Moon Knight [2016] #7 - Marvel Comics

MOON KNIGHT No. 7, December 2016

It is extremely doubtful that many of this comic’s 33,866 readers were expecting Issue Seven of “Moon Knight” to contain a narrative featuring (Captain) Marc Spector’s futuristic exploits battling a ravenous horde of Space Wolves, rather than the ‘grounded’ crime-fighting exploits of the Fist of Khonshu as originally envisaged by his co-creators Doug Moench and Don Perlin. In fact, considering Greg Smallwood’s infuriatingly misleading cover illustration of Jack Russell's’ hairy alter ego, the vast majority of this book’s audience were in all likelihood anticipating some sort of homage to the former West Coast Avenger’s first ever appearance within the pages of “Werewolf By Night”.

Sadly however, this twenty-page periodical contains absolutely no such reverence to the ex-mercenary’s mid-Seventies debut whatsoever and instead, somewhat surreally, contains a truly bizarre science fiction-based adventure which seems far closer to something found within a George Lucas “Star Wars” motion picture than the psychologically thrilling series previously promised by “author extraordinaire” Jeff Lemire. Certainly, the Canadian cartoonist’s incredulous storyline concerning the titular character fighting the lycanthrope General Lupinar on the moon’s surface seems a million miles away from the wonderfully atmospheric penmanship of the comic’s previous tale “Welcome To New Egypt”; even if it does provide ample evidence of the writer “using Marc’s illness against him to question his very identity.”

Admittedly, the large-scale space battle between “Humanity’s last hope” and their “Wolfkind” foe provides plenty of intense action, as well as gives Spector’s sidekick Jean-Paul “Frenchie” DuChamp a copious amount of ‘screen-time’. But that doesn’t excuse the preposterousness of a plot which depicts the schizophrenic pilot of “Moon Knight One” falling before the claws and fangs of an animalistic extra-terrestrial…  

Equally as choppy as the Joe Schuster Award-winner’s script for “Incarnations” is this publication’s interior breakdowns. Drawn by James Stokoe and the immeasurably talented Francesco Francavilla, the two artists’ differing styles are so remarkably opposed to one another that any bibliophile able to somehow immerse themselves in Lemire’s patchy proceedings will immediately be jarred out of any such reverie. Indeed, Stokoe’s detailed, yet exceedingly amateurish-looking panels with googly eyed-figures and fanzine pencilling, makes it extremely hard to take any of this comic’s content seriously.

Writer: Jeff Lemire, and Artists: Francesco Francavilla & James Stokoe