Moon Knight 1

I had mixed feelings approaching this one. On the one hand, I love Bendis & Maleev’s run on Daredevil, and will therefore be keen to read anything else they do. On the other hand, Moon Knight. A very Batman-style superhero with more explicitly stated lunacy, often expressed in simpleminded split personality terms, and without an interesting history, strong villains or a supporting cast anyone cares about.

This rather reboots the character in a couple of ways. Secret identity Marc Spector has sold his mercenary adventures as a TV series, and is now a success in LA. We see him asked by Cap, Spidey and Wolverine to watch over LA, telling him that a lot of criminals seem to have moved West because NYC is so well policed by superheroes. We also get a first battle with such elements, specifically Mr Hyde, always a high-quality goon for a starting place of this sort, and this confrontation comes with suggestions of some sort of LA kingpin figure, and a scary consignment of goods.

Spoiler alert, I’m afraid – the thing I like best about this is something that also gives away the twist ending, though the cover on my copy (by Mark Texeira, as shown here; there are variants) hints at it. Bendis, despite his tendency to lengthy conversation, can be very economical at suggesting and evoking personality through the precision of his dialogue. The two conversations with the three Avengers (the second after her has found out some things) rang slightly oddly in that sense: much of it seemed rather exaggerated, particularly Wolverine’s violent comments. Then in the midst of the second conversation with them, we turn to the final page and Moon Knight is continuing the discussion, except he is alone. This strikes me as a far more entertaining and interesting take on his schizophrenia than the previous split personality approach, though now the gag has been revealed, some creativity will be needed in the future. In this case, the three other superheroes strike me as good choices for the mental roles, since their attitudes and characters are very different.

Maleev does what you expect: strong, realistic figures, plenty of texture and mood, perhaps not dynamic enough on action scenes but very good on the rest. The milieu and feel of this will undoubtedly be close enough to Daredevil that he strikes me as an excellent choice.

Overall I am keener on this than I expected, given my total apathy about the character. I guess I’d rather the team were doing something closer to the heart of the Marvel Universe, some character I already cared about more, but this still looks very promising and I will be back for more.