Moon Knight [2016] #12 - Marvel Comics

MOON KNIGHT No. 12, May 2017

Having made a complete mockery of this title’s previous scenario “Incarnations”, by once again depicting Marc Spector’s schizophrenic personas as self-functioning separate entities, as opposed to “alternate identities” which the crime-fighter desperately needed to eradicate in order to regain some semblance of sanity, Jeff Lemire’s script for Issue Twelve of “Moon Knight” may well have maddened the majority of this comic’s 25,152 readers. It’s certainly just the sort of thing which could well have contributed to this series’ ever-dwindling audience dropping by a further fifteen hundred copies in March 2017.

Fortunately however, the Canadian cartoonist’s writing for this twenty-page periodical’s sub-plot, an enthrallingly tense retelling of the titular character’s first meeting with the Bushman, is actually well worth this comic’s cover price alone, and genuinely helps flesh out the cavalier attitude of the former mercenary as he abducts a heroin dealer from the streets of Saudi Arabia “some years ago.” In fact, this ‘secondary’ tale is infinitely more entertaining with its ‘modern-day’ gunplay and helicopter heroics than the Juno Award-winner’s main, fantasy based narrative filled with jackal-headed gods, Egyptian-riding giant insects and stellar spacecraft. 

Whether this success stems from a grittier, realistic tone to proceedings or simply the inclusion of Jean-Paul “Frenchie” DuChamp once again piloting a rotorcraft, isn’t clear. But it definitely comes as a great relief when Spector’s other guises eventually inform him in the principal storyline that “you go the rest of the way alone. Marc. We can’t come with you”, and leaves Mister Knight, as well as the elderly Crawley, alone to their mysterious adventure deeper into the dangerous Overvoid. 

Happily, despite the confusing nature of Lemire’s prose and the ‘physical’ manifestations of the crime-fighter’s dissociative identity disorder, long-time “Moonie” fans could still take solace in the fact that Editor Jake Thomas permits Greg Smallwood to pencil the entirety of this publication, without him yet again turning to other illustrators to draw the opposing facets of the U.S. Marine’s different faces. This wise decision at least provides some consistency to proceedings, and also allows the Kansas-born artist an opportunity to demonstrate just how well he can storyboard a dramatic fist-fight when Spector storms the Wolf’s lair with little more than a pistol and a strong right boot; “<The Wolf. I want the Wolf!>”

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