Moon Knight is one of those odd Marvel characters that has been looking to define his niche for years. When Deadpool showed up and stole the spotlight from a lot of what had made Moon Knight stand out, Marvel started looking elsewhere. There have been a lot of recent attempts to find it.
Well, look no further. I've been a fan of Jeff Lemire for a while now, so it's no surprise that he's the one who figured it out. The gimmick about Moon Knight is that he's probably insane. Lemire takes that pretty seriously.
In these opening issues, Lemire has the hero, in his most basic guise, Marc Spector, locked in an asylum, because his Moon Knight adventures are one massive delusion. The Egyptian god Khonshu, however, suggests to him that madness may not be a handicap, but an asset, because it leaves Marc in the unique position of interceding in a pending war with the gods that have lost their ability to directly interact with humans, except Seth, who of course is planning nothing good.
It's kind of like the Marvel version of Warren Ellis's Supreme: Blue Rose, which similarly took advantage of a muddled mythology to produce something great. The art is in the best Marvel tradition of allowing low-profile characters to have an indy look (this time courtesy of Greg Smallwood). There's every indication that Lemire has been granted all the leeway he needs to give Moon Knight the story he's always deserved.
I'm assuming all the supporting characters who aide Marc will be familiar to long-time Moon Knight readers, of which I am not. I've been a dabbler. This is a character who even got the Brian Michael Bendis treatment, and even that didn't leave an impression on fans. So in its desperation, Marvel turned to Lemire, perhaps one of the few writers who could have finally figured out that the answer was there all along. Lemire is fearless. Of course he'd put Marc in an asylum.
Which makes it all the more rewarding when, in later issues, he's once again running around in that neat white sport suit variant that makes him look like the deranged Spirit. Perfect. Is all this in Marc's head? Probably not. But it could be. That's why you have a writer like Jeff Lemire taking the helm. Because he just might be crazy enough to give Marc Spector the opposite of a fairy tale ending...
In the end is his brain going to be fried by electroshock therapy and then a big Indian smothers him and breaks out by breaking a window with a water fountain?
ReplyDeleteYes, good One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest reference.
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