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| MOON KNIGHT No. 1, June 2016 |
Whilst many writers have readily captured the fact that
“Moon Knight is one of the most terrifying and inspiring heroes in the Marvel
Universe” Jeff Lemire’s narrative for this opening instalment to “Welcome To
New Egypt” also quite plainly spells out that the man behind the mask, Marc
Spector, is also dangerously “mentally ill.” Indeed this entire thirty-page
periodical, “which is extra-sized by the way”, focuses upon the incarceration
and dubiously brutal treatment of the “American rabbi’s wayward son” in an
institution he’s supposedly resided in “since you were twelve years old.”
Admittedly such delusional doubts as to what is real and
what isn’t have plagued the schizophrenic Fist of Khonshu before. But in his
attempt to pen “one of the very best Moon Knight stories ever”, the Joe Shuster
Award-winner must have persuaded some of his 60,938 strong audience that this time the unshaven rough-looking “masked vigilante” genuinely is a
total lunatic by depicting the imprisoned inmate stood watching “exclusive [television]
footage” of his supposed alter-ego “taking on his old nemesis, the sultry
Stained Glass Scarlet” some miles away in Hell’s Kitchen… Or there again, perhaps fellow inmate Bertrand Crawley is quite right when he warns the mystified
patient (and doubtless the occasional vacillating reader) not to “look at that
rubbish… [as] It will putrefy your brain. And it is all part of the Big Lie
anyway. Pure fabrication.”?
Fortunately despite spending the larger portion of his
narrative on raising so many questioning doubts as to Spector’s sanity, the
Ontario-born author also splendidly satisfies those fans of the crime-fighter
who just want to see the former mercenary thump bad people up. In fact the
bedsheet-wearing superhero’s brutal beating of the (supposedly) jackal-headed carers
Billy and Bobby is something the two interns have had coming their way since the
publication’s start when they give their distressed patient a bloody nose and “some
extra medicine to help him sleep.”
Greg Smallwood’s pencilling for “the book you’d be insane
to miss” is equally as impressive as his colleague’s storytelling, and it’s clearly
evident from the outstanding opening panels of the titular character stumbling
into an ancient Egyptian tomb during a starry night, just why Lemire thought
himself “lucky” to have the “mind-boggling” American artist on board. It certainly
seems true that whilst many “readers may have seen Greg Smallwood draw Moon
Knight before, they [will] have never seen anything like what he’s doing in
this new series.”
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| The 'Action Figure' variant cover art of "MOON KNIGHT" No. 1 by John Tyler Christopher |
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