Moon Knight [2021] #20 - Marvel Comics

MOON KNIGHT No. 20, April 2023

Featuring one of Speedball’s less formidable foes from the Late Eighties, it’s difficult not to imagine a fair share of this comic’s readers feeling rather disenchanted with Jed MacKay’s conclusion to Issue Twenty of “Moon Knight”. True, the Canadian author’s build-up is enjoyably intriguing as numerous informants from the titular character’s past start falling like dominoes during the course of a single, crimson-splattered night. Yet, this momentum is arguably soon lost once Marc Spector determines his opponents are just the badly brainwashed Harlequin Hit-Men; “8-Ball called you a couple of jokes. 8-Ball.”

Indeed, the Fist of Khonshu defeats Herb Hollister and his wife Sheila single-handedly without even breaking a sweat, before begrudgingly handing them over to Doctor Andrea Sterman and the appropriate authorities. This all-too abrupt ending is clearly penned to provide the Gemini Award-nominee’s mysteriously manipulative “Ghost In The Telephone” with some extra awe and murderous menace – presumably for a future narrative featuring them. However, it also disappointingly shuts down any meaningful sense of dramatic closure for this particular twenty-page-periodical, as the crescent crusader simply walks away despite the brainwashed assassins having cold-bloodedly gunned down, garrotted, and blown up several members of the Shadow Cabinet.

Luckily, Alessandro Cappuccio does provide some rather theatrical layouts for this publication, which readily draw any perusing bibliophile into Moon Knight’s desperate attempt to rescue his former ‘friends’. Of particular note is the Italian illustrator’s marvellous splash-page showing the route through Manhattan Island cab driver Jake Lockley mentally envisages whilst trying to determine who will be the Harlequin Hit-Men’s next victim. Many of these panels genuinely help drive home the increasing sense of helpless loss the ex-West Coast Avenger is feeling as the corpses mount up, and additionally imbues the search for survivors by Tigra and Hunter’s Moon with some vibrant pace.

Much more action-packed and debatably entertaining though, is this publication’s celebration of Black History Month, “Moon Debt” by Danny Lore and prodigiously energetic penciller Ray-Anthony Height. Featuring “the Sheriff of the Vampire Nation”, Blade, with one of Marc’s cowled predecessors from the Mid-Seventies, this ‘secondary short’ provides a thrillingly violent insight into the Egyptian Moon God’s eternal battle against fanged blood-drinkers who stalk “the innocents walking the night.”

Writer: Jed MacKay, Artist: Alessandro Cappuccio, and Color Artist: Rachelle Rosenberg