Murderworld: Moon Knight #1 - Marvel Comics

MURDERWORLD: MOON KNIGHT No. 1, April 2023

Brazenly boasting that “this penultimate chapter has some of the biggest twists yet”, Jim Zub and Ray Fawkes’ script for Issue One of “Murderworld: Moon Knight” certainly should have satisfied any bloodthirsty bibliophiles hoping to see the Fist of Khonshu savagely batter the few surviving competitors left in Arcade’s “life-or-death game of treachery and tragedy” into a pulpy mess. However, any readers eagerly anticipating that the former West Coast Avenger was genuinely going to appear within this comic’s twenty-page plot and potentially put an end to the insane super-villain’s deadly contest, were probably plenty disappointed; “In the name of the Moon, I’ll punish you!”

Indeed, for some reason the writing pair appear to have preferred to pen the “guy in a cape” as a bemusing mechanical singing simulacrum, who utters some truly trite dialogue, loaded with ham-fisted humour and the lyrics of Andy Williams’ song “Moon River”. True, some within this publication’s audience will doubtless have found this ‘tongue-in-cheek’ take a nice change of tone to an otherwise decidedly dark storyline - especially when the situation is swiftly blamed upon one of Arcade’s henchmen apparently having "trouble sourcing audio for Mister Knight.”. But it’s arguably still somewhat hard to take the deaths of this event’s leading cast even slightly seriously when their robot killer is so laughable.

What does definitely work though is the spotlight upon Marina Komarova, and the Hydra assassin’s mission to compete in Murderworld, “acquire all pertinent data, then destroy the facility and kill the staff so no one may use it” except her paramilitary terrorist organization. This character development even goes as far as to show the Russian agent going against her training to save Alex Benavides’ life, making the deadly hand-to-hand combatant actually quite likeable despite her master’s orders.

Italian illustrator Luca Pizzari also does a commendable job in imbuing all these shenanigans with plenty of pace and frankly, raw energy. Perhaps somewhat disconcertingly, the “freelance cartoonist” does pencil Arcade as looking rather like a Joker-clone, complete with massively oversized hand-gun, insane toothy smile, and flamboyantly-coloured waist-coat, tailored suit, and frilled shirt. Yet such a drawing-style also clearly adds lots of dynamic life and personality to the numerous figures he sketches, particularly whenever the panel zooms in on their emotional faces.

Writers: Jim Zub & Ray Fawkes, Artist: Luca Pizzari, and Color Artist: Matt Milla