Well I have, to my own surprise, kept reading American comics. Though at a fairly sedate pace. Even more surprising I actually kept writing about it as well. I haven’t strayed from Moon Knight yet. Though when I catch up with the current run I am definitely going back to find out why there are so many fucking vampires everywhere.
Part of the reason I’m reading them slowly is that I don’t want to get too far ahead which would disincentivise me from writing up my thoughts on them. I’ve made myself type up at least 500 words per night to try and keep the pace solid. It takes some effort not to just repeat the same things again and again. I’ve tried to move away from the page by page blow by blow approach I used previously in this (very long) series. I felt it was a bit boring to read. I’ve tried to go with much shorter full issue summaries and just calling out the bits I feel were relevant. Hopefully it makes for a more interesting read. If it’s still boring? Well tough shit, offer it up as penance. Alternately let me know and I’ll try something else (or just secretly resent you).
Moon Knight #8 – 18
So as I mentioned towards the end of the last article I had finished Devil’s Reign and was champing at the bit to get back to the mainline Moon Knight comic and storyline. But what I failed to mention the last time was that while I had the most recent extended Moon Knight run recommended to me I pulled the actual reading list from one of the many available online. This list said that the next thing to read was a four issue limited series called Moon Knight: Black, White and Red. I lasted one issue. It was dogshit. The series thing was that it was only three colours, the ones mentioned in the title. Each issue had three short stories by different authors and artists. Most of which had nothing to do with current day Marc Spector. For example the first one was set in the far distant future and was about some future Moon Knight. If I’m being kind I’d say the art style was experimental. If I was accurately relaying my experience of reading it I would say that it was visually incomprehensible most of the time. It actively pissed me off reading the first issue. I tried, I swear I tried, to get through the second issue but I just wasn’t strong enough. So I dropped it and returned to Moon Knight #8.
Chronologically this issue took place which Marc Spector was incarcerated during the Devil’s Reign event. The issue is largely stand alone and features Dr. Badr aka Hunter’s Moon aka the Left Fist of Khonshu. As a character I find him quite one dimensional but this issue was really enjoyable. It’s a murder mystery where he’s hunting down the perpetrator of killings that match the MO of a dead killer who had become an urban legend. Ultimately he finds out that it is literally an urban legend that is behind the killing. The story/urban legend had become a minor god of sorts. Hunter’s Moon had to call in backup from big daddy Khonshu and the dialogue strongly suggested that all the gods are actually living stories which is a nice idea. I know given the nature of the Marvel universe it can only every be true for this authors run of this one character. But its still a neat idea.
While I’m at it, in the last article I mentioned that Hunter’s Moon’s introduction laid the groundwork for a neat little payoff. But I then forgot to point out what the payoff was. Well it turns out that when one becomes a Fist of Khonshu they are supposed to get the knowledge of how to fight and all of the rites of Khonshu and shit from the collected memories of all the previous Fists. It’s called the Chorus. Marc never got this, possibly because his brain was already like Swiss cheeses before he got resurrected by Khonshu. I am a big fan of collective memories being passed down. It would have been better if they had put a bit of a spin on it, some novelty. But even just the basic concept is one I like.
We are back with the main Moon Knight in the protagonists seat in issue #9. I generally enjoyed this issue but I feel it suffered from being in a weekly comic. This happens quite a bit with serialised mediums. Plots aren’t given time to ripen and develop so the speed of events often feels jarring. It feels sort of like a summary of itself or like a child telling a story. It’s a lot of “and then” plot development. This issues was about a haunted house that was eating people. Well a haunted building. Marc went to investigate, got out after a week or so (or one two page montage if you nasty). He then got shit talked by his therapist, paid a visit to Wong and went back into the house. Which turns out to be the House of Shadows for the well informed True Believers out there. He convinces the house to work with him by giving it some hokey bullshit. I actually like the idea but to loop back to my earlier complaint, it felt like it happened too fast. Anyhow the house agrees and it becomes the new Midnight Mission. Which some may recall was currently a burned out wreck.
The majority of issue #10 was a conversation with his therapist interspersed with him fighting an escaped mental patient/HYDRA super killer who as it turns out was also a patient of his therapist and who insisted she had been replaced. The tension between the two events was built well but ultimately felt empty. We knew his therapist was kidnapped so it was easy to believe something was up. Turns out the therapist was replaced by Waxman who is basically Batman’s Clayface at home. Only he has a penchant for serial murder. Maybe Clayface does as well? I can’t recall and I couldn’t be arsed looking it up. MK unsurprisingly defeats Waxman and seals him in an enclosed steel ball and threatens to seal him in the foundations of a building unless he talks. Which he does. But Moon Knight seals him in concrete anyway. I have very little time for hard men taking the law into their own hands. But, and I know its emotional manipulation at work, I don’t really mind when it’s immortal super powered serial killers.
Moon Knight as a series is really all over the place for me and in some ways issues #11 captures both the highs and the lows of the series. The first third or so is them rescuing Moon Knight’s therapist who Zodiac (fuck I hate that guy) handed over to Jigsaw who Moon Knight kicked the shit out of earlier and did so again. At that point Marc gets a phone call from Zodiac who is outside the Midnight Mission. We then get some boring shit about Zodiac saying that Moon Knight is now too PC for him so he’s going to kill Reese and Soldier to bring back the old Moon Knight. Oh and he also has about a dozen naff looking unnamed maybe superpowered henchmen with him. They also have Hunters Moon captured, because that guys purpose is largely to get beaten up. I fuck hate this shit. It’s typical superhero nonsense in the worst fucking way. Zodiac is just so incredibly fucking boring. He’s like a bad pastiche of Nolan’s Joker which I personally found incredibly over-rated and Zodiac doesn’t have the goodwill earned off the back of his actors death. The fact they doubled down on bag head by giving him some guys that look like their Christian name is mook doesn’t help.
Anyhow Marc’s all in a quandary about how he cant get back in time so he calls on Daddy Khonshu to help him. Khonshu lets him take a shortcut through a tomb realm where all the old Moon Knights go when they die for real. He takes Tygra with him and they race through the entrance. I love this stuff. It’s weird and cool and it feels fresh. It’s stuff like this that makes me stick with the comic. But its such a vivid contrast to boring dross like Zodiac that its almost disorienting. Back at the mission Soldier dresses up as Mr Knight to try and bluff Zodiac to buy some time. Ah yes, probably should have mentioned that Zodiac was threatening that unless Reese and Soldier come out (because the Midnight Mission is living house now) he will drag out and murder civilians so time is a big factor.
Soldier’s cunning ruse goes poorly at the start of issues #12 as Zodiac puts three in his chest. Resse jumps in front to try and save him but sadly that’s ineffective do the laws of big bullets and physics. Meanwhile Marc and Tygra are sprinting through a tomb dimension being chases by the undead remains of all the old Moon Knights (considering that Khonshus thing is resurrecting his Fists I do have some questions here). Zodiac is shitting on about some bollocks when he gets punched right in the face by Moon Knight appearing from nowhere. Something I very much enjoyed. The undead Moon Knights came out of the tomb dimension as well and a classic super hero melee ensues. Zodiac mentions he cant feel pain. Which honestly felt like a weird irrelevant non sequitur. Marc beats up Zodiac then Reese loses it and vamps out and is gonna murder Zodiac but Marc tells her to hold his beer he’ll kill him. Then just at the glorious moment of Zodiac’s death…Steven Grant one of Marc’s other personalities takes over and decides to spare Zodiac.
I was…displeased. Moon Knight has killed a lot of people. Across the many runs, including this one, several of whom did significantly less fucked up shit than Zodiac so it makes no sense to me why this caused him to dissociate. It felt incredibly forced. I’m not a fan of psycho protagonists but by this stage we’ve had to listen to him talk about how bad and crazy he is every fucking issue and then just a whole lot of nothing. I am also biased because I ahte Zodiac and just want him gone (not that death is ever that in a superhero comic.)
So I assumed issue #13 would be continuing on with the Zodiac, dissociative identity disorder bollocks. I wasn’t looking forward to. But I was largely wrong. The majority of the issue is an extended conversation between Taskmaster and “Tutor” who is the vampire at head of the multi level marketing vampire cult we saw a brief glance of in issues #1. I really like Taskmaster as villain. He has no delusions of grandeur. He’s generally just a guy doing a job. In this case Tutor has brought him in as an advisor because Moon Knight is making big in-roads into his organisation. You see these very violent in-roads interspersed with Taskmaster giving advice. This was a great sequence overall. Cool ideas about vampirism. Really good dialogue from Taskmaster. Purposeful violence from Moon Knight. First half an issue was great. Then we get Marc whinging to his therapist and Tygra and Reese chatting. I didn’t notice it when I first read it, or rather it didn’t stay with me. But Tygra is reading the paper and offhand mentions that Midnight Man seems to be back. A subtle foreshadowing for later. Well subtle if you’re forgetful. Anyway, turns out Solider isn’t dead. He’s a vampire now.
After that revelation it switches back to Tutor and Taskmaster and it turns out Tutor doesn’t give a shit about his minions being killed. He’s raging because Moon Knight is making new vampires and he’s supposed to be Big Daddy V of New York. He has a big deal coming up and anyone shaking his dominance would fuck it up. He offers Taskmaster a lot of money to kill Moon Knight. But Taskmaster has spent fifteen or so pages saying its a bad idea and turns it down. He then goes and gives Moon Knight a heads up. The issue ends with Tutor talking to two assassins he hired. Nemean and Grand Mal and they are introduced in the standard comic book fashion that makes you think you should know who they are and that they are badass. Only I’ve never fucking heard of them. That’s not necessarily unusual I haven’t read Marvel in about twenty years. So out of curiosity I googled them. This was their first fucking introduction! So literally nobody knows who the fuck they are. What a weird way to introduce entirely new characters.
Well two things that were obviously coming came in this chapter (ooh matron). Marc’s dissociative identity disorder and the two assassins trying to kill him. An extended conversation between Moon Knights alternate personalities is interspersed with a fight against Nemean and Grand Mal. It wasn’t terrible but I didn’t enjoy it. I find Marc’s other two personalities boring as fuck. They are very reminiscent of tropes from silver age superhero comics or classic pulp detectives. Steven Grant is a rich urbane playboy. Bruce Wayne you say? Well yeah, basically. Jake Lockley is a salt of the earth New York cabby who knows everyone. Neither interests me. The fight against the assassins goes well, until it doesnt and he gets the shit beat out of him. He self actualises and realises all his alters have to work together at the same time Tygra and Hunters Moon show up to save him and it ends with him unconscious and near dead. But at least he self actualised and for all of us isn’t meaninful healthy psychological growth the real victory? No? My mistake.
All of chapter #15 uses Marc talking about his DID with his therapist and others as a framing device. Interspersed with these conversations we have his two other personas, Stephen Grant and Jake Lockley getting back out into the world and using their connections to dig up information on the Structure (the name for the multi level marketing vampire organisations) as well as Nemean and Grand Mal. It honestly wasn’t bad. Which I found a little surprising. The fact he sticks on a fake moustached when he’s Jake Lockley is an odd mix of hokey and tragic. But by and large the chapter was solid. We find out about Nemean and Grand Mal’s super powers, which aren’t relevant so I wont mention them. Much more importantly we also find out that there is a vampire presence in Chinatown that oppose the Structure and that they are afraid off. Marc plans to go with the always popular “enemy of my enemy approach”.
I really liked issue #16. I’ll be honest I find it hard to even try and bother with some kind of ersatz objectivity when reviewing something like comics (or anything if I’m honest). I thought this chapter was very good. A large part of that is because it was full of things I like. I think that’s fine and generally how we quantify thing. But some people do like to get themselves tied in knots trying to find some objective scaffolding to hang their subjective opinions on. Well, enough of the sermon. The chapter starts with Moon Knight and his two vampire buddies (Reese and Soldier) heading into Chinatown while Hunter’s Moon (well known vampire hater) heads out to get Nemean and Grand Mal. The gang quickly meets the head of the Chinatown vampires, Lady Yulan. There’s the usual back and forth but it turns out Lady Yulan is a vampire that was created through alchemy by “The Dread Immortal Yi Yang.” I love shit like this. I’m a big fan of pulp stuff like this especially when it pulls in elements of xianxia.
But immortals creating vampires is particularly appealing to me. There is a tabletop RPG called Night’s Black Agents which to put it overly succinctly is gritty modern day thriller-esque intelligence operatives vs vampires. It’s a fun game that if I’m honest I’ve never had great success running. But conceptually I love it. In the game there are no preset vampires in terms of powers or origins. The gamemaster creates their own. Which is what I did for a campaign that never got off the ground. My origin for vampires was that Xu Fu on his second journey to find the secret of immortality for Emperor Qin Shi Huang actually found Penglai Immortal Island and well bad things ensued and the world got vampires. So you can see how the idea of vampires created by an Immortal would appeal to me.
The other relevant things we find out is that she wants to kill Tutor because he bootstrapped himself into vampirism by kidnapping one of Yulan’s brides and using her blood to do it. He’s threatening Yulan, who is on the run from her immortal creator, that if she messes with him he’ll reveal her location. There was some pretty believable stuff here about how Yulan tried to keep herself sane and such. Moon Knight also finds out that Tutor is after him because he thinks he’s making more vampires.
As an aside we get told how Soldier became a vampire. I assumed it was Reese turning him. But no. It is very stupid sounding. When Reese jumped in front of him a chunk of her heart got driven into his by the bullet and that changed him. I’ll be honest this seems needlessly convoluted. It also raises a lot of questions about how the fuck vampirism works in the Marvel universe. But that question was drowned up by the rush of ones to come.
Turns out Tutor doesn’t want his vampire making powers challenged because he’s making a bid for international recognition. What the fuck does that mean you may ask. Well they kindly tell us. He wants recognition from the vampire nations in Europe, Africa, Asia and South America. Most importantly he want’s recognition from the only sovereign vampire nation in history the vampire nation of Chernobyl ruled by Dracula…what the fuck? I know its been nearly two decades since I read Marvel comics but there are vampire nations? There’s one that’s out loud and proud and ruled by Dracula (and in Chernobyl?) Is this a new thing that happened or just something that I was impressively ignorant of? It could well be the alter as I never read Blade so maybe vampire nations were a thing in it? So yeah Tutors big plan is to sell his vampire MLM structure to all the other vampire bigwigs. Turns out he’s having a big meeting that Moon Knight plans to crash.
Ah yes, those readers who’s eyes haven’t glazed over will remember Hunters Moon was doing stuff this issue. What he was doing was getting the shit beaten out of him by Nemean and Grand Mal and a big group of Structure vampire goons. To give him is props he kills all of them but ends up with lots of crowbars and screwdrivers stuck in him and then Nemean breaks his neck killing him. As I’ve alluded to before it really feels like Hunters Moon exists to get beaten up.
Unsurprisingly issue #17 starts out with Marc and Tygra finding Hunters Moon dead on a rooftop. I didn’t think about it at the time. But now I can’t help but wonder, how did they find him? It’s just a random rooftop in New York after all. Me move straight to Moon Knight fighting Nemean and Grand Mal – I also wonder how he found them. The fight has some cool visuals but honestly I found it anticlimactic. Moon Knight simply drags them both into the House of Shadows and it fucks their minds. Oh and Hunters Moon is back from the dead, free to live his best life as an exemplary punching bag.
After that it moves on to the next night and Tutor is holding his big vampire expo for all the vampire nations. Which we get the names of, the Sasabonsam, the Jiangshi, the Vetalas and the Cihuateteo. We also have three naff looking fellows from the vampire nation of Chernobyl. Tutors speech gets interrupted by Nemean and Grand Mal getting fucked through the skylight (weird thing to have in a vampire meeting I feel) and Mr Knight and Tygra walking through the front door looking snazzy.
I found this issue was just sort of a nothing issue. It was workmanlike. Simply there to move the narrative along. I couldn’t give a shit about Nemean and Grand Mal. Maybe they have a rich inner life but they were introduced a few chapters ago. All they did was spout villain lines, beat people up and get beaten up by people. Their powers aren’t particularly amazing. Nemean has an unbreakable hide like the Nemean lion. He’s super fast, strong and tough. Oh and he’s an expert at pankration – because he’s Greek, get it? Grand Mal is a skilled assassin with seizure inducing gauntlets, hence the moniker.
Issue 18 is basically the big finale of the Structure plotline. It was very enjoyable. A full half of the issue is verbal sparring between Marc and Tutor in a room full of vampire dignitaries before the fighting starts. It really wasn’t much of a fight as Moon Knight uses a satisfyingly clever and cool way to fuck all the vampires just as the fighting starts. Reese and Soldier are off infiltrating the building to set this up and Hunters Moon shows up when the violence begins. Shockingly he doesn’t get the shit beaten out of him. This was a really satisfying conclusion to the arc. Tutor was never really about violence. He was about adapting new ideas of social predation to an ancient version of it. I really do enjoy lateral thinking like that. It’s not quite a deconstruction of the classic vampire tropes but it is a refreshing spin on them. It’s funny, I don’t really have a lot more to say on this issue other than it was a satisfying finale to a plot that’s been running since the first issue of this run. It also makes me want to go and find out why there are vampires fucking everywhere in the modern day Marvel setting. The issue was marred slightly by two pages at the end where we see a new therapist, Doctor Robert Plesko, talking to Zodiac and giving him his mask back (which you will remember is literally a cloth bag or pillow case.) I had no idea this guy was an established character and thought he was some shady fuck up to no good. Well, as long time Moon Knight fans would know, and anyone who reads the next issue will know, he’s a very old long-time ally of Marc’s from back when Marc wasn’t Moon Knight but just an ex-CIA merc.
In some ways this run peaked for me here. I am, as of writing this, up on issue #26 and the next ten or so issues aren’t bad but they really didn’t grab my attention like al the vampire stuff. I suppose that’s not too surprising as I really love vampire fiction and have for decades now. Which is a weird contrast from my childhood and teen years when vampires were the one supernatural thing that really scared the shit out of me. I remember reading Dracula when I was 11 or 12 out in thr shed (its very big, think very big garage not garden shack) and realising it got dark I had to call for my mother to escort my back to the house. I’m not sure why I thought she had vampire vanquishing powers, but sure that’s how mammys are right?
If I was a character in the right comic that’s when the vampires would have attacked and I’d find out my mother was a badass vampire slayer. But that feels like a very physically active career so not really my bag. even worse if it was a Buffy situation and my little sister got super powers and I got fuck all. Oh, that would be my super villain origin story I guess. Or my tragic Renfield origin story. Maybe its better that my mother wasnt a hereditary vampire slayer (as far as I know)