Moon Knight: City Of The Dead #1 - Marvel Comics

MOON KNIGHT: CITY OF THE DEAD No. 1, September 2023

Energetically advertised by its New York City-based publisher as featuring “the debut of the new Scarlet Scarab”, David Pepose’s opening instalment to “Moon Knight: City Of The Dead” probably deserved to be the twelfth best-selling comic of July 2023. In fact, the thirty-page periodical is so packed full of various pulse-pounding proceedings, such as the heart-wrenching demise of adolescent Khalil Nasser at the hands of a cold-blooded cult or Marc Spector’s horrifying excursion down to a dismally dark place “where souls go to be judged”, that it’s arguably pretty near a perfect example of proficient penmanship.

Foremost of these successes is debatably the mini-series’ initial set-up, which sees a poor young street orphan being brutally gunned down during a sadistic sacrificial rite in an alleyway. So tragically sad an event on its own may well have been enough to see the titular character risk all by travelling to an ancient Egyptian afterlife. But the “former crime reporter turned Ringo Award-winning comic book creator” ramps up the masked crime-fighter’s angst ten-fold by having his comrade-in-arms, Doctor Badr, take him on an additional guilt trip over the boy’s violent death.

Just as well written though, is how disconcertingly big Moon Knight’s destination appears to be, with the author even touching upon the heavily-built monuments, luxurious palaces and numerous multi-story buildings being home to “a thousand generations” of the dead. So grand a metropolis would be impressive enough in its own right. However, the sheer scale of the land is broadened even further when the reader is shown just what sort of Crocodilian monster stalks just beneath the surface of the sand dunes outside the city’s walls; “N-No -- I take it all back! P–Please -- Anything but this -- !”

Undeniably adding plenty of dynamic energy to all these sense-shattering shenanigans is Marcelo Ferreira, who does a terrific job in depicting Spector’s emotions as he tries to hunt down Nasser’s lost spirit. Ably aided by the likes of inker Jay Leisten and color artist Rachelle Rosenberg, the Brazilian illustrator also imbues the faces of Marc’s foes with some genuine-looking terror - especially once it becomes clear to the would-be child-murderers that the “Lunar Legionnaire” can take a punch as well as dish them out.

Writer: David Pepose, Penciler: Marcelo Ferreira, Inker Jay Leisten, and Color Artist: Rachelle Rosenberg