Comic of the Week- Vengeance of the Moon Knight #1

Moon Knight has been an interesting character for me for some time now. I first took notice of him as a West Coast Avenger, though he did strike me a little bit too much of a cookie cutter superhero with generic street level powers but with a twist. Turning him violent and savage made me really dig him, especially since he’s doing it in the name of Khonshu, which was a very interesting take on the character.

In Vengeance of the Moon Knight #1, they take Marc Spector, give him his wealth back, clean him up, remove him from hiding and shine a whole new light on him. Do I like it? Well, meh.

Vengeance of the Moon Knight #1
Writer: Gregg Hurwitz
Artist: Jerome Opeña/ Dan Brown

Okay, this will be spoilery so turn back now if you haven’t read it yet.

Apart from being one of the coolest action figures I own in both 6″ and 3.75″ scales, Moon Knight’s character always stuck out in my mind. He kicked ass in Marvel Ultimate Alliance and also, his costume just fucking owns, hands down. I loved it when he was carving cresent moons into people’s foreheads, when he was manipulating the system to get registered, when Cap and Iron Man were saying they didn’t want him on either side of the Civil War. Hell, Cap recruited the Punisher, but he didn’t have the balls to recruit Moon Knight. What the hell does that tell you about how fucking hardcore the man is?

In Vengeance, they took MK from Mexico where he was able to get some thinking done and brought him back to New York, where he seems to have unfinished business. It seems like he’s positioning himself to be an actual hero. You know, those guys who don’t maim, kill or dismember baddies but just brings them to justice without aforementioned maiming, killing or dismemberment? Yeah, those guys. Hurwitz took MK and took the badassery away and put in chivalry, in a bad ass way. Wait… or did he?

Ooh, more internal conflict. Marc wants to go straight and narrow but there remains Khonshu, trying to push him back into the darkness, over the edge. That makes for an interesting character, although that plot’s been beaten to death already. I like how Marc could just be faking it to get Norman Osborne’s attention or if he’s really trying to go down the straight and narrow. I want to see if or when Khonshu pushes Marc back into hyperviolence, and it’ll be glorious if/when it happens.

Oh, and on a superficial note, Moon Knight’s costume gets a little upgrade. It’s the bastard child of the The Dark Knight’s batsuit and the familiar white duds.

He’s still rocking the hood, though. Oh, and he’s bullet-proof now, I guess.

I like it. It looks very technologically advanced, but it still holds that same mysticism that made Moon Knight’s original design look so good and visceral. I wonder how it would translate into action figure form.

I give this issue 3 and a half Moon Knight action figures out of five. It made me want to see the next issues and it gave the character new depth. Oh, and the ending rules. The reason why it didn’t get higher was because I didn’t get my violence fix with this issue of Moon Knight.