlene has gotten off the Praise Khonshu train, and is back to saying SHE brought Steven back from Hell and just because of that, she should completely ignore the need from Justice.

The plot of the whole mini is weird as hell, there are tulpas, aliens and Loch Ness monsters, as well as people trying to kill Marc Spector when everyone thinks Marc Spector is dead to begin with,  and in issue three, we learn that Moon Knight, Steven Grant and Marc Spector don’t believe in Aliens.

I am going to repeat that: Two (three?) of the members of the System, who have BEEN Avengers and BEEN to space, FOUGHT Aliens in a world with a thousand moon that made them stronger than Hulk, and live in the world where GALACTUS is a known entity, where the Kree-Skull war is a thing, who fought an evil doppleganger made with a cosmic stone and saw said evil doppleganger kill his multiverse alters including a Little Mermaid one and 60’s Batman parody who had a sidekick named Moonboy, who ALSO fought in the Infinity War and the Infinity Crusade against THANOS and Adam Warlock? Doesn’t believe in Aliens.  Now THAT is madness.

(We don’t get to know if Jake shares this idiotic idea, thank Khonshu, because right now my Man Jake is the only sane person in that brain)

It doesn’t help that the aliens in these mini are false. And yeah, this is what makes it feel sometimes that Moon Knight is not actually part of the Marvel Universe.

Still, when it ends, we are still in our usual status quo.

This won’t last as we head into the very first series that portrays Moon Knight as a violent, ruthless killer who gets off in the pain of his victims, who wants to kill rather than understand or redeem his enemies. In short, the series where the writer wanted to be writing Punisher, but had to settle for ruining Moon Knight.

It is also around the time of one of the worst crossovers ever of the Marvel Universe until then, the Civil War, where heroes had to register with the government to keep working, then The Initiative, the Secret Invasion (although Moon Knight sat that one out) and Dark Reign.  So.. yeah, they wanted to OUT Dark-grim the Dark-grim era of comics. There are a couple of things that are introduced in this series that would be worth keeping, but in the whole? If it’s retconned to oblivion, we wouldn’t be missing much. In fact, I think we would be winning.

Because you see, Charlie Huston, the main writer who plotted what would be the whole tone for the volume? Is a crime-thriller-noir writer (I am not going to even TRY his books after what I read here) and one of those who honestly believes that idiotic ableist lie that neurodivergent people are violent and dangerous in nature, or at least it seems so from the way he writes not only the System, but also how people react to them.

Or, in short, an ableist hack who gave us the current status of “The whole MU thinks that Moon Knight is a crazed psycho who can’t be trusted”

And once again, I refuse to let you suffer issue by issue so…  summary.

The “good”: Once again we have canon confirmation that it is MARC the one who kills, not Steven and most definitely not Jake. In fact, while we never see Steven front in this 30 issues series (I don’t doubt he’d be a ball of anguish in the back of their mind, even if he’s not as soft as TV Steven), we do see Jake and when Jake fronts? Moon Knight not only doesn’t kill, he also doesn’t MAIM, which… Marc does. A LOT.  In fact, we have a tiny sliver of a great moment when, under hypnosis, Jake fronts, then Steven fronts, and they’re the most amiable people ever, even if Steven seems to be under the impression that Jake is his chauffer.

Frenchie is outed as gay (Or maybe bisexual. As always, comics don’t SAY the words, but Frenchie says a lot of his women were beards), now has a restaurant where he is the chef -despite we had never seen him cooking- and has completely lost his legs from the knee down but is now wearing prosthetics. He tells Marc that he has a boyfriend, Rob, who happens to be a physical therapist and a waiter at the restaurant, and that he was always in love with Marc, which is why he kept fighting at his side.  And that Marlene knew, but they never fought because they both wanted Marc alive (I could say it was because Frenchie loved Marc, while Marlene loved Steven, which, well, makes everything a bit better except no one loves Jake. Poor Jake).

Oh, and we have canon proof that Jake, of all the alters, speaks Spanish. Mexican Spanish specifically as at the end of the run he flees to Mexico and lives there as Jake for at LEAST the whole Secret War Skull Invasion.

And finally… it’s canon that Spiderman calls Moon Knight “Moony” In his book even, not just in Spider-man.

Now, the bad.

Yes. Those four things were the only rescuable things of the whole run, and the second one has issues.

But let’s do this in order. In the very beginning of the run, like, the three first pages, we have hope this is going to work because we see a happy Marc -if a little too violent- fighting for what’s right, and completely devoted to Khonshu (To the point that he calls his armor ‘his priest garb’), but three pages later, he’s in a wheelchair, cursing Khonshu and throwing everyone who loves him away. We find out that he ended up in the wheelchair in yet another fight with Bushman, where he went and killed Bushman AGAIN, then skinned his face -and later kept it as a souvenir, and once tried it on as a mask, which led to Marlene leaving AGAIN (for like, the fifth time JUST in this 30 issues series and the only time it was actually justified)- but in the process he was so badly hurt he lost the use of his legs, and is addicted to pain pills that Crawley produced for him, while Frenchie and Marlene left him but Samuels and Needa stubbornly stay.

Oh, and once again… the guy who skinned Bushman? MARC. You know, Mr. “Not as bad as Jake”.

And here gets even worse because at some point, Marc prays to Khonshu to beg him to restore his legs after a sacrifice -more on that later- and… Khonshu turns first into Peter Arandule Sr., then into Bushman himself. And… Bushman starts speaking as if HE was Khonshu, and… stays. Seriously. This series makes Khonshu FINALLY speak to Marc, but THIS Khonshu is a horrible racist caricature of a French-african man without a face, who wants Marc to kill everyone. Yes, not just the guilty, not just those who have harmed the travelers of the night… EVERYONE. And he STAYS. This is the Khonshu Marc will have as a “Jimmy cricket” for the remainder of the series. Not Steven, not Jake, but this thing. No wonder people think Khonshu is a bad god! So.. I am going to call him Fake-shu even if it sounds like a bad pokemon, because seriously, it’s offensive. Also, there’s no actual canon proof that it’s not Marc hallucinating given that Marc has no powers in this series, and the writer seems to think that neurodivergency means schizophrenia and schizophrenia means “violent serial killer”.  Oh, and the comic also claims, via the super secret cabal of villains who wants to destroy Moon Knight, that Khonshu is actually an alien, not an egypcian god, because it is not as if at the SAME TIME this was happening, Aasgard was floating over Kansas.

Remember when I said that Frenchie being out and proud would be ruined? Well, it is because the ONLY reason he and Rob are there? Are so that they can get gay bashed to get back at Marc. That’s it. Even if when in narrative at some point Rob becomes Marc’s physical therapist for that knee thing? It’s just so a villain can hurt him so that Marc and Frenchie will be at odds. And before that? It’s Frenchie in the hospital, because he was gaybashed, to get Marc to his lowest point. And AFTER that? Oh, they get gaybashed again! It’s like a clock. Every four issues or so? Time to hate crime the gays.

We also get told that one of Gena’s kids got killed in “the war”, and because neither Marc nor Jake went to his funeral? They’re no longer welcome at her diner. (This series makes the ONLY time Marc goes to the diner. Everywhere else? It’s always Jake, fake mustache included)

Marlene gets treated even worse than in Dixon’s run because she goes from having a job at a museum as an Egyptologist with a new boyfriend and telling Marc they’re completely over to… sleeping with Marc at her boyfriend’s back and only running when Marc’s mental health really goes haywire (the “I put on Bushman’s dissected skin on my face” incident)

But what really made my blood boil? Is that in this run for some reason that absolutely no one ever explains on panel every single A-List hero and even some of the D-list villains? Know Marc is “Crazy” and has multiple personalities even if they only seem to know about Marc and Steven. In fact, during Civil War neither side wants him and Captain America, Frigging Steve Rogers? Goes to Marc’s house to tell him DIRECTLY that HE is worse than The Punisher.

That Frank deserves jail, but Marc deserves “a straight jacket”. Because of COURSE Captain America would be ableist against the neurodivergent!

And the narrative keeps spinning, with people, and Fake-shu who refuses to go away, keep telling Marc that he is a Sadist, that he enjoys causing pain, that that is the only reason why he took the Moon Knight mantle.

Not only that, in previous runs, the System was very careful about whom they trusted with that particular secret. Marc, hell, even Khonshu in his Hawkeye fangirl era, made a point of NOT telling the avengers he was a System. But here, everyone knows, and this comes to the point that, in order to get registered because he doesn’t want to be chased by everyone in NY? Tony Stark forces him to take a psych eval (Confident that he will fail it and thus, not get registered).

I want to point out that at the time? The Thunderbolts were registered and allowed to be heroes. Led by Norman “Green Goblin” Osborn, who is not the poster child for mental health in ANY universe, and with Venom (Mac Gargan, aka. The Scorpion) during the time he ACTUALLY ATE BRAINS, and with Bullseye, the man who killed Elektra, as an agent. Those guys? Perfectly ok with a license. But we can’t leave Marc alone, no. He is marking evildoers with a crescent moon in the forehead (Ok, so THAT is also extreme, but not as extreme as eating brains)

Anyway, he gets the worst doctor ever, as he starts the session by telling Marc point blank that everyone knows he’s crazy.  That is when we get to see Steven and Jake for like, three seconds, btw. But Marc says there that they’re not real. He manages to get a registration approval, but only because he pretends to be Khonshu speaking through Marc, using some intel on the doctor to make him believe. And yes, he is pretending because at the time, the only Khonshu we have on deck is Fake-shu and Fake-shu can’t talk to anyone except the System (Because he does speak to Jake later)

Now, Marc IS quite unhinged on the violence department in this series. Because he not only carves crescent moons on people’s heads, he also tears people’s ears out with his teeth, kills Black Spectre in front of the cameras by throwing him off a building, I am pretty sure he decapitated someone at some point and yeah, you will never sell to me the idea that “Jake is the violent one”, even if this? This is not our Marc either. This is a hack writer trying to prove to Marvel that they can write Punisher.

Punisher, btw, seems to be the only person in the whole Marvel Universe who didn’t got the message that Moon Knight has DiD, as when he finally meets Moon Knight when Jake is fronting, all he can think of is that “there’s something different about Spector”.

After that killing, by the way, Marc goes back to “I hate you Khonshu” and tells the Fake-shu that he’s done being his avatar. Then, he has to fake his death in a fight against Bullseye and the Thunderbolts (That includes, of course, a gang beating Frenchie and Rob in their restaurant because we had gone 5 issues without a hate crime) and Marc Spector dies… but Frenchie, who has been zigzagging on his loyalty to Marc ALL run? Points out that even if Marc dies? Jake still lives.  

In Mexico.  Where he fights a drug cartel, whose leader spouts some of the most offensive shit about my country ever, despite being Mexican himself, a pair of hired assassins who are masked wrestlers named Zapata (AFTER our GREATEST Revolutionary hero. NO assassin in Mexico would call themselves Zapata, trust me), and a horrible cannibalistic monster dressed like a Mayan (when Mayans weren’t even CLOSE to the US border, nor were they a violent tribe), who calls itself Tlaloclli after the AZTEC god of Rain.  Who didn’t take human sacrifices so wouldn’t be interested in maiming anyone, yeah, not even a drug cartel. Once THAT is solved, and with some money from the now destroyed cartel, Jake finds out about the Skull invasion and how Osborn is now beloved by everyone and decides to return to the USA to get his good name back. And the series ends. Thank Real Khonshu.

Finally, Moon Knight: Silent Knight is a Christmas one shot. Narrated by Marlene. About how she is expecting that, for a Christmas miracle, her JEWISH boyfriend stops being a superhero with Did. (It doesn’t happen, her, again, JEWISH boyfriend is busy avenging the death of a Mall Santa. No mention at ALL about the fact that, you know, he wouldn’t be celebrating Christmas with his girlfriend, but instead Hanukkah. And usually Marvel is on point remembering these things)

Oh, one thing to remember again: While this series REALLY cements Moon Knight as a terrible violent hero in the eyes of readers and the MU civilians?  The second Jake fronts? Moon Knight stops with the extra violence. He was just working to leave people unconscious, nothing extra serious like the beginning of this terrible run. He doesn’t even carve a crescent on the foreheads of his enemies, a thing that he picked up in this run because “edge”. So, despite EVERYTHING, Jake is STILL not a violent psycho.

Where the hell did that come from? Well, we’re going to see that pretty soon, but I dunno if it will be in Part 7, because right now, we have to get to the Vengeance of the Moon Knight, the Secret Avengers and, Finally, the origin of the Mr. Knight persona! (As in Superhero identity, not Alter. At least, I think Mr. Knight is not an Alter, but then, Moon Knight SOMETIMES is treated as an Alter independent of Jake, Marc and Steven, so I still wonder how many alters are in the Moon System according to the writers at any given time)