Moon Knight [2016] #11 - Marvel Comics

MOON KNIGHT No. 11, April 2017

If Jeff Lemire's choppy, ‘flashback-obsessed’ plot to Issue Eleven of “Moon Knight” is anything to go by then it's kind of hard to believe Editor Jake Thomas' boast at the end of the twenty-page periodical that this title was "getting a lot of love” in the New York City-based publisher’s ‘Best of 2016’ lists. In fact, considering just how arguably bad the Canadian cartoonist's illogical ramblings for this second instalment of the “Death And Birth” story-arc are, it’s difficult to understand just why even a single reader would consider the ‘Fist of Khonshu’ as being their “favourite ongoing series.” 

For starters, there simply appears to be absolutely no rhyme nor reason as to just why the Ontario-born writer wantonly flits from Marc Spector attending his father’s funeral, to him standing naked in an Iraqi minefield, and then finishing up fist-fighting in Africa. True, the “Marvel Worldwide” strap-line for this particular edition is that the titular character’s “survival depends on answers in his past!” But at no point do any of the ‘retconned’ “events that brought him to this moment” actually do anything more than simply suggest that Doug Moench’s co-creation was guided by Khonshu from his earliest days; “Yes, my son. Come… come to me. You are the one who would do anything to be cured. You are the one who will give his soul to me.”

Indeed, considering that the comic’s main narrative focuses upon Mister Knight battling giant insects, fending off ancient Egyptian warriors and rescuing the dog-headed goddess Anput in the Overvoid, Lemire’s decision to persistently interrupt these enthralling exploits with senseless recollections, really proves frustrating. It certainly can’t have helped anyone “like this new take” on “Marvel’s Batman” when such intrusions persistently occur just as the costumed crime-fighter is in the thick of things and jousting upon huge locusts up in the night’s sky… 

Fortunately, Greg Smallwood somehow manages to make even the most sedentary scenes within this comic look mouth-wateringly good. So whether it be a decidedly mild-looking Spector saying goodbye to Doctor Emmet as he departs the Putnam Psychiatric Hospital in Illinois, or a rather tiringly tedious conversation within the confines of a U.S. Marine Corps tent, each and every panel, at least momentarily, demands attention.

Writer: Jeff Lemire, Artist: Greg Smallwood, and Color Artist: Jordie Bellaire