Moon Knight: Black, White & Blood #3 - Marvel Comics

MOON KNIGHT: BLACK, WHITE & BLOOD No. 3, September 2022

Seemingly starting out strong with Erica Schultz and David Lopez’s rather tongue-in-cheek tale of some truly troubled banks robbers unwisely choosing Jake Lockley’s taxi as a getaway vehicle, this “trio of additional tales of moonlight and madness” surely must have hooked many a perusing bibliophile encountering the mini-series for the first time. Sadly however, the same can’t arguably be said for those readers who reached the end of this thirty page periodical, with many probably scratching their heads in utter bemusement at its final storyline’s bewildering non-terrestrial based plot by Ann Nocenti, Stefano Raffaele and Chris Sotomayor; “Space spaghetti is disgusting. Limp noodles… The red sauce is just… drool.”

To begin with though, “Wrong Turn” smacks of an anecdote which could easily have been fleshed out so as to successfully populate an entire issue of Moon Knight’s regular ongoing title. Initially wasting no time in showing its three antagonists to be cold-blooded killers, courtesy of one of them laughing as he guns down a floored female security guard, the tale suddenly twists into dark humour as the cabbie’s so-called customers become increasingly spooked by Lockley's evident dissociative identity disorder and eagerness to drive them until they quite literally “hit the water.”

Much more serious is Jim Zub and Djibril Morissette-Phan’s “No Empty Sky” which provides an intriguing insight into the Fist of Khonshu’s gradual acceptance of the super-natural powers given to him by his deity. Essentially told as part of one long fistfight between the “silver crusader” and a cult of mask-wearing murderers, this yarn not only shows Marc Spector’s alter-ego survive a bone-crushing nosedive down a spiral staircase, as well as a “nasty god’s” spiritual stabbing through the back. But also explores the suggestion that the costumed crime-fighter’s ancient Egyptian god is always marking people out as his prospective replacement, even when they’re unconscious throughout an entire adventure and about to be carved up as a sacrificial offering.

Debatably bringing this book back to Earth with a befuddling bump is the aforementioned “Astronuts”, which is apparently based upon the premise that Moon Knight would agree to “a quick space jaunt” alongside the utterly loony and immorally-minded Boss Gem simply because his other persona “are scared to go.” Perhaps unsurprisingly this trip soon turns into a mission to prevent the bespectacled, billionaire crime lord from boring the crater-covered natural satellite into Swiss Cheese “with his big drill”, and therefore immediately raises the question as to why the villain would ask “Hero-boy” to accompany him into orbit in the first place..?

The regular cover art of "MOON KNIGHT: BLACK, WHITE & BLOOD" #3 by Frank Cho"