Moon Knight #1-38 By Moench, Sienkiewicz, Nowlan & Others For Marvel Comics

Moon Knight #1 – 38 (November 1980 – July 1984)

Written by Doug Moench (#1-15, 17-26, 28-33), Jack C. Harris (#16), Alan Zelenetz (#21-22, 32, 36-38), Denny O’Neil (#26), Steven Grant (#27, 29), Steve Riggenberg (#31), Tony Isabella (#34-35), Bill Sienkiewicz (#37)

Penciled by Bill Sienkiewicz (#1-15, 17-20, 22-26, 28-30, 37), Denys Cowan (#16-17), Jimmy James (#16), Vicente Alcazar (#21), Greg LaRocque (#21-22), Keith Pollard (#26), Joe Brozowski (#27), Kevin Nowlan (#29, 31-33, 35), Mike Hernandez (#31), Marc Silvestri (#32), Bo Hampton (#34, 36-38), Bob McLeod (#35)

Inked by Bill Sienkiewicz (#1, 3, 9-15, 22-26, 28-30, 33, 37), Frank Springer (#1-2), Klaus Janson (#4-7, 16), Frank Giacoia (#8), Steve Mitchell (#16-20), Joe Rubinstein (#16-17), Armando Gil (#16, 37-38), John Tartaglione (#21), Bob Camp (#21), Dave Simons (#21), Joe Albelo (#22), Keith Pollard (#26), Kevin Dzubin (#27, 31), Kevin Nowlan (#29), Terry Austin (#31), Carl Potts (#32-33, 35), Gary Kwapisz (#32), Brent Anderson (#33), Joe Chiodo (#33, 35), Bo Hampton (#34, 36), Bob McLeod (#35)

Coloured by Bob Sharen (#1, 3-5, 9-10, 31), Carl Gafford (#2, 6), Don Warfield (#7), Roger Slifer (#8), Christie Scheele (#11-35, 37-38), Ben Sean (#36)

Spoilers (from thirty-nine to forty-three years ago)

Now that I’ve read Moon Knight’s earliest appearances leading up to his getting his own series, it’s time to dive into that book. I guess his appearances in The Hulk!, a magazine, increased interest in the character to the point that Marvel decided to give him his own book, written by his co-creator Doug Moench and drawn by the rising star Bill Sienkiewicz.

I didn’t read Moon Knight until his second volume came along, but had a number of random back issues that I gathered in my early years of serious collecting. Sienkiewicz was a big deal to me – his New Mutants expanded my idea of what comics could be, and it was because of that that I sought out some of this title. It wasn’t until the last few years that I decided to fill in the gaps in my collection, so I’ll be reading this book in order for the first time.

I remember that this was a more mature book than other Marvel comics of the time, and that MK faced some strange villains. I don’t remember much more than that – I’m curious to see how Marc Spector’s dissociative identity disorder was portrayed, and when it became more than a curiosity about the character. I’m mostly looking forward to the few times that MK interacted with the larger Marvel Universe, and how the creators distinguished him from Batman, whom he resembles a lot.

I have high hopes for these books, so let’s see where it goes…

Let’s find out together.

Let’s track who turned up in the title:

Villains

Bushman (#1, 9-10)
Skid-Row Slasher (Jimmy Crawley; #2)
Midnight Man (Anton Mogart; #3, 9-10)
Boom-Boom (#4)
Razor (#4)
Ice (#4)
Dragon (#4)
Bull (#4)
The Committee (#4)
The White Angel of Death (“Papa Doc” Norman Vidal; #6)
Cajun Creed (#11)
Morpheus (Robert Markham; #12, 22-23)
The Jester (Jonathan Powers; #13)
Joe “Mad Dog” Fasineri (#14)
Xenos (Sgt. Gwenn; #15)
Blacksmith (#16)
Master Sniper (Third World Slayers; #17)
Arsenal (Nimrod Strange; Third World Slayers; #17-20)
Jeesala/Assigi (Third World Slayers; #17-20)
Sonia/Sheena (Third World Slayers; #17-19)
Yumi (Third World Slayers; #17-20)
Jou-Jouka (Slayers Elite, Third World Slayers; #18)
Kareesh-Bek (Slayers Elite, Third World Slayers; #18)
Sumaro (Slayers Elite, Third World Slayers; #18)
Chu-Lin (Third World Army; #19)
The Grand Bois (#21)
Black Spectre (Carson Knowles; #25)
Commodore Donny Planet (#26)
Louis Fulcanelli (#27)
The Kingpin (Wilson Fisk; #27)
Jellim Yussaf (Sons of the Jackal; #28)
Morningstar (Schuyler Belial; #29-30)
Asmodeus (#29-30)
The Savage Studs (#31-32)
Douglas Brenner (#31)
Druid Walsh (#33)
Alcaide (Raiders; #34)
The Fly (#35)
Bora (#35)
Amutef (#36)
Zohar (Rabbi Reuben Davis; #37-38)

Guest Stars

Daredevil (Matt Murdock; #13)
Stained Glass Scarlet (Scarlet Fasinera; #14, 24)
The Thing (Ben Grimm, Fantastic Four; #16, 35
Alicia Masters (#16)
Daniel Drumm (#21)
Brother Voodoo (Jericho Drumm; #21)
Werewolf By Night (Jack Russell; #29-30)
Professor Charles Xavier (X-Men; #35)
Colossus (Piotr Rasputin, X-Men; #35)
Nightcrawler (Kurt Wagner, X-Men; #35)
Storm (Ororo Monroe, X-Men; #35)
Mister Fantastic (Reed Richards, Fantastic Four; #35)
Invisible Woman (Sue Richards, Fantastic Four; #35)
Human Torch (Johnny Storm, Fantastic Four; #35)
Kitty Pryde (X-Men; #35)
Doctor Strange (Stephen Strange; #36

Supporting Characters

Frenchie (Jean-Paul; #1-11, 13-30, 32-37)
Marlene Alraune (#1-4, 6-20, 22-30, 32, 34-38)
Samuels (#1-4, 6, 9-11, 17, 20, 22, 27, 29, 35)
Gena (#1-4, 6-7, 10-11, 13, 15, 22, 29-30, 33-35)
Bertrand Crawley (#1-4, 6-8, 10-11, 13, 15, 22, 25-27, 29-31, 33-35, 37)
Ray (#2, 4, 6, 10, 31, 34)
Ricky (#2, 4, 6, 10, 31, 34)
Nedda (#3, 9-10, 13, 25, 35-37)
Joshua Mendossi (#6)
Isabelle Kristal (#11)
Dr. Peter Alraune (#12, 22-23)
Detective Flint (#12, 15, 17, 24-25, 29, 33-34, 36-37)
Lieutenant Manolis (#13)
Streglov (#17-20)
Dr. Lawson (#29-30)
Joy Mercado (#33)
Thosbi (#36)
Elias Spector (#37)

Let’s take a look at what happened in these books, with some commentary as we go:

The series opens with a flashback set in Sudan, where the mercenary Bushman led his forces, including his second in command, Marc Spector, on a raid of a rebel camp. They quickly defeated their foes, and Bushman explained why he tattooed his face (but not why he had metal teeth) – to strike fear into his enemies. Frenchy (the spelling of his name changed from his earlier appearances) landed his helicopter, and he and Marc talked about getting away from their ruthless boss. Bushman said he wanted to attack Selima, an area without rebels, because he wanted to raid a tomb that had just been discovered there. Marc told Frenchy that they should leave that night. Bushman’s people attacked the town, and a young American woman and her father figured it was because of the tomb they found. The older man grabbed a jeweled dagger and went to confront Bushman. Marc warned his boss, and Bushman used his teeth to rip out the man’s throat. Dying, the man pleaded with Marc to save his daughter. He rushed to the house the man described, and when the woman wouldn’t leave, he threatened her, claiming he killed her father himself. Bushman found Marc and made plans to follow her. He had his men kill the men of the village, which was the final straw for Marc, who attacked him. Bushman knocked him out with one punch and had his men abandon him in the desert. When Marc woke up, he wandered, struggling to withstand the heat and his injuries. He was seen passing out, and was brought by some locals into the newly uncovered tomb of the Pharaoh Seti. The woman Marc saved was called, and she recognized him, but was too late to save him. As she cried over him, we are shown the statue of Khonshu. Suddenly Marc returned to life, recognizing the statue and taking its cloak as his own. He took the woman’s jeep and left to return to the town and confront Bushman. He made his way through Bushman’s men, and blew up his ammo dump. Bushman recognized him as Spector and they stared at one another. A scream delayed their fight; Frenchy had found the woman watching the fight. Bushman escaped while they talked, and Marc revealed that it was Bushman that killed her father. The woman told him her name was Marlene, and they embraced. There’s a quick recap explaining how Marc has other identities – millionaire Steven Grant and cabbie Jake Lockley, as well as Moon Knight of course. In the present, Marlene talks to Steven about his newest case – he found a heroin dealer wearing a pendant with Bushman’s symbol on it. Frenchy has updated the helicopter so it now runs almost silently. Jake heads out to figure out where Bushman is, and insists that Marlene stay home; Frenchy follows in the chopper. Jake heads to Gena’s diner, and learns from Crawley that Bushman is taking over the drug trade and operates out of a burlesque club in Harlem. Jake changes into Moon Knight and catches a ride on the chopper, hanging off the ladder until Frenchy takes him to the club. He pushes his way through the place and starts taking down Bushman’s men until he gets into his secret office. He sees the dagger that killed Marlene’s father on the table, and is confronted by his old boss, who recognizes him. At the same time, Marlene arrives at the club. Bushman holds a gun on MK, who refuses to follow his instructions. Marlene enters the room, and Bushman fires at MK, misses, and then shoots Marlene. Moon Knight and him start to fight (he breaks Bushman’s teeth with his truncheon). Moon Knight starts beating on him, hitting him again and again in the face until Marlene stops him. She convinces Steven that he’s not like Bushman, and they head out as the police arrive, with Marlene promoting the noble aspects of Moon Knight’s character.

At night on the Bowery, a man approaches another unhoused man, asking him for a light. He asks him some questions about Trenton, New Jersey, and if he ‘has it’, and then kills him with a scythe. A few blocks away, Moon Knight stops some guys who try to rob a shopkeeper after he locks up for the night. MK has modified his truncheon so it also works as a nunchaku (apparently the “Orientals swear by ‘em”). He calls Frenchie (whose name is spelled correctly again) to take him to Jake’s cab. He changes and heads to Gena’s for breakfast. He learns from the paper (that must get printed and distributed really quickly) that the homeless man was killed. There’s a ‘Skid-Row Slasher’ at work, and when Crawley enters the diner, they learn that he was friends with the latest victim. Jake and Gena make sure that Crawley has a safe place to stay, and Jake, no longer hungry, heads home. He soaks in his tub and chats with Marlene, who is starting to worry that Moon Knight is taking over Steven, and that he’s too dangerous. Crawley spends the day wandering the city, and when he heads home, he learns that his landlord has changed his locks until he pays him three month’s late rent. With nowhere to go, Crawley wanders the streets some more and comes across a friend. He asks if he can stay with him for the night, but the guy’s room is already full. Crawley continues down the street and finds another victim. He runs into a dead end alley and is approached by the slasher, who attacks him. Steven prepares to leave to meet with a newspaper publisher to try to learn about the slasher, and Marlene feels flirty and ignored at the same time. Gena is closing up the diner when the injured Crawley comes in. She takes him to the hospital where she deals with administrative apathy and a cop who doesn’t care about finding someone who is just killing ‘bums’. The next day, Jake goes about his cabbie duties, and is followed by Ricky and Ray, a pair of teens. They follow him to Steven’s house and when they try to talk to him, he attacks them. They introduce themselves as Gena’s sons, but when Marlene comes out with a gun and calls Jake by Steven’s name, he decides it’s time to come clean. Gena and Crawley join them, and Steven tells them about Moon Knight and what he’s been doing. He wants to use his friends to help him in this mission, and that prompts Crawley to tell his story. He was a traveling salesman who developed a drinking problem. In the end, his wife left him and took his son with her, and he spent twenty years in a downward spiral. He likes the idea of working with MK, but a week later, they still haven’t found the slasher, whom Crawley thought looked familiar. Moon Knight tries to pose as an unhoused man, but only draws the attention of someone wanting to rob him. He hears a shout and finds Crawley, who interrupted the slasher. MK chases the man and takes him down easily. After he’s arrested, Crawley speaks to the cops. When he goes home (he got his room back with money Jake gave him), he starts to look through some old photos. A month later, at the slasher’s trial, Crawley changes his story, claiming he didn’t see anything, surprising everyone. Crawley then reveals that the slasher is his son (I’m not sure why the court wouldn’t have figured out that they have the same name). The slasher, realizing who Crawley is (again, I’m not sure why his name wouldn’t have been familiar to him) attacks him in court, grabs a bailiff’s gun, and shoots the bailiff before fleeing. Steven rushes to follow, changing into Moon Knight. He follows him to the roof and trips him with his truncheon before disarming him. The slasher moves to the edge of the roof and jumps. MK isn’t able to catch him, and Crawley cries over his body.
Issue three opens with a page from the Daily Bugle that tells us two things – that Moon Knight has been working tirelessly through a relentless crime wave, and that a burglar called The Midnight Man has been robbing priceless works of art from around the city. We then get a series of panels showing Moon Knight stopping crimes while the Midnight Man steals some stuff, including swooping onto stage during a special midnight opera performance to steal the diamond off a diva’s neck. Early one morning, Marlene talks to Steven while he works out. He changes into Jake and has breakfast (we meet his cook, Nedda, for the first time); Marlene can tell he’s going to be hunting the Midnight Man all day. As he leaves, he asks Samuels to tell Frenchie to overhaul the chopper. The butler can’t find Frenchie so he gets in the craft and pretends to fly it, but then turns down Frenchies offer to take him for a flight. At Gena’s, Jake can’t learn anything about the Midnight Man, but Crawley suggests he check out the pool hall across the street. He can’t get anyone to talk to him, and offers them money to come and give him information in the alley. The men there decide to rob him, but find Moon Knight waiting for them. He learns that the Midnight Man has a plan to lure MK into a trap. Steven hosts a charity gala thing in his home that night, and meets Anton Mogart, who asks to speak to him in private. Mogart is an art collector and he explains that he’s worried the Midnight Man is going to target him. He wants Steven to connect him to Marc Spector so he can protect his work, offering $100 000 to do so. Steven says he’ll connect him in exchange for some art instead. Steven then tells Marlene he has to leave, and he and Frenchie head for Mogart’s home in New Jersey. The large house is quiet, and MK sneaks inside. He trips a wire and almost gets shot by a crossbow. The Midnight Man appears, and it’s clear that MK has figured out he’s really Mogart. They fight, and Siekiewicz’s handling of these scenes is pretty amazing. They fight throughout the house, smashing furniture as they go, and MK unmasks Mogart. They end up on the top floor of the house, and fall through a window onto an exterior slanted roof. MK almost falls, and Mogart comes at him with a knife. Marlene pulls up outside the house and fires her gun, hitting Mogart in the back. He falls into the river (MK is only able to grab his cloak as he falls). Moon Knight grabs a painting off the wall on his way out. Later, Steven and Marlene are at an art museum and she recognizes the painting he stole, along with two others from his house, with a plaque saying they were donated by Marc Spector. Back home, Steven explains that he’s keeping Mogart’s cloak on the wall now, because he expects him to return (they didn’t find a body in the river). Marlene admits that when she shot him, she fired a rubber bullet.

The Committee has returned, and have hired five assassins (Boom-Boom, Razor, Ice, Dragon, and Bull) to kill Moon Knight. He encounters Ice, a sniper, first when he glides through Rockefeller Center. Ice takes a shot at him and moves in to confirm his kill when he learns he really only hit his cape. He fires close to MK’s face, momentarily blinding him, but makes his escape. The five killers speak to the Committee, reporting that they’ve had no luck so far. One of the Committee, the criminal organization that we saw in MK’s first appearance, asks what’s going on, as he’s missed some meetings. We learn that the Committee has decided to kill MK, since he cheated them out of their money, and are paying the killers $25 000 each. At Grant’s mansion, Steven asks Frenchie about the Committee. Through their conversation, we learn that Frenchie has posed as a French industrialist to join the group. When they were looking for an agent, he suggested they hire Marc Spector, and he provided them with the Moon Knight costume to give him, smoothing over the continuity problems MK’s first appearance has compared to his later appearances. We get a recap of what happened in that first appearance (which I wrote about in my last column). Frenchie figures that now that the Committee has reorganized, they could be coming after Marc. Jake goes to Gena’s to see if Crawley knows anything, but he can only name three of the five hired killers. He knows they hang out at a club in Queens called ‘Inn Flight’, so Jake sends Gena’s sons to go get him the other names. He also calls Marlene and makes a suggestion to her, and asks her to get Frenchie to go to the Committee’s next meeting. Ricky and Ray head to Inn Flight, which is inside an actual airplane. They ask about the assassins, and get sent to a back room. Frenchie asks at the Committee meeting why he wasn’t informed of the plan against Moon Knight (MK is on the roof listening), and learns they thought he was connected to him; he disavows MK. A guy pulls a gun on Ricky and Ray but they disarm him and learn the names of the last two assassins. They tell Marlene as they leave, and she applies for a job as a dancer in the club. Jake meets up with the kids, and Marlene starts dancing. Moon Knight is patrolling when Boom-Boom, the explosives expert (not the New Mutant) lures him into an alley. An alleycat finds the bomb Boom-Boom has left, and MK manages to shelter it and himself from the explosion. Boom-Boom flees from him and manages to escape. The next day, MK and his associates can’t learn anything. Later, Steven gets a tip from Crawley that two of the killers would be attending the fights at Madison Square Gardens. Steven gets tickets for Marc and Frenchie, and they spot Razor and Dragon. Marlene starts to flirt with Ice. Marc changes into MK in a bathroom and walks past a boxer I should probably recognize (is it Muhammad Ali?) and rushes outside so Frenchie can help him pursue the cab that took the two killers. He enters a tenement he sees them go in, and learns that it’s a trap. He fights Razor (knife expert) and Dragon (a martial artist). He gets them down, but is hit from behind by Bull (big guy). He is saved by Frenchie, who starts shooting at Bull. They drag away their two prisoners. Marlene can’t get any good info from Ice, but he receives a call from Bull and leaves. Marlene follows him, and he notices her using a payphone to call Jake. Boom-Boom and Bull meet with the Committee, shaking them down for money or they’ll blow the place up in ten minutes, while Ice double-crosses them all – he chains the doors to the building where they’re meeting and then climbs to a neighbouring roof. MK climbs to the roof of the Committee’s building and watches the panic inside the building as the Committee and the two killers realize they’re trapped. Ice gets MK in his sights, but the building explodes and Moon Knight falls into it just as Ice shoots. Frenchie has managed to protect himself from the explosion, and has saved the satchel full of money. MK goes after Bull, who jumps into a speedboat. MK fights him on the boat, but Ice shoots Bull from a distance. Bull aims the boat back towards the dock as he dies, and MK jumps clear. Marlene kicks the rifle out of Ice’s hands and fights him. MK arrives as he starts to choke her, and smashes his rifle, then knocks him out with it. Later, the whole team is at Steven’s celebrating. Samuels brings the satchel of money, and Steven describes how he’s going to give some of the money to his team, some to charity, and use the rest to reward them all with a trip.
Issue five was an odd one, with an unusual story structure for the time. A pair of teenagers are daring each other to go into a supposedly abandoned and possibly haunted mansion in a rural area that has all its windows painted red. The sudden appearance of Moon Knight on the roof sends them running. We learn that MK is looking for two crooks named Creach and Parkins. We see that they are outside the home, looking for someone named Redditch who grew up in that home. Parkins explains the Creatch that Redditch, his childhood friend, is crazy, which he blames on Redditch’s father having killed himself when they were kids; Redditch Sr. was suspected of being a serial killer. We learn that these three men were working together on some crime stuff in New York when Redditch learned that his mother, whom he’d had institutionalized, was dead, and that her collection of five hundred one thousand dollar bills were being kept in a bank. Redditch wanted to go steal that box right away. Parkins and Creatch enter the house, and MK watches. In a flashback, we see Marc and Frenchie talking about the statue of Khonshu in Steven’s house; Marc feels vibrations from the statue. MK moves into the house, and the two men get frightened by an owl caught in a curtain. We see that the three men had robbed the bank, and Redditch lost it and shot a woman. They fled, and Redditch was hit in the side by a police bullet. They fled, and caught Jake Lockley’s attention. He had Frenchie pick him up with the helicopter so they could pursue. In the house, Creatch and Parkins come across a room stocked with canned good, and shoot at a cat. MK gets closer to them. We see that earlier, Redditch discovered something in the stuff he stole that made him happy. He told his friends to keep the money while he ran off with his ‘treasure’ and carjacked another car. His friends went after him, and MK saw this from the chopper, following them to the house and bringing us up to speed with the beginning of the issue. Creatch and Parkins enter Redditch’s childhood room, and find four skeletons hanging upside down on the wall. Following a trail of blood, they come across a skeleton in a chair, holding a shotgun on them. It fires and they run; we see hands pulling wires tied to the gun’s triggers. MK realizes someone else is in the house. The two men move into the basement, and MK yells for them to surrender. Thinking it’s the cops, the two men decide they should burn the money they stole, and start a fire in the furnace. The furnace’s flue is blocked, and it builds pressure until the furnace explodes. They find a trapdoor under the floor and crawl through a tunnel which takes them outside. Moon Knight confronts them, and we see the house burning behind him. Parkins fires his shotgun at MK, but misses. He knocks both men down, and then discovers Redditch’s body in an open grave. His mother emerges from the shadows; she fled the institution where she was committed and has clearly lost her mind. She’s set up Redditch’s father’s skeleton with the shotgun upstairs. MK realizes that Redditch’s ‘treasure’, which he didn’t know about, was the deed to the house. He brings the old lady towards the helicopter, showing sensitivity as she babbles about her life.

Moon Knight returns home from a night of patrolling and finds Samuels waiting for him with a telegram for Marc. Someone is calling in a marker. He talks to Marlene and tells her that it’s time for a vacation, and that he wants to go to St. Lucien. He changes into Jake and heads to Gena’s where he tells her, her kids, and Crawley that they’re going to take the trip he promised them. The crew arrives in St. Lucien, a Caribbean island, and check into their hotel. Steven tells Marlene he’s going to head out on his own, and she reveals that she found the telegram and knows he’s there for MK business. Steven tells her that his old friend, Joshua Mendossi, saved his life once and has called in the marker Marc gave him. Joshua is the director of police, and he tells Marc and Marlene that there’s a problem with people going missing on the island, and that the locals think this is because of Le ange blanc (should be L’ange blanc), or the “white angel of death” (there’s no death in that name), who is apparently turning people into zuvembies. Joshua explains that he is understaffed, and wants Marc to look into this for him. He tells him that his driver will take him around to speak to women who have lost their husbands recently. Marlene stays and asks to learn how Joshua saved Marc’s life. On one of their mercenary jobs, Marc was pinned down and Joshua shot the person shooting at him. Marc visits Joshua’s sister, who doesn’t want him in her house after dark. He sends the driver away and then notices screams. He changes into Moon Knight and finds a guy in a skeleton costume loading men into a truck. His appearance frightens the locals, who think he’s the white angel. MK fights the ‘zuvembies’, and frees the men, but the truck takes off. MK walks back to the hotel, and then explains to Marlene that he thinks someone is taking advantage of local superstitions. The next day, he recruits Ricky and Ray into becoming bait for the zuvembies. He gives them a radio, and sends them out. Frenchie and Crawley have been investigating too, and they come across a poppy field hidden by sugar cane. The field belongs to a white man named Norman Vidal, and as they look around, they are caught by some of the zuvembies. Ricky and Ray find a truck being loaded with men by more zuvembies, and they climb on when no one is looking, but since one of them is in the truck with them, they can’t radio Marc. Marc starts driving around the island. Ricky and Ray are taken to The White Angel, who is Vidal dressed in a feathered headdress. He has Frenchie and Crawley strung up upside down, and orders his new zuvembies to prove their loyalty by killing them. We learn that he controls his zuvembies by getting them hooked on his heroin. Ray pulls out the radio and calls MK, even though it draws attention to him. Marc figures out where they are based on Ray’s description, and heads that way, as Marlene goes to get Joshua. As the prospective zuvembies circle Ricky and Ray, MK arrives on the scene, and maneuvers himself so it looks like he’s coming out of Vidal’s fire. For some reason, the skeleton-costumed zuvembies start to refer to Vidal as ‘Papa Doc’, which doesn’t make a lot of sense given what was happening in Haiti when this book was published. MK confronts Vidal, who insists that what he’s doing is necessary to help him harvest his heroin (it’s basically the rationale for chattel slavery in general) and the skeleton goons attack MK. As he fights them, the drugged guys come after Ricky and Ray. They fight back, and the police arrive after they cut Frenchie and Crawley free. Vidal runs to his storehouse and starts shooting at MK and Joshua as they rush forward. Inside, Joshua hides behind some sacks, and Vidal almost gets shot when Vidal sneaks up on him. MK saves him, and Joshua shoots Vidal. He ends up getting buried under a pile of white powder (which the narration specifies is heroin, even though it looks more like cocaine). Joshua figures out that Moon Knight is Marc, and thanks him for making things even between them. Later, Gena pretends that she’s not letting her kids work for MK anymore, but specifies it’s just for the week they’re on St. Lucien.
Jake adds a fake mustache to his look, to help differentiate him from his other identities. As he drives his cab, Crawley jumps out in front of him to get his attention and tells him that he heard from a friend that something big is about to go down in Chicago. We see that some men are bringing bottles of water into their base, and we know that they’ll need it for their plan, which goes down the next night. At Gena’s, Crawley and Jake continue talking, and he decides they need to go to Chicago. He calls Marlene, who is getting tired of having to figure out who she’s talking to all the time, to get her to book hotel rooms for them, Crawley, and Frenchie in Chicago. Walking back into the diner, Jake thinks about Steven as a separate person. In Chicago, the men in charge of the plan (one is named Simon, the other Fox), prepare their men for the night. We see them pour something into the city’s water works. The next morning, we watch various people in Chicago drinking water while Grant and his crew prepare to leave. We see a woman lose her mind and attack someone, biting him on the face. As Frenchie flies, the crew tries to figure out what is going to happen in Chicago. When they arrive, they can see fires and chaos. Steven changes into Moon Knight; he has Frenchie drop Marlene and Crawley on the roof of the hotel and they go to investigate. Frenchie heads into the police station posing as a reporter while MK listens from outside the building. Frenchie takes a drink of water from a fountain before coming to tell Marc he didn’t learn anything. MK suspects the issue might be the water as they get underway, and that’s when Frenchie starts to lose it and crashes the chopper into the harbor. MK dives in to pull him out, and he attacks him. He has no choice but to knock out and tie up his friend, leaving him in a boat. Simon and Fox prepare to go to city hall, and put on werewolf and Frankenstein masks. Marlene watches the news and decides to get a drink of water. MK calls her from a payphone, but his call is cut off before he can warn her; she takes a drink. A large group of people see Moon Knight and start chasing him into a park. He has no choice but to fight back. Nearby, the guy in the werewolf mask starts to talk, and the crazed people follow his suggestions, howling at the moon. MK rushes over and hears the werewolf mask ask for a twenty-five million dollar ransom to stop the madness. MK jumps the guy, and the man in the Frankenstein mask tosses a gas bomb to cover his retreat. MK follows werewolf mask into the subway, where another gas bomb goes off in his face. MK starts to hallucinate, and believes he’s on the moon. When some people start to chase him, he thinks they are moon aliens, and he begins to fight them. They knock him down and hold him on the subway tracks as a train approaches (he believes it’s a moon monster). At the same time, Marlene recognizes that she’s now as crazy as Steven; she holds a broken shard of mirror and plans to kill him.

Issue eight recaps the last issue, then shows us Moon Knight narrowly avoiding being hit by a subway train which he thinks is a moon snake or something. As he climbs on the moving train, his brain clears from the hallucination gas, and he makes his way to the front. In the first car, two madmen are trying to attack a woman. MK stops them, and then knocks out the driver, stopping the train. He heads off to find Marlene while the city rages. Marlene is waiting for Steven so she can kill him. As MK walks through the tunnels, he finds Crawley drinking with some guy who freaks out at MK’s appearance. Crawley has learned some things that will help. In Washington, some officials decide how they are going to deal with the terrorist demands in Chicago. MK and Crawley take a car. Simon and Fox hang out in City Hall, planning their next move. The guy from Washington has a helicopter pilot who doesn’t drink water prepare for their plans. Crawley checks out the place his drinking buddy told him about, and finds the lab where Simon and Fox operate. The other two guys in their plan arrive to get more clean water, and Crawley knocks some crates over, rendering them both unconscious. MK fights his way into Marlene’s hotel and finds her room trashed. Marlene jumps out and stabs him in the shoulder; he bounds and gags her as Crawley arrives to tell him how there are only two people left in the plot to destroy the city, and that dawn (and their deadline) is approaching. The helicopter pilot drops a sack on the roof of City Hall as National Guardsmen circle the building. The sack doesn’t have their money, though; instead it releases tear gas into their faces. Because of their masks and the wind, it doesn’t affect them. The National Guardsmen are confronted by a mob of madmen, but MK slips past them all and makes his way to the roof. Simon and Fox, however, get past the Guard and head for the reservoir. MK jumps onto the helicopter that is still hovering, and yells for it to follow the car Simon and Fox are in. The pilot gets the same order. As they drive, Simon kills Fox and smashes a barricade to get to the reservoir. The cops stationed there open fire, but Simon still manages to pull out his barrel of poison and move towards the water. MK drops on him, but the barrel, which is leaking through a bullet hole, rolls towards the reservoir. MK tosses a dart at Simon’s hand, keeping him from shooting him, and stops the barrel from falling in the water. Later, Steven and his friends watch as the ruined helicopter is pulled from the lake.
Moon Knight’s learned that Bushman has escaped from prison, and he knows he’ll come after him, so he’s out patrolling and searching for him. He smashes into a casino night for high rollers to try to get information. At the same time, Marlene talks to Samuels about the Khonshu statue in Steven’s mansion. She reveals that she doesn’t fully believe that Khonshu revived Marc when he died as she prepares to go to bed. MK fights the guards at the casino night, and as he starts asking about Bushman, notices one guy slipping away. Frenchie is working on building a new helicopter. MK goes after the guy, changing into Jake and following him with his cab through driving rain. Marlene is woken by a strange noise and sees a man standing in the doorway to her bedroom. She screams, and Frenchie comes running. He’s knocked over by a man running away. Jake continues to chase the guy through Manhattan, until he finds his car abandoned and the guy missing. Marlene and Frenchie realize that the Khonshu statue has gone missing, and Nedda comes to tell them that Samuels has gone missing too. Marlene calls Jake on his radio to tell him about the butler, but doesn’t mention the statue because she’s concerned his mental state is already precarious and he puts too much value in it. Jake finds an open manhole near the guy’s car, so Moon Knight drops in to explore. Nedda, Marlene, and Frenchie talk about who might have broken into the house, and they don’t believe it was Bushman. Marlene has a thought, and rushes to the ‘art room’. MK discovers a large chamber in the sewer system that is filled with random junk displayed like artwork. He can tell someone is above him. Marlene finds that a certain cloak is missing from Steven’s gallery, and she realizes, just as he reveals himself to MK, that the Midnight Man is back. Marlene and Frenchie plan to go search for MK, while Midnight Man explains that he survived the fall into the river at their last meeting, and that effluent from the drain pipes in the river disfigured his face. When he finally returned to his home he found his entire art collection gone, so he went mad and started gathering a mockery of art in his underground sewer gallery. He reveals that he has the statue of Khonshu, and then smashes it, which leaves MK feeling drained. Midnight Man starts shooting at him, while he tries to get close to him. He knocks the gun from his hand, and they fight briefly before MK kicks Midnight Man in the face. He demands to know where Samuels is, but is interrupted when a steel door closes the exit to the chamber. Bushman reveals that he’s the reason Midnight Man came after him, and the guy that Jake followed turns up, holding Samuels. Bushman blows a hole in the wall, and water starts gushing into the chamber. They toss Samuels, who is tied up, into the water.

Bushman gloats over Moon Knight as the rushing water fills the room he’s trapped in, and pours onto Samuels, who is dangling from his feet. Bushman recaps Moon Knight’s origin, and mocks him for the fact that Khonshu’s statue was smashed. On the street, Marlene and Frenchie find the open manhole cover and descend into the sewers to look for MK. Bushman and his goon leave MK, Samuels, and Midnight Man in the chamber that continues to fill with water, sealing the door behind them. Midnight Man retrieves his gun and holds it on MK, demanding that he get them out of this situation. MK starts to look for a loose brick, managing to open a small hole beneath the level of the water. He widens it, and as Midnight Man pushes through first, cuts Samuels free. MK dives down to retrieve something, and as he follows Samuels through the hole he created, his cape and cowl get stuck. Frenchie and Marlene are almost trapped by a sudden rush of water. Samuels and MK are pushed through a conduit to the river. Marlene finds MK’s cape and believes he’s lost. Outside, under a pier, Marc talks about how he’s a failure. He holds the head of the Khonshu statue, and won’t listen to Samuels telling him that he’s done well. He walks off, talking about how he’s a nobody. Once Samuels returns home, he tells Marlene and Frenchie that Mark is still alive but seems to be suffering from a breakdown. She calls Gena to get her, Crawley, and her kids out looking for Marc, but for three days, they have no luck. Frenchie has the new helicopter (it looks a lot better than the previous one, with an upright crescent moon supporting the rotors) up and running, but no one can find Marc. We see him talking to the Khonshu head while perched on a rooftop gargoyle, continuing to speak about what a failure he is. At the same time, Bushman continues to make inroads into the New York crime world. Marc ends up sleeping in Central Park, talking to Khonshu’s head. Crawley and Gena find him and get him back to Grant’s mansion. Despite being cleaned up, Marc is still in a state of despair and Marlene has trouble reaching him. She talks about how she helped him build this new life and work towards righting the wrongs of his former life. She also reveals that the Khonshu statue is still intact – she’d had a fake built and replaced the original with it, claiming that Midnight Man stole the fake. This seems to snap Marc back into himself. Days later, Crawley calls to let Marc know that he’s learned that Bushman is going to be attending a meeting at a house in Brooklyn. Marc prepares to head out. They’d tipped off the cops, so when Bushman arrives at the house, he sees three officers rushing towards him. Moon Knight arrives on the helicopter and chases Bushman as he tries to drive off. Bushman ends up running into the botanical gardens, and MK follows. They argue, and end up fighting in a pond. Moon Knight knocks Bushman out. Later, back at home, he asks Marlene which statue is the fake, and she points out that it doesn’t even matter, because he regained his self-control either way.
Moon Knight watches a drug transaction go down under a bridge. The man supplying the drugs is a tall man with a mohawk named Creed. MK knocks the money and drugs out of their hands with a crescent dart and starts to fight them. He’s surprised by how strong Creed is, and kind of lets him get away. He gets Frenchie to take him home in the new chopper, then dives into the pool so he can emerge in his bedroom where Marlene is waiting (she just hangs out there a lot). A little later, a woman comes to the door looking to leave a message for Marc, since she knows his mail is sent there. Samuels tells Steven the woman’s name – Isabelle Kristel – and he agrees to see her. He calls Frenchie to join them. When Steven sees Isabelle, she can tell he’s really Marc Spector, and he quickly explains that Grant is an identity he uses. Frenchie arrives, surprising her. She calls him Jean-Paul, and it’s clear they have a lot of history when they share a tearful embrace. She gives him a package and says he isn’t to open it, and that she can’t spend time with him yet. She says if she hasn’t returned in ten days, he should open the package. After she leaves, Frenchie explains that before he met Marc, he and Isabelle were lovers in France, but one day she just took off. Frenchie became a mercenary and got to know Marc, and at some point, they ended up in a fight in Africa and Isabelle was on the opposite side of a coup attempt they were working for. He knows that they love each other, and hopes they’ll be reunited in the next ten days. Six days later, Marlene sees in the newspaper that Isabelle was killed. Frenchie opens the package and finds a quarter of a million dollars in it. Marc changes into Jake and goes looking for some information. He learns that Isabelle was killed by Cajun Creed, because she didn’t follow through on a business arrangement they shared. Frenchie and Jake figure that Isabelle was working undercover in the cocaine trade, and they decide they should head to New Orleans during Mardi Gras and avenge her. Moon Knight walks around in his costume openly in New Orleans, while Frenchie wears a pirate disguise. It doesn’t take them long to find Creed, and Frenchie immediately confronts him. MK moves in to help him, and is again surprised by how strong he is. One of Creed’s crew tries to jump MK, and then gives up where he operates from. MK goes after him, but Frenchie gets there first. He holds a gun on Creed, who acts like Isabelle was in love with him. Another person arrives and shoots Frenchie in the side. MK fights Creed, who gives up after he starts to take a beating. He admits he lied about Isabelle – she didn’t love him, and in fact betrayed him. He admits to kidnapping her, and interrogating her for days, during which time she would only say she was going to retire and live with Frechie. Frenchie recovers enough to knock Creed out. A couple days later, Frenchie visits Isabelle’s grave in Paris.

Dr. Peter Alraune sits in his office at night and looks at the file of his patient Robert Markham, who was transformed into a hideous creature through Alraune’s actions. He decides to call the police to report Markham’s disappearance. At the same time, Markham, now calling himself Morpheus, decides to visit his doctor. We learn that because of the experimental drugs that Alraune gave Markham in an attempt to save his life from a mysterious disease, Markham can no longer sleep, but that he also can manifest psychic dream energy as a form of dark matter. He uses a tendril of this stuff to choke Alraune, but is interrupted by the arrival of the police. He slams the doctor into the wall, and swings off on his darkmatter, like Spider-Man. The next night, when Moon Knight comes home, Marlene rushes to tell him that her brother, Peter Alraune, is in the hospital (this is strange because in her first appearance, Marlene’s last name was Fontaine). They go to visit, and Alraune says a few things about Morpheus before falling into a coma. As Steven and Marlene leave the hospital, they discover that Morpheus is attacking it. Steven changes into MK and attacks him. Morpheus hits him with his dream energy, which drains MK’s own energy. He manages to draw Morpheus away from the crowd and gets him to expend enough of his energy (by beating on him) that he flees. MK feels like an amateur (honestly, he’s not all that good at this stuff). He heads to Alraune’s office, where he finds a Detective, Flint, who shares information about the case, and points out that most of his fellow detectives wouldn’t have done that. When MK returns home, he learns that Alraune is no better, and that Marlene is upset. We see that Morpheus spends his day pacing an apartment, without rest, and that his power builds, as does his madness. He wants to build himself a palace, so as night falls, he goes and robs a bank. MK drops in behind him, getting in a good punch before Morpheus’s energy slams him against a wall. Morpheus flees into the Central Park Zoo, and releases a panther that attacks MK. As Morpheus is about to blast him, he maneuvers so the panther takes the hit. Battered, MK tosses his truncheon past Morpheus so it bounces off a zoo cage and hits him in the back of the head. MK hits him, but Morpheus sends him flying. MK sees some equipment and thinks he can adapt the original plan he had to defeat him. He positions himself carefully, and then tells Morpheus that he gives up. Morpheus fires his energy at him, but MK ducks and the energy hits a generator; it seems to drain all of Morpheus’s power, and MK knocks him out. Later he talks to Flint as Morpheus is taken into custody. Later still, we see that Flint has arranged for Morpheus to be sedated every night at a psychiatric ward. Six days later, Peter Alraune wakes up from his coma.
It’s strange that it wasn’t until this series was in its second year before MK had another hero appear in his series (is this the first time Bill Sienkiewicz drew Daredevil?). At breakfast one morning, Steven sees in the paper that Ace Taggert is being released from prison; apparently Taggert vowed to get revenge on Moon Knight for putting him away. We see that in prison, Taggert has been hanging out with Jonathan Powers, the Jester, who is also planning to enact some revenge when he gets out four days after Taggert. He intends to disrupt the Broadway premiere of his rival’s new show and wants Taggert to help him set up, promising to help him with Moon Knight afterwards. Four days later, Daredevil knows that Powers is getting out, and hitches a ride on the back of the cab that takes him home, so he can keep an eye on him. Jake goes to Gena’s to see if Crawley has heard anything about Taggert, and learns that Taggert was bragging about helping the Jester. Daredevil listens in as Jester prepares his ‘toys’ and gets ready to head out for his plan. When the same cab driver comes to get him, DD hitches a ride again. Jester gets out of the cab a few blocks from his target, and DD follows. Moon Knight is above, and worries that DD will interrupt his plan, which is to follow Jester to Taggert. When Jester assaults a driver with a yo-yo, DD moves in to stop him. MK tosses a crescent dart, slicing DD’s billy-club line. They end up fighting in the doorway to an arcade, where the noise interrupts DD’s radar. Jester happily continues on his mission, approaching the theatre. Finally, DD and MK realize they should talk, and after comparing notes, move out to find Jester. Jester meets up with Taggert, who has a truck full of Jester’s robots, which start to melt the door to the theatre. Jester interrupts the show as his robots threaten the audience. One robot shocks the director, Jester’s rival, and then Jester demonstrates his fencing skills and forces the audience to applaud. Jester starts to rob the audience. MK and DD arrive and split up. Jester calls Taggert, telling him to go get their helicopter and to meet him on the roof in a half hour. MK knocks Taggert out and calls Frenchie. DD approaches the police barricades set up outside the theatre (the cops really got this all set up before the two heroes could make it down the street?). DD heads in and starts to fight Jester and his robots. MK swings in to help with the robots, who do things like fire toy biplanes with drills and explosives attached to them. MK polishes off the robots while DD continues to struggle to stop Jester. Jester starts to run, and MK lets him leave, which angers DD. Jester makes it to the roof and climbs the ladder dropped from a helicopter; it’s Frenchie piloting though, and he delivers him straight to the police, which makes Daredevil and Moon Knight laugh.

Issue fourteen opens with a splash page showing an abstracted image of Moon Knight and Stained Glass Scarlet in stained glass, and is an early sign of Sienkiewicz’s growing experimentation. The issue opens with a lengthy description of an abandoned church, where the lower levels are decaying. Above, though, is where Stained Glass Scarlet, a women in an evening gown, and her cat, have lived for three years. We see that she drinks wine, spends time on the roof looking at the stars through a telescope, and then plays the broken organ on the main floor. Then she contemplates chess games and falls into a reverie, looking through an old photo album. Finally, she looks at a newspaper clipping announcing that Joe “Mad Dog” Fasineri has escaped prison. Steven and Marlene are having a rare night in, looking through a book on the artist Alphonse Mucha (which further explains the first page of the comic) and listening to Marlene play a Beatles song on the piano before she starts crying over John Lennon’s recent assassination (was this marked in any other comics?). They turn on the radio, as does Scarlet, and both learn that there have been three shootings, all blamed on “Mad Dog”. Steven decides he needs to head out after all, and has Frenchie prepare the helicopter while he changes. We see a cop shoot at Mad Dog and his crew as they escape. As Moon Knight heads out to hunt Mad Dog, so does Scarlet (we see that the boarded up door to the church is not actually boarded up. Moon Knight and Frenchie find Mad Dog and his crew shooting up a liquor store, and MK drops in, taking out a number of his men. Mad Dog and some others get away in their car. Frenchie follows the car, and notices some of the men going into a grocery store. As MK approaches the abandoned grocery, he sees Scarlet enter ahead of him. Inside, she approaches two of Mad Dog’s guys and tells them to tell her to come to the church. After she leaves, MK heads in to apprehend them. Frenchie’s followed Scarlet to the church. MK goes in through the roof, and reveals himself to her. She explains that she is Mad Dog’s mother (she really does look good for her age). She explains that as a young girl she chose to become a nun (her other option was actress), but when she met Vince Fainera, an older man who confessed to her one night because the priest was absent, she fell for him, despite knowing he did bad things. They ended up getting married and having a kid, but Vince was distant and kind of abusive. When he robbed a bank, the cops killed him right in front of the church. Joe, young Mad Dog, succumbed to his anger and started running the streets, killing people before he turned nineteen. He was arrested three years prior, and Scarlet became a hermit. She also believes that Vince hid the money he stole in the church, and that her son would return for it one day. As they get to that part of the story, Mad Dog enters the room, pointing a gun at his mother. She tries to convince him that she can provide him with whatever he needs, and he threatens her. MK knocks the gun out of his hand with his truncheon, and they fight. Mad Dog pulls a second gun from his boot and appears to shoot MK. Scarlet raises her gun and shoots the window next to Joe. They aim at each other, and she shoots her son. As he falls, he pulls on the rope tied to the church’s bell, and when it rings, a sack of money falls down. Scarlet walks off, and MK returns home (he doesn’t seem to have been shot very badly, and it’s not mentioned again).
Issue fifteen is the first issue of Moon Knight to go direct-market only, which was done at the same time with Micronauts and Ka-Zar. What’s strange is that none of the previous issues mentioned this happenings, so I’m sure some fans missed out on this issue. With this issue, there’s a longer page count and no ads. It opens with a Japanese trade enjoy getting shot in the arm in a car outside of JFK airport, and the cops on hand thinking they’ve seen Moon Knight run off. A few hours later, Moon Knight is in Central Park, preparing for a meeting. He’s feeling very run-down and has a headache. When he moves to meet with Detective Flint, who’s asked him to come see him, he’s surprised to see someone else there. Flint introduces Sgt. Gwenn, whom he says he trusts completely. They ask him if he knows about the Japanese minister, and when he says he doesn’t, the two cops are surprised. Flint says “code zebra” into his walkie, and a bunch of squad cars pull up. MK fights back against the cops, who start shooting wildly at him. MK tells Flint he’s wrong, and goes to escape. A cop’s shot hits a tree branch, and MK dives to protect an older woman who was almost hurt by it. Later, Flint feels weird about this, but Gwenn insists he saw MK at the airport. Jake goes to Gena’s to ask Crawley about the shooting, and Crawley confirms what he’s been told (there’s this weird thing where times are mentioned incorrectly; MK was to meet Flint at 10:30, but then we establish it’s just after 9:00). Jake remembers that Steven is hosting a party and rushes home. Marlene is annoyed that he’s so late, and it’s clear as he meets his guests that he’s not feeling well. The next day, some guy in a green suit buys some things at a toy store and makes odd references to having lots of little friends. As he walks home, he has an internal monologue that reveals he’s intensely racist. We learn that he has a display case in his house full of rats, and he starts dressing them in toy soldier uniforms. Going to his closet, he decides that he can’t trust Moon Knight, so decides to put on a rat costume and starts calling himself Xenos. Later, Grant insists that Moon Knight needs to go to the Japanese trade minister’s speech outside city hall to protect him and to clear his name. He heads out with Frenchie. There are many cops outside the mayor and minister’s speech. MK stands on a roof a couple blocks away, watching through binoculars, and spots Xenos making his move. As he swoops forward, the cops see him. Xenos starts shooting, and MK hits him in the back. Xenos fights back and then drops into the sewers. The cops follow him, blocking MK, so he goes home. As Steven and Marlene watch the news that night, it gives Steven an idea. We see Xenos arrive home. Later, MK arrives at the same home, having worked some leads. Inside, he finds a number of different costumes, and some books about Hitler. He finds the rat display case and a secret room with a makeup mirror. He’s hit from behind with a jar of sticky rat food, and soon the rats are swarming all over him. Xenos spouts some more racist nonsense and leaves. MK gets the rats off of him, and as he runs out, Frenchie lets him know that Xenos has moved to nearby rooftops. MK gets in front of him, and unmasks him. He’s surprised to not recognize the face under the rat mask, but when he pulls at it, he sees that Xenos is Sgt. Gwenn, as he expected. They fall through the skylight of a hardware store. Gwenn is about to bring an ax down on MK’s head, but steps on a rat trap. MK knocks him out and brings him to Flint, who is outside the store. Later, Marc admits to Marlene that he was concerned that his headache was because of a memory blackout. This issue has a three page essay by Doug Moench going into the history of how he created MK, and how he came up with his four identities.

Issue sixteen is a fill-in issue written by Jack C. Harris, and featuring art by newcomer Denys Cowan (I never would have guessed it was his work). Moon Knight confronts a guy named Sharp who used to be one of Bushmaster’s mercenaries. He finds him at a construction site, and their confrontation ends when Sharp falls off the platform he’s on and dies. The crowd that gathers spots MK, so he takes off in the helicopter. A kid named Douglas approaches his father, an NYPD detective, to show that he got a photo of Moon Knight, but his father is angry he’s there and crumples the photo. Later, Douglas’s father comes and rips up his MK posters. Somewhere else, a businessman named Alexander Latimer talks to his associate, Mitchel, about how Sharp’s death puts his plans in jeopardy. We learn there’s a secret plan involving some devices under the building that is under construction. They have a guy named Blacksmith working for them. We learn that he’s recently out of prison, where he spent his time studying Moon Knight and figuring out how to build blacksmith forceps that are self-heating. Latimer tells Blacksmith to go with a guy named Morris on an assignment; Blacksmith only wants to work alone until he learns he’s there to protect Morris from Moon Knight. After they’ve left, we learn that Latimer was hired by a foreign power to plant a nuclear bomb under his construction site, positioned to take out all of Manhattan and the east coast communications grid. Latimer tells Mitchel that he’s altered the bomb so that when Morris sets it, it will detonate immediately. Steven and Marlene talk about what’s going on, and Steven receives some reports from an anonymous dropbox he’s set up. He learns of Latimer’s involvement from this, and tells Frenchie to prep the chopper to take him to his home. Detective Mills, Douglas’s father, investigates the construction site and finds the tunnel under the building. As he explores it, he falls through a hole and into the path of a subway train, which kills him. Learning of his father’s death, Douglas wants to find Moon Knight to help him get revenge. Moon Knight and Frenchie head out for the night. Douglas goes to the Baxter Building, where he manages to meet The Thing and Alicia Masters, and asks for help finding MK; Ben is annoyed by this, but Alicia convinces him to help, so he starts broadcasting a radio message to Moon Knight. Frenchie hears it in the helicopter, so they head back to the construction site. Blacksmith kills a guy and is attacked by some cops. MK drops in and they start to fight. MK realizes that Blacksmith is wearing a fuel tank on his back, and uses a dart to disconnect it. It explodes. MK finds himself in the tunnels, and follows Morris, avoiding the hole that Mills fell into. He realizes that there’s a nuclear bomb just as Blacksmith returns (he didn’t blow up) with Douglas as his hostage. MK starts to fight Blacksmith again, as Douglas attacks Morris. MK throws Blacksmith into Morris, causing him to drop the detonator, which explodes immediately. The two villains realize that Latimer betrayed them and immediately stop fighting. A little later, MK talks to Douglas about how he should listen to what his father taught him about cops being heroes and how the system is important to uphold, even as he works outside it. This was all a little stiff.
There is a backup in #16, drawn by Jimmy James, that tells of an earlier adventure of Marc Spector where he was sent by an old guy to get a box in Stuttgart. He ended up getting followed into the building where the box was. The woman who followed him tried to stop him and they both got caught by the box’s owner, who tied them up. Marc learned that the woman was the daughter of his employer, and that he was sent to retrieve the head of Medusa (the father, a sculptor who had to stop making art because of arthritis, so he intended to use the head to make people into statues). His daughter wanted to stop him. With the use of part of the woman’s makeup mirror from her handbag (good thing she took her purse to a heist), Marc reflected the statue’s glare, turning it and his captor into statues which he then delivered to his employer. This was too much.
Moench and Sienkiewicz return for issue seventeen, but it’s pretty apparent that Sienkiewicz was just providing layouts on the lead story, as with Steve Mitchell inking, his work does not look like the previous issues much at all. Grant and Marlene are training together when Samuels announces an old friend of Marc Spector’s. Benjamin Abramov is a spy for the Israeli government, and he’s come looking for Marc to help him in his quest to stop Nimrod Strange and The Third World Slayers (which is a group of extreme left and right-wing terrorists that work for money, even though it sounds like an amazing reggae band). Benjamin develops some photos in Steven’s darkroom, and talks about how Strange has three beautiful female bodyguards, one Black, one Asian, and one white, and how he also has a killed called Master Sniper who works for him. Benjamin wants Marc to courier a package to a guy in Switzerland named Strelgov, but as Marc starts to explain that he’s out of the mercenary game, Master Sniper shoots Benjamin through the window. Marc goes after him, changing to Moon Knight on the run, while Marlene and Frenchie try to make sense of Benjamin’s dying words, which reference the third rib over his heart. They discover a mole there. MK jumps Master Sniper, and they fight briefly. We learn that Master Sniper is really just a Deadshot ripoff, as he uses his wrist gun to shoot MK. Frenchie and Marlene come running. Later, we see that Steven is in the hospital, being questioned by Detective Flint (who doesn’t know he’s MK). Steven vows revenge. A week later, Nimrod Strange watches his beautiful bodyguards fight, and learns he has new recruits for the Third World Slayers. Two weeks after that, as Steven is released from the hospital, he immediately starts to plan a trip to Switzerland. Later, he looks over the information hidden in a micro-dot in Benjamin’s mole, but can’t understand it. Reluctantly, Marlene and Frenchie accompany Marc to Switzerland where he starts making inquiries into Strelgov. He has to break into the archives of the local news service to learn he’s an Israeli cultural attaché. He calls him and sets up a meet at a ski lodge. When Marc starts looking for him, three men take him outside at gunpoint. They are about to kill him when Spector turns the tables on them, and proves that he’s there for legit reasons. As they start to talk about the microdot, one of the Swiss men gets shot. Spector realizes Master Sniper is there, and slips away to turn into Moon Knight and circle around on him. They start to fight, and Master Sniper jumps onto a cable car. MK almost falls into a chasm when MS shoots at him, but he maneuvers with his gliding cape to get across. MS goes after Marlene and Frenchie next, but they get away by skiing down a hill. MK gets behind MS as he shoots at Marlene, which causes the edge of the cliff they are on to avalanche. Moon Knight saves himself. Later, Spector hands over the microdot info and heads to Jerusalem to see Benjamin’s widow. He ends up promising her that he will get vengeance for her.
In another backup drawn by Cowan, we get another early adventure of Marc Spector. In this case, he’s been sent to steal an Incan idol made of solid gold. He finds it outside the tent of an archeologist, and is attacked by a dog. He ends up falling into a secret underground Incan temple full of treasures. Marc wants to steal them, but the one he already has is the one he’s being paid to take. His quest to get it home borrows a lot from Indiana Jones (was Raiders out by then?), as he avoids bats, rats, a cliff, a broken rope bridge, alligators, and a cheetah before being attacked by a giant snake and then some local Indigenous warriors. When he finally gets to the village, he learns that he’s been carrying a plaster fake that is sold to tourists.

Nimrod Strange watches his bodyguards fight one another again. Last issue, only two of the three were named, and in this issue, they have different names. It’s clear that he doesn’t have much confidence in Sheena (fka Sonia), his white bodyguard. The other two want to go on the mission to Israel, but he instead wants to send his Slayers Elite – Jou-Jouka, who uses magnums, Kareesh-Bek, who throws glass knives filled with acid, and Sumaro, a massive man who likes to strangle people with a garrote. Strange is sending these three to Jerusalem to kill Marc Spector. We learn that Strange is planning coordinated attacks across the world, and worries that Spector might have information that can stop him. Marc, Frenchie, and Marlene are staying with Anna Abramov, Benjamin’s widow, while Marc waits for the Swiss to decode the information in the microdot. While Marc broods a little, terrorists attack a synagogue. Marc and Frenchie follow soldiers in a truck and end up chasing the terrorists as they try to escape (Marc changes into Moon Knight as they drive). MK jumps onto the terrorist truck and knocks out the driver, which causes it to swerve into the car Frenchie is driving. Frenchie is hurt when the car smashes into a stall, but the truck hits a tree and explodes. Marlene is hanging out with Anna as she goes through her Sabbath rituals. The Slayers Elite break in and grab them. Frenchie is taken to the hospital, and when Marc returns to Anna’s, he finds a message on the wall telling him to come to the citadel at midnight. Marc consults a map and heads towards the historic building early, as Moon Knight. He tries to pick a clever path, but ends up getting shot at by Jou-Jouka. MK takes him out pretty easily, and continues to move through the narrow streets, not realizing that someone is following him. Kareesh-Bek attacks MK, with one of his knive’s acid weakening his truncheon. MK fights him, but ultimately Kareesh-Bek knocks himself out when his acid weakens the roof of a vendor’s stall and a beam hits him on the head. MK enters the citadel, finding a guard was killed, and then gets garroted from behind by Sumaro. They start to fight, and when MK breaks his truncheon over the big man’s head, he runs up to the roof. He grabs Anna (both she and Marlene are on the roof, tied up and gagged) and threatens to kill her. Anna headbuts him, giving MK the chance to punch him. They both fall over the edge of the roof, but MK holds on to the side while his enemy falls to his death. We learn that it’s Frenchie who has been following MK. The next day, Strelgov arrives with the news that they have figured out where Strange’s base is. Marc wants to participate in the coming assault. Allen Zelenetz has an essay in this issue describing Moon Knight’s earliest appearances.
The Statement of Ownership for 1981 reports an average press run of 426 000 (!) with average newsstand returns of 214 000.
The Third World Army (the Slayer is gone from their title) is loading new recruits into a truck that is a very short distance away from the plane they are going to fly them away in, and it doesn’t make a lot of sense. Moon Knight glides into this scene in an effort to distract the guards. He runs off into the nearby trees, and many guards go after him. He manages to trip and knock out about a half dozen of them before returning to the truck and knocking out the only guard left. He quickly changes his clothes (Marc is now using Yitzak Topol as his disguise, but he doesn’t seem to be a new personality) and grabs Marlene and Frenchie. They board the truck unseen (except, presumably, by the thirty other new recruits who are just sitting there). Marlene is worried because one of the guards saw her in the trees, but she tries to hide her face (despite the fact that she’s the only blonde and the only woman there). There is a tense moment where the truck almost doesn’t start, and they worry that they’ll have to walk to the plane, but then the truck does start. As the plane flies to the TWA’s base, we see that Streglov and some Mossad officials are in a gunboat off of Nimrod Strange’s island base. The Mossad guys are worried that Spector is too emotionally invested in the mission. On Strange’s island, he continues to put down his white bodyguard. When he sees Marlene coming off the plane, he asks who she is (she’s using Mary Sands as her name) and suggests she could be his new bodyguard. She says she doesn’t need to be trained, and gets into a fight with Yumi, the Asian bodyguard. Marlene knocks her out, and Sheena gets sent away. Sheena notices Marc and Frenchie watching Marlene, and decides that there’s something suspicious about them. She goes to an office to get the manifest of new recruits. Strange shows his bodyguards how he’s put together a new set of weapons and costume for himself, and says he’s going to start calling himself Arsenal now. He demonstrates his weapons (which have come from Master Sniper and the Slayer Elite), and then reveals his master plan, which involves simultaneous attacks on seven major cities, and apparently, all of South Africa, with the goal of being able to eventually blackmail the US government. The other new recruits are sent to the barracks, and Sheena notices that there are two more people than on her manifest. Once everyone has gone to sleep (odd that there are enough beds), Marc changes into Moon Knight and he and Frenchie separate. Frenchie checks on the planes that Strange owns, while MK starts sabotaging all of the weapons in the armory. MK takes Frenchie a gun, then goes looking for Marlene. Marlene is with Strange, who is forcing himself on her as her ‘initiation’. MK decides to move up his plans before Strange can consummate anything. At the same time, Sheena goes to Strange’s number two person, Chu-Lin, to tell him that there were extra recruits. Once he runs off, she makes her way towards Strange’s chamber. Chu-Lin sounds the alarm as Frenchie and MK finish wiring up explosives on three of Strange’s planes. Streglov’s associates are getting antsy waiting for Spector’s signal. The guns that the soldiers carry won’t fire, so it’s easy for MK and Frenchie to take them down. Sheena knocks on Strange’s door, and Marlene (who has changed clothes off panel into something much less sexy than she was wearing a couple pages before) takes her down without him noticing. Frenchie blows up the planes and they run to the remaining plane. As Strange puts on his Arsenal gear, MK tries to start the remaining plane. He manages to get it running and sets it to fly right into Strange’s ammunition dump before he bails out. The large resulting explosion is the signal Streglov and the Israelis have been waiting for and they move in. Strange and Marlene head towards a secret motor-launch on the island, but they have to pass a huge globe. Moon Knight is waiting on it, and he and Arsenal start to fight. Strange throws a grenade that blows up the globe; pieces of it strike MK, knocking him out. Marlene has no choice but to go with Strange, but she’s pleased to see that Moon Knight is still moving. After things die down, and Spector has connected with Streglov, he shows them a piece of the globe that suggests Strange is looking to blow up the bridges leading into Manhattan.

Moon Knight, Frenchie, and Streglov are in New York (MK has explained to the foreign agent that Spector is elsewhere, but can tell that Streglov suspects the truth). They’ve figured out that Arsenal is working his plan, and has four oil tankers located near key points around Manhattan. They’ve figured out which tanker Arsenal is on. MK dives into the river and swims towards it, just as it starts pumping oil into the river. MK climbs partway up the ship and cuts a hole into its side so the gasses building up inside can be released safely. At the anti-terrorism command post in Manhattan, Streglov tries to explain what’s happening to his American counterpart, and everyone is pretty nervous. Streglov explains how Strange’s plan is to dump a ton of oil around the city, and then ignite the gasses left in the tankers. When they blow, they’ll take out the four main routes of entering Manhattan, and will set the rivers on fire, eventually burning the entire city. The Americans do not want to meet Strange’s exorbitant blackmail demands, and while they’re all uncomfortable counting on MK, they know that’s their only choice. MK remembers what the Israeli Eban said about Spector being too emotionally invested to be effective, but is also very worried about Marlene, who is still with Strange. Strange rants to his bodyguards, then makes another move on Marlene. MK starts taking out guards, but one gets away from him and warns Strange. When Moon Knight opens the door to the room, both he and Marlene hesitate, which gives the other two bodyguards time to kick him in the head, knocking him out. Frenchie makes it to the Grant mansion and goes to get the helicopter. MK wakes up strapped to a generator. Strange mocks him a bit and then unmasks him. He’s amused to see that MK is Marc Spector, and with an hour to kill before he explodes the boats, he goes to hang out with the women in another room. Marc realizes his only hope to free himself is to knock one of his crescent darts into his hand, but it’s harder than he expected. Eventually, he manages to get one, and starts cutting the ropes. Strange and two of the bodyguards are sleeping, and Marlene gets up to try to free MK. Assigi notices her leaving and wakes up Strange. Marlene connects with Moon Knight, who is free, and realizing they have only ten minutes before Strange’s deadline, start fighting the guards again. They make it to the room where Strange was sleeping, but he’s gone. Strange shoots at MK and then goes to detonate the boat, leaving the bodyguards to fight. MK leaves them to Marlene and goes after Strange. Marlene takes out the women. Arsenal prepares to shoot MK after knocking him down with a grenade, but MK knocks a pipe loose so steam streams into his face. They fight some more, and both men exhaust one another. Strange crawls towards the plunger that will detonate the boat, but Moon Knight manages to find the strength to stumble forward and knock him out. Giving in to emotion, he spits in Strange’s face as Marlene joins him. They tie Strange up and disconnect the detonator, and then leave the boat. They call Frenchie to come and get them. A little later, they are talking to Streglov, who is about to reveal that he knows MK is Marc Spector. MK decides to just tell him, but as he talks, Strange recovers enough to re-wire the detonator and blow up the bomb on the boat he’s on (which, because the gasses escaped, did not ignite the river as feared). Marc decides to not tell Streglov the truth, now that Strange can’t out him. Later, Anna Abramov gets a cable from Marc telling her that her husband’s work is done.
Issue twenty-one is split between two stories, the first by Moench and Vicente Alcazar. Moon Knight is fighting some guys in Haiti and is surprised when he sees a spirit rise out of one of them. The men run from the ghost, and we see it enter one of the men, and then attack MK. He knocks him down, but in such a way that he falls into the speedboat the others are using to escape. Brother Voodoo appears in front of him and we learn that MK is in Haiti because he was hired by some guy named Grisgard to stop a coup. Voodoo talks to him about zuvembies (the Marvel version of zombies) and voodoo stuff. He also explains that the ghost MK saw is his brother Daniel. They agree to follow the men together, but instead of using Frenchie and the helicopter, they’re going to take a small rowboat. As they paddle after the men, BV talks about the Grand Bois, the enemy he is seeking, and how the full moon will give him more strength. They are attacked by some zombies who are riding on zombie alligators, and who have zombie snakes coming out of their eyes. They fight them off, but don’t really win the fight. The zombies turn back, and BV figures it’s because the Grand Bois hasn’t gained full control of them yet. Frenchie rejoins them in the air after dealing with the weapons they intercepted at the start of the issue, and the two heroes split up. Voodoo continues on the right branch of the river, following the zombie, while MK hangs off the copter’s ladder, taking the left branch and following the men they were chasing. He comes upon a fortress of sorts, at the bottom of a waterfall. They see that Drumm and his boat is approaching the waterfall (suggesting that this river runs in a circle somehow), and when his boat goes over the waterfall, he rejects the help MK provides by gliding over him with his glide-cape. I’m not sure how he would manage to glide with another person, or how it works with his hands not touching the cape, but Voodoo lets himself fall. When MK lands, he’s surrounded by the gun runners. Voodoo appears, and his brother’s spirit rejoins him. Drumm suggests that instead of following the running men, they sneak into the fortress. They see the men talk to their leader, who is revealed to be the man that hired Marc in the first place. He breaks through a window and demands the rest of his payment, then reveals that he knows he’s the leader of the terrorists. Giscard shoots a poisoned dart from his desk and knocks MK out. When he wakes up, he’s in a pit tied to a post, and Giscard is revealed to be the Grand Bois – he’s been working three angles here. There’s a giant skull statue on the wall behind him, and he explains that it gives him power (MK frees himself as he’s talking). In the full moon, he’ll be able to take over the whole country or something. Brother Voodoo arrives as zombies approach MK, and tries to block the moonlight from hitting the statue (called a wangal). MK’s truncheon can’t hurt the statue so he calls for Frenchie to bring the chopper down and shoot it. When the wangal is destroyed, Grand Bois calls for his men to shoot the heroes, but they refuse. It turns out he was forcing them to help by controlling their dead relatives, and once his power was broken, they stopped. MK turns over the money he got from Giscard to Brother Voodoo so he can build a hospital or something.
In the backup story to #21, by Alan Zelenetz and Greg LaRocque, a crook and cop killer hides in a museum to avoid police. At the same time, an Egyptologist gives a talk about the benefits of x-raying Egyptian sarcophagi instead of opening them. The crook walks into the Egypt exhibit, and feels like the moon in the window and the gaze of a statue of Khonshu are following him. Startled by the statue, he drops his gun, and when he hears footsteps coming, he gets into an open, standing sarcophagus, crushing its actual inhabitant as he pulls the door shut. After the guard leaves the room, the guy tries to open the sarcophagus, but can’t (I’m not sure how the explanation of his coat being caught makes sense). The next morning, after the professor has x-rayed the sarcophagus, his assistant is shocked to find that there’s a gun in it (why would they x-ray a sarcophagus that had already been sitting open? Makes no sense).

Sienkiewicz returns to inking his own pencils with the lead story in issue twenty-two. Peter Alraune has night terrors and is convinced it means that Morpheus is coming after him again. Jake Lockley randomly starts thinking about Morpheus and changes into Moon Knight to go check on him through the skylight in his room. He hears two caretakers talking about how the doctors have changed Morpheus’s medication in the hopes that they can drain off his dream energy and restore him to normal. As MK watches him, someone dressed all in black attacks him from behind. As they tussle, MK sees Marlene on the edge of the roof, and sees her fall, but when he goes to the edge, she’s gone. The guy in black pushes him over the edge and takes off. He returns to his cab and heads to Gena’s, where Crawley talks about dreams. When Jake returns home, he learns that Peter Alraune has come to visit. Peter tells Steven and Marlene about how his dreams have been so intense. There’s a lot of talk about dreams and stuff, and then he talks about how he dreamt that Morpheus was outside his window and smashed it. When he woke up, his window was fine, but the glass he’d left on the sill was smashed. Steven suggests that Peter and Marlene go to his house in Maine, and he sends Frenchie to drive them. As they drive, Peter falls asleep and almost immediately a giant dragon comes through a highway tunnel and causes them to crash. MK sneaks into the hospital where Morpheus is kept, and is immediately attacked by the guy in black. The guy runs, and MK follows him, but starts to see things that aren’t there. He finds himself in a post-Apocalyptic landscape where a clown tries to sell him sunglasses and talks about Marlene’s body. Entering a tunnel, he sees Marlene who is eaten by a giant snake. MK returns to reality in Grand Central Station. He catches up to the guy in black and they fight some more. Suddenly, MK sees Steven, Jake, and Marc attack him. Marc calls Moon Knight out for being afraid of his lack of principles and quick savagery. MK starts beating on Marc, but then realizes he’s fighting store mannequins, while the guy in black tries to run him over with Jake’s cab. MK fights the guy again, and manages to knock him down. Marlene and Frenchie are fine from their car crash, but can’t find Peter. When MK pulls the guy’s mask off, he sees that he’s been fighting Peter. The caretakers in the hospital argue about cleaning Morpheus’s room. While the older one answers the phone, assuring whoever’s called that Morpheus is still there, the supposedly sleeping villain wakes up and kills the younger caretaker, then comes after the older one. As we see MK carry Peter, Morpheus talks about his new drugs strengthened his abilities, so his dreams can now take over reality.
Zelenetz and LaRocque have another backup story, this time set in Egypt in 1942. A pair of British soldiers who are part of a push against Rommel a buried tomb. Ezzie O’Gourke finds a statue of Khonshu and stops his friend from looting the tomb. Hitler wants supremacy in the desert. The British prepare to attack, while Rommel’s men spend time laying landmines throughout the desert. When the attack comes, Ezzie sees Khonshu’s face in the sky, and then all of the mines suddenly explode as the underground tombs collapse, providing a safe corridor for the soldiers. Ezzie and his friend see the statue lying in the sands.
As Morpheus runs off into the night, we see that Moon Knight has joined Frenchie, Marlene, and Peter on the road to Maine. As Peter falls in and out of sleep, Morpheus is able to hear him and knows that they are headed towards Maine. Once they arrive at Grant’s Maine home, they start to get settled. MK pulls Marlene aside to make sure she continues to hide the fact that he’s Steven Grant from her brother. Peter theorizes that Morpheus can remotely send him into a dream state, and that if Peter touches someone, he gives Morpheus license to affect them. They think of possible plans to deal with Morpheus, and MK and Frenchie head to the basement to set up the generator. Morpheus arrives in Maine (I have no idea how he got there so quickly), but Marlene manages to lock the door before he can get inside. He uses his ebon energy to knock the door down. Peter approaches Morpheus, and when he touches him, he cancels out his powers momentarily. Morpheus sends Peter out into the woods and takes control of Marlene. She comes downstairs and tosses a lit match into the generator, making it explode. MK gets his friends away from the fire and outside, then goes back inside looking for Peter. Instead, he finds Morpheus waiting for him, and they start to fight. MK uses a mattress to protect himself from Morpheus’s energy blasts, but Morpheus sends him flying out the upstairs window. He finds Peter standing at the edge of a cliff, but as soon as he touches him, he enters a dreamstate where he imagines doing battle underwater with a black knight on horseback that’s emerged from a giant pearl. He realizes that he’s in the ocean and drowning and manages to get to shore. He heads towards the others, but almost as soon as he finds Frenchie and Marlene, Morpheus is on them again. Marlene shoots at him, but his energy protects him. They run, splitting up, and Morpheus goes after Marlene. She sees a shadowy figure coming towards her and opens fire, shooting Peter in the shoulder. Moon Knight has returned to the house and has come back with a mirror, modifying Marlene’s idea of how to stop Morpheus. He sets the mirror up so it looks like the three people are hiding in the woods. Morpheus blasts at their reflected image, and while he’s distracted, MK jumps on him and starts to choke him. Morpheus passes out. Peter, knowing that he can cancel out his powers somehow, puts his hand on him, restoring him to normal, but Peter dies in the process. Sienkiewicz ends this issue with a beautiful image of a snowy field, with MK and his friends tucked into the top left corner, and then gives us a splash page of Marlene crying. This feels like the issue where Sienkiewicz starts to become his more abstract self.

Sienkiewicz is growing by leaps and bounds now, starting with an incredible cover and continuing into issue twenty-four, which features the return of Stained Glass Scarlet. A bunch of mob guys are meeting in a restaurant in the South Bronx when someone walks in and shoots them dead with a modified crossbow (it can shoot up to five bolts without reloading, which I’m confused by). The killer writes the letter ‘S’ on the wall inside a rhombus, with lipstick. As Moon Knight perches on a rooftop, he hears a waiter from the restaurant running through the streets actually yelling out ‘bloody murder’. He gets the guy’s story, then spots the crimson-clad killer running through the streets. MK realizes he’s chasing a woman, but she gets away. Detective Flint is at the murder scene when MK returns, and when he sees the ‘S’ on the wall, he realizes that he’s dealing with Stained Glass Scarlet; he doesn’t tell Flint everything he knows, but he learns who the dead guys are. MK heads to Scarlet’s church, but finds her apartment empty except for a receipt from a flower shop. He heads to the cemetery where he finds Scarlet at her son’s grave. They talk, and she reveals that she’s decided to go after the syndicate who turned her son on to a life of crime. They debate the righteousness of her mission on a page that employs a cool kind of juxtaposition, and Scarlet makes it clear that the leader of the syndicate, Manny Sindone, is the person who directly influenced her son’s life, getting him hooked on drugs and making him commit crimes to pay for them. She tells MK that she’s going to kill him that night (it’s dawn now), and asks him who he’d rather leave on the streets, Sindone or Scarlet. MK returns home, where he tries to get Marlene’s opinion on his decision, but she’s too wrapped up in her own grief for her brother to really care. When night falls, MK gets Frenchie to take him out while Scarlet gets ready to do her work. Sindone has a large house in New Jersey, and guards everywhere. Scarlet gets past the guards and looks in the window, seeing that Sindone is with about fifteen people. MK drops from the helicopter and knocks Scarlet down. Their arguing draws the attention of a guard, and Scarlet kills him, but he gets some shots off. Other guards come running, and as Moon Knight fights them, she sneaks away. She gets to the room Sindone is hiding in and kills the two men still with him. One of the guards manages to wing her, but she stays on her mission. Sindone tries to bargain with her, so she explains who she is, and uses her own blood to draw an ‘S’ on the wall. While she’s distracted by this, Sindone grabs a gun from his desk and the two are in a stand-off when Moon Knight enters the room. He chooses to support Scarlet and throws a crescent dart at Sindone, disarming him. Scarlet fires her bolt into his chest, killing him, and then jumps out the window. MK goes after her, but then decides to let her go.
Issue twenty-five was double-sized. A guy named Carson Knowles comes home from the Vietnam War to find that his wife has left him, that his job is gone, and that the only new job he can get is a low-paying delivery job. One day while making deliveries, he realizes he’s at the 32nd precinct political headquarters. He goes in to see a guy named Cranston, and we learn that Knowles’s father once held some political capital in the city, but that it’s long spent. One night, years later, Knowles learns that his son has been killed. A few years after that, Knowles finds his car stripped and ruined, gets splashed by a cab, and is almost robbed. He beats up his mugger and goes home. He reads an article about Moon Knight and decides to model himself after him, but to gain revenge on the city. He decides he also wants to be mayor. He recruits three random tough guys and gets himself a suit; he starts calling himself Black Spectre. He and his goons break into Cranston’s home to steal some documents. As Moon Knight prepares to head out for a night of patrolling, he blows off Marlene, who wants to talk to him about something. Black Spectre busts into Cranston’s office and tells him that he’s going to support Knowles’s run for mayor, or he’ll release documents that prove Cranston’s a crook. Black Spectre gives Cranston a beating while his goons trash to office. Moon Knight hears about this over the radio (one of Cranston’s guys snuck away and called for help). MK rushes in and takes out the goons, but is surprised by Black Spectre’s strength and ferocity. He manages to pull BS’s mask away and sees his face, but he also gets kicked in the head and passes out. Detective Flint is the first on the scene, and together they question Cranston about what happened. The political boss denies that anything happened at all. Back home, MK is upset that he was beaten so easily. He again blows off Marlene when she tries to talk to him. The next morning, he still feels badly, but a news broadcast catches his eye when it shows Knowles’s face. He rushes to Gena’s to ask Crawley about BS and Knowles. He heads back to Cranston’s office, where he hears him talking to someone named Gus Chiodo, another political boss, and heads towards his office. Black Spectre gets there first though, demanding that Chiodo support Knowles in the coming election. By the time Jake gets there, Chiodo is dead. Later, Marlene tries to talk to Steven, but he insists he’s still Jake. She reveals that she’s had enough of this lifestyle, and worries that Moon Knight is almost as much a monster as Marc Spectre was before she met him. She tells Steven she’s leaving him, but he convinces her to infiltrate Knowles’s organization first for him. She agrees. Steven sends Frenchie out to find Crawley for him, and while those two men share a bar on the Bowery, some guys beat Frenchie up. Jake goes to see him in the hospital where he learns that it was Black Spectre’s men who beat him. He gets a call from Marlene who has gotten a job with Knowles; she thinks he’s sincere in his efforts to improve New York. Jake starts to question himself. The next day, MK holds a press conference where he reveals that Black Spectre and Carson Knowles are the same person. The press don’t believe him, and Flint is not able to substantiate any of his claims without proof. Marlene watches this with Knowles, and after she leaves the room, he calls a police chief he has dirt on to get him to go after MK. As MK walks down the street, Flint picks him up and warns him that less scrupulous cops will be coming for him. MK gets out at Jake’s cab, and after Flint drives off, some cops attack and shoot him in the shoulder. When he returns home, he sees that Marlene is in the process of moving out (she doesn’t even care that he’s wounded). He lies in front of his Khonshu statue and vows to defeat Knowles. Later, Marlene is with Knowles as he prepares for a large political rally taking place outside the building they’re in. He tries to get Marlene to join him on the roof, but she stays, having to look for some invoices. She doesn’t like the way he speaks to her, and when she looks for the invoices in his office, she discovers his plans to cut city services and funnel money to his personal accounts. As Knowles stands on the roof, he spots Moon Knight arriving. He changes into his Black Spectre gear and attacks him. MK has put on spiked cestus, like BS wears, but it’s not enough to stop him from getting his butt kicked. BS stabs him with his sword and leaves him for dead on the roof. He tells his men to get his tux so he can go to his rally. MK is not dead though, and confronts him again. He quickly takes out his goons, and BS and MK fall through the window, landing in a spotlight below. MK addresses the crowd, unmasking Knowles. Flint tells MK it’s still not enough proof, but Marlene arrives with the papers she found. She tells MK (in front of everyone, which is kind of dumb) that she wants him back if he’ll take her, and they walk off together. Sienkiewicz has a three-page column about rejected covers for this series.

Issue twenty-six has two stories. The first is even more Sienkiewicz than the last few issues, and it’s so cool to watch him experiment. Editor Denny O’Neil references their experimentation on the inside cover. The issue opens with an expressionistic appreciation of the members of a generic jazz band, and moves into a montage of people hitting things (baseballs, a radio, a dynamite detonator) as the drummer hits his drums. Moon Knight hits the streets, swinging on his truncheon line like he’s Spider-Man or Daredevil, patrolling. In one of the buildings he passes, some guy named Joe is upset by what he’s seen in the newspaper. Crude crayon drawings over his head show a man hitting a child, and he runs out. His colleagues see that he was reading the obituaries. Joe pushes his way through a crowded street outside New York’s music clubs, and hits some random guy. It’s kind of obvious that he’s living out his childhood, but on the opposite side of it, as the crayon drawings continue. MK hears the commotion, and the musicians on the page become more punk. This Joe guy continues rampaging down the street, until he finally busts into a funeral parlor. There is a priest there (not sure why, it’s not a church) and Joe hits him before he starts beating his fists against the coffin that we now know for sure contains his father. Moon Knight enters the room and tells him to stop. Joe talks about the abuse he suffered as a child, but then he tries to get MK to hit him. At first MK refuses, but after Joe sucker punches him, he starts to get angry too, finally smacking him around some, and then laying him out. As he leaves, Marc is angry with himself for giving in to his own anger. This was visually an incredible story.
The backup to issue twenty-six is by Denny O’Neil and Keith Pollard, and it is definitely not as ground-breaking. Jake is taking a fare down a street when he has to brake suddenly for a dog. A man fires a bazooka at him from the bushes, but it hits a different cab. Later, we learn that the man who fired the bazooka is a big guy named Commodore Donny Planet (seriously), and that he’s been hired to destroy Jake’s cab. Jake returns home, goes for a swim, and then has Frenchie take him out to try to figure out what’s going on. From the helicopter, they can see a fire where another cab was destroyed, and MK decides the best thing to do is to head to a local cemetery where some crime bosses play poker in a mausoleum. He asks Frenchie to go get his cab and bring it to the cemetery entrance. He drops in on the guards protecting the game and forces his way in to the crypt, where a half dozen men play. He wants to know why someone is blowing up cabs, and Manny Zilko explains that one of his guys hid a cassette tape with important evidence in a cab before a cop shot him. The criminals have narrowed the cabs down to three, but don’t know where the tape is, so they decided to just blow them all up. Crawley is there, helping run the game, and Zilko orders him to shoot MK. MK jumps across the table and knocks his friend out (gently, he hopes), and then goes after Zilko who runs from the crypt. Zilko finds a cab and gets in, then learns that Moon Knight is his driver. MK has him take him to the pier where Commodore Donny Planet is based. MK finds the big guy and they fight (he’s really strong) for a few pages. Donny ends up in the water, tangled in a net, and MK has to dive in to save him. I guess we’ll never learn if anyone found the cassette and what was on it.
The writer Steven Grant (not the character) was joined by Joe Brozowski (long before his excellent Firestorm run) made issue twenty-seven. A string of killings have targeted NYC police, and Jake stops to ask one of his contacts, a cop, about it. He doesn’t learn much, and immediately after they part, Jake’s friend is killed. As Jake narrates, we get a clearer image of Marc’s various identities being in conflict with one another than Moench or any other writer has shown before now. Jake wants to keep Marc locked away, and instead goes home as Steven for a bit, before he has Frenchie take him out as Moon Knight to look into these killings. Moon Knight sneaks into a police station, working on a hunch that they know more about what’s been happening than they’re telling the public, disguised as a cop. He accesses a file room (he’s dressed like Moon Knight again) and finds a connection between the cases. A detective named Fulcanelli pulls a gun on him, and MK tries to convince him that they’re on the same side. He distracts him and jumps out the window, and then has Frenchie take him to see Wilson Fisk, the Kingpin. He enters Fisk’s office and fights about four guys before having a chat with the crime lord. He learns that Fisk didn’t have the cops killed, and that in fact each of them was working for him in some capacity. The Kingpin sucker punches him, and then has his men deliver him to the roof; he leaves on the copter’s ladder. A pair of cops who just left Fisk’s office follow a speeding car and radio for backup. Frenchie hears their call, but it’s not until the guy in the speeding car starts shooting at them that MK decides to intervene. He gets there as the surviving cop dies, saying something about someone named “Looey”. The gunman is behind MK, and tells him that he’s only targeting bad cops. When MK turns around, the guy is gone, but he thinks he knows who it is. Fulcanelli arrives on the scene and stops other cops from shooting MK. His partner, De Rais, also shows up and it’s clear the two men don’t much like each other. De Rais returns to the station house, where Moon Knight confronts him. Since De Rais is a lieutenant, he figures the dying man referred to him, tells him to stop killing, and disappears. Later, Marlene argues with Steven that he should have caught him, but Steven figures that he’s okay if more corrupt cops die. He gets mad that Marlene suggests he’s just like Marc. We see Fulcanelli head into “an apartment”, where he finds a package of money and then answers the phone; a voice tells him to kill his partner. Fulcanelli calls De Rais and tells him to meet him at De Rais’s place. Steven tries to call De Rais to stop him, but then Marlene notices that the phonebook reveals that Fulcanelli’s first name is Louis; Steven now thinks he’s the killer. As MK and Frenchie fly out, we realize that Fulcanelli was in De Rais’s home. Fulcanelli confronts him and accuses him of corruption. He prepares to shoot him. De Rais shoots him in the shoulder and is about to kill him when MK breaks down the door and stops him. It’s clear now that Fulcanelli was the one killing the cops, but MK calls the cops on him instead of helping him. Steen and Marlene go out for dinner and makes vague references to Marc needing to accept hard decisions. Alan Zelenetz rounds out this issue with an essay about the four helicopters we’ve seen MK use so far in this series.

Moench and Sienkiewicz are back with issue twenty-eight, which opens with Moon Knight fighting some fur thieves. Frenchie puts Marlene through to his cowl mic; she’s been offered the chance to give a lecture on her father’s archeological work in Sudan, and she asks Steven to come with her. He agrees, and the next day, they fly out together. When they arrive in Sudan, Marlene admits that her lecture is to specifically focus on the Seti Tomb, the place where Marc was reborn. They are met by Jellim Yussaf, who gets them through customs with a wave. He takes them to their hotel, on the edge of the desert (there’s a lot of assumptions made about life in Sudan, I think). The lovers seem to be enjoying their time away. Marlene goes to change for dinner, and Steven is amused to realize that he’s worn his Moon Knight suit under his clothes. Marlene screams, and tells him that someone threw a knife at her from her window. Steven finishes changing into Moon Knight and goes after the guy. At the same time, Yussaf busts into Marlene’s room (she’s only wearing her bra and underwear) and stops her from calling the police, once he knows that Steven has left. MK loses the guy, and when he sees some jackals on the edge of the desert, gets a bad feeling. He returns to the hotel to find that Marlene is gone, and the only clue is a letter K hastily scrawled on the wall by Marlene. MK figures that references Khonshu and heads into the desert in a jeep, trying to find the Tomb of Seti. He’s able to follow some tire tracks in the sand, and once he finds Yussaf’s jeep, manages to follow on foot. As he walks, there’s a lot of narration, as MK contemplates what it means to be back in this place. We see that the Tomb of Seti is much more excavated than it was before, as Yussaf insists that Marlene show him around so he can find treasure. Marlene, who is still in her underwear, is not afraid as she knows Steven will come to help her. When MK arrives at the tomb, he grabs a guard and learns that Yussaf is the leader of the Sons of the Jackal, a cult that believes Khonshu’s treasure is in the tomb. MK moves into the tomb, finding himself in the chamber where he was reborn. Marlene yells to him, and he knocks Yussaf into a wall. MK and Marlene chase after Yussaf as he moves into some confusing passageways. Yussaf drops on MK from the ceiling, and their fighting triggers a boobytrap. A large stone slab slides towards them (Raiders of the Lost Ark was pretty influential on the culture), and while they avoid it, it opens a big hole in the wall that leads to a chamber full of riches. Yussaf pushes MK and Marlene into it, and Marlene hurts her ankle in the fall. MK has landed on a massive statue of Khonshu, and he sees Yussaf dropping down on a rope. He tosses a crescent dart, cutting the rope. Yussaf is fine, and MK can’t figure out how to get down to him (he lost his truncheon in the passage above). He thinks about his options while looking at Khonshu, and suddenly a large wind comes through the tomb, giving MK enough loft for his glider cape to work. He drops on Yussaf and knocks him out. MK and Marlene leave, speculating on whether or not Khonshu helped them; the issue ends with a look at the statue in Steven’s home.
Jack Russell runs through a trainyard in Omaha. He’s being chased by three guys in tall hats marked with ‘666’, who have high-tech wrist blasters. Jack makes it into a boxcar, and when the men approach it, Jack has transformed into the werewolf and grabs the lead guy by the neck, killing him and tossing his body into the others as the train pulls away. One of the men goes to ask the man in the ticket window where the train is going, and learns that it’s headed to New York. In LA, a reporter records a segment outside a church where she explains, a Satanic cult led by Schuyler Belial, the Morningstar, is being held. Inside, Belial promises his followers that, as proof that he’s the chosen of Satan, he will produce the ‘beast of the apocalypse’ for them, but not for a little while. A couple of his followers push back based on how long he’s been making this promise, which angers Belial. His pager goes off, so he calls Asmodeus, his man following Russel, and they make plans to meet in New York. As he leaves on his private jet, he speaks to his followers and we see that they have a way of tracking Russell. Jake Lockley arrives at Gena’s, and gets a message that Moon Knight should meet with Flint. When he arrives, Flint gives him a note from Russell, asking him to meet him at his old house in Jersey before 6:00. MK rushes off in the helicopter, but as it’s getting dark, finds that Jack has locked himself in a room. Suddenly the werewolf busts through the door and gets past MK. He follows, and as the werewolf is about to take down a deer, someone shoots MK in the leg. He finds the weird wrist blaster, but is knocked out from behind. Asmodeus calls Belial over a radio, who calls him back. As the night ends, Jack Russell finds himself standing in a river. Marc comes to and finds Jack. As Frenchie approaches, they notice static over his radio. Later, Jack is at Steven’s place, and explains that Belial’s people have been after him for a year. MK suggests they call in Dr. Lawson, who owes Steven a favor. He x-rays Jack’s head and finds a homing device in his skull. As night is falling, Marlene rushes the doctor out and they strap Jack down. When he turns into the werewolf, he gets free, and Jack loses control.
Issue twenty-nine has a backup story by Steven Grant and drawn by newcomer Kevin Nowlan. Steven is home alone at night, with everyone else out somewhere, and as he ponders his cowl, he’s visited by a vision of Marc Spector. Marc demonstrates his violence, as Steven insists that Marc needs him and Moon Knight. A vision of Jake appears with a pair of children, representing the people Marc fought against as a mercenary. Marc shoots at them and then begs Steven to kill him. Steven tells him that as Moon Knight he will help pay for Marc’s sins. It’s odd to me that Steven Grant, the writer, is the one who is more explicitly addressing Marc’s multiple personalities, while Moench handles it with more subtlety.

Moon Knight tussles with the werewolf in his house, before the beast escapes and starts running towards the city. Moon Knight gives chase, and they end up on a roof somewhere, and then they both fall over the edge and get knocked out for hours. They get found by Asmodeus and his men, and taken away. Many of Belial’s followers arrive in New York and gather at his building, 666 Fifth Ave (it’s worth noting that 660 Fifth was the home of DC Comics for many years) where Belial shows them the chained up Jack Russell and Moon Knight. There’s a lot of talk, as Belial continues to make his case as Satan’s chosen. He intends to sacrifice Jack and use his blood to give them all powers. When some of the cultists take MK and Jack back to their cages, Moon Knight attacks them and manages to escape with Jack after calling Frenchie. When Belial realizes what’s happened, he has his men shoot at the chopper. Once they’re back at Steven’s, the doctor removes the homing beacon from Jack’s head. Steven places it in his games room; we see that Asmodeus is already staking out the house. Marlene takes Jack to the garage while Frenchie heads to the chopper. When Asmodeus and some other guys break into the house, MK attacks them. Marlene drives Jack to Gena’s, where MK joins them. Marlene hypnotizes Jack to give him commands to not attack Moon Knight. Asmodeus calls Belial claiming to have Jack in custody. Jack eats and chats with MK and his friends until it’s time for them to move their plan into action. When “Asmodeus” delivers Jack, it’s really MK (it was Frenchie calling in earlier), and he arms himself after letting them take Jack away. Belial prepares to sacrifice Jack, but that’s when MK uses one of the weird arm blasters to stop him. Jack turns into the werewolf and the fight is on. MK is happy to see that Marlene’s hypnotism works, and that the werewolf is fighting alongside him. Once again, everything ends up on the roof, and the werewolf throws Belial over the side to his death. As more of the cultists converge on the roof, MK gets the werewolf to grab the bottom of the chopper’s ladder and move to safety. Knowing that Detective Flint’s men are surrounding the building and coming to arrest the cultists, MK jumps and glides down to where Frenchie lets the werewolf off. They stare at each other, and then the werewolf runs off. Marc feels like it makes sense to let him go free, and we learn from Jack’s narrative that he understands that Marc helped him.
The Statement of Ownership for 1982 reports an average press run for this book of 256 000, with average newsstand returns of 116 000, which I wonder about since I didn’t think direct market books could be returned. On the back cover, Denny O’Neil reveals that Sienkiewicz has left the book and that Kevin Nowlan will be taking over. There’s a gap between Moon Knight and Sienkiewicz’s work on New Mutants, and now I’m wondering what he did in that time (is that when the Dune adaptation came out?).
Kevin Nowlan debuted as the new regular artist with issue thirty-one, and he brought Terry Austin as inker! There is a Brooklyn street gang called the Savage Studs, who are apparently shaking down shopkeepers on Dough Row because they are planning to hold a big dance soon. Their leader, Shank, has a scraggly mohawk, and they wear mostly denim vests. Moon Knight is patrolling Brooklyn because Ricky and Ray tipped him off to problems. The gang hits Dough Row just as the shopkeepers are closing up for the night; we learn that they charge protection fees, and that the store owners are not making enough to pay them. The gang surrounds a pawn shop owner named Lewis and are vaguely threatening to him. He’s surprised to see a kid named Lenny among them, because he thought Lenny was leaving the gang. When he comments that Lenny’s mother is a good woman, Shank gets aggressive. Moon Knight spots this and drops in on them, chasing them off except for Shank and Lenny. Shank threatens MK with a broken bottle, and then calls on Lenny to help him while MK slaps him around a bit. Lenny jumps on MK’s back and Shank runs off. Lewis stops MK from hurting Lenny, claiming he’s a good kid. When Lenny runs, MK goes after him, and Lenny talks about how there are no other opportunities for a kid like him. MK returns to check on Lewis, and learns that the other shopkeepers on the street have armed themselves and are going to go stop the gang. Moon Knight tells them that the police don’t appreciate vigilantes, and stares them down. He suggests they try to give the kids jobs, but none of them can afford new hires. They agree that they’ll stop paying them off, and will be firm with them. MK leaves. The Studs are at their hideout, and Lenny has to talk them out of attacking the pawn shop. Instead, he says he’ll get money from Lewis. Lenny goes home, and his mother shows him that she found the old music box she used to play when he was a child. Once she falls asleep, Lenny takes the music box and leaves. Jake goes to see Ricky and Ray, and they tell him where the Studs have their clubhouse. Lenny goes to the pawn shop to pawn the music box. Lewis tries to talk him out of selling it, and talks about how everything in his shop represents a failed dream, and how sad that makes him. Lenny gets upset, and their conversation seems to suggest that Lewis is his father. Lewis pays him for the music box, and says he doesn’t believe him when he says he’ll come back to get it later. When Lenny goes home, his mother is really upset; Lenny promises to go get the music box back for her, and we see him returning to the pawn shop.
Issue thirty-one has a backup by Steve Ringgenberg and Mike Hernandez. Jake learns from Crawley about a guy who has hired five hitwomen to help with some sort of job involving an environmental lab in a dirigible that Steven Grant helped fund. When Moon Knight goes to check it out, he discovers that it’s pumped full of Zyklon B gas, which he is exposed to. He gets knocked out from behind, and wakes up blind on the dirigible (the blindness is from the gas, which is not really true). Douglas Brenner, the guy who developed the lab, wants to show him around the vessel (even though he’s blind), and explains his plan to gas and kill everyone in New York and other cities so pollution will end and the environment can recover. MK turns off the lights and fights the hitwomen in the dark. His vision returns, and he punches Brenner, and then knocks him out. He learns that Brenner works for something called Iron Rose, and then bails out of the flying dirigible, contacting Frenchie to get him to get the air force to take care of it.

Nowlan gets joined by Carl Potts on issue thirty-two, and things look great. We get a lengthy recap of what happened last issue with Lenny, Lewis, and the Savage Studs. The day after last issue, Lenny has decided to go get his mother’s music box back from Lewis, and to deal with the consequences from his gang. He runs into them on the way, and Shank gets upset when he learns Lenny doesn’t have his money. He decides the gang should head to the shop to cause trouble. Moon Knight gets ready to head out for the night (it looked like daytime the page before, but whatever). The Studs start smashing the windows of the pawn shop and kick the door in. When Lewis comes to see what’s happening, Shank tells Lenny to rob him. Shank pulls out a switchblade and threatens Lewis. Lenny tells him to stop being crazy, and they start to fight. When Lewis tries to intervene, he gets stabbed in the chest and falls down dead. The gangsters run out, and Lenny looks at the body of the guy we’re led to believe is his father (it’s weird that he won’t acknowledge that). He runs too. Moon Knight arrives as the other shop keepers carry Lewis out of the shop (I guess no one has thought to call 911). They blame MK for letting this happen, and while he stands up for himself, MK has his own doubts. He heads to the waterfront and finds the shack where the gang hangs out. Inside, the others are telling Shank that they want out. Mk breaks down the door, and Shank and one other guy attack him. There are some glorious fight pages, as Moon Knight gives everyone a beat down. Lenny comes in and says that it was his fault, and he and Lenny walk away. Lenny asks if they can stop by the store first; he puts the cash on the counter and takes back the music box before he and Moon Knight walk down the street.
The backup story in issue thirty-two is by Zelenetz and a very new Marc Silvestri, with strong inks by Gary Kwapisz. A doctor tells a man that his brother’s cancer is inoperable. The man is angry that the doctor is so cold. Moon Knight returns home, and changes into Steven. He and Marlene prepare for a charity dinner. The man stands over his brother’s hospital bed, feeling guilty and nursing his resentment towards the doctor. That doctor is addressing the charity gala, and ignores his beeper. The man is at home nearby, holding a gun. A little while later, we see the outside of the hospital, and hear gunshots. Steven changes into Moon Knight to investigate, and gets into a pissing contest with the cops who won’t let him past. He knocks them all down, and learns that the shooting happened on the 18th floor. He climbs the stairs with his grappling hook, and finds the man sitting on his brother’s bed. He shot him to put him out of his misery. Later, the doctor doesn’t recognize his patient’s name when he signs his death certificate.
Issue thirty-three features a paper upgrade, which means it’s preserved better. A big guy with fangs and two skulls tattooed on his face sees an ad for the Daily Times that shows reporter Joy Mercado is writing about him and Moon Knight; he puts his fist through MK’s face and the side of the newsstand. Joy Mercado asks people about this guy, Druid Walsh, who has become a legend in the neighbourhood for such wild acts as throwing a piano from a roof onto a police car, and pulling down a street light to use as a club. The people she’s talking to warn her against looking for Walsh, but she’s determined. Walsh is shaking down a bartender for protection money, but he’s got a half dozen guys there to protect him. Walsh beats them all up, and then pulls apart part of the bar and throws it on them. As he leaves the bar, he runs into Joy who flirts with him and gets him to agree to go out for dinner with her. They head to the Olympus Room, a restaurant on top of a building called The Mount. She gets the Maître D to let them in despite Walsh’s appearance. Walsh realizes that she’s a reporter and is a little upset that she’s not on a real date with him. She suggests that if he’s interesting, they could continue to see one another. As she asks about his legendary stories, he debunks them all, and it’s obvious that Joy is getting bored. When some guy bumps into Walsh and comments on his smell, the bigger man picks him up and dumps him on the desert cart. He and Joy leave, and she blows him off. The next morning, Jake enters Gena’s diner where he learns that Flint called to pass on an urgent message from Joy Mercado. Crawley points out what’s in Joy’s column, and Jake figures he better go see what’s going on. Walsh gets someone to read the column to him, and as he hears about how he’s “an ignorant scapegoat for the collective yearning of our mundane society”, he is hurt. Jake arrives at the Daily Times, and calls Frenchie to come join him. Walsh hears about how Joy called him “a cheap thug”, “oafish,” and “a modern myth exploded” and storms off. Moon Knight turns heads when he enters the Times’s newsroom and learns that Joy manipulated him into coming. As they talk, Walsh storms in and yells at her. When MK tries to stop him, they fight briefly. Walsh knocks MK down, grabs Joy, and leaves. When MK gets to the street, he can’t find them, and gets Frenchie to search from above. Walsh drags Joy into an alley where he grabs a picnic basket and rifle he stowed there. He takes her back to the Olympus Room where he shoots the rifle so everyone else will leave. He talks to Joy about how he dropped out of school because he couldn’t read, and then was sent to Vietnam. When he returned, he tried to become a wrestler, and got his fangs put in, but that caused him to be fired, leaving him with no choice but to live on the street. Frenchie tips MK off to their location, and he finds Flint outside the Mount. He convinces him to hold off on sending in the hostage unit. Walsh has built a bomb and sets it to go off in thirty minutes, referencing the exploding myths comments. MK drops onto the roof of the restaurant and comes in through a window. He and Walsh fight for a while, and then Walsh picks up a plaster pillar to smash MK with. MK kicks him, causing him to drop it on himself. MK frees Joy and leads her to the window, where Frenchie has the rope ladder waiting. She starts to climb, and Walsh jumps out the window, grabbing MK, who has to grab onto the ladder. Frenchie moves them over the roof so MK can drop Walsh safely. Moon Knight tries to get him to give up, but Walsh tries to hit him again and then collapses. MK jumps as the restaurant explodes, gliding down with his cape. Later, Moon Knight confronts Joy about how she created this whole situation and is responsible for Walsh’s death; he talks about how the only myth that exploded is the one about the uninvolved reporter. It’s interesting that this is Joy’s first appearance, as I always associated her with Spider-Man and assumed she debuted in one of his titles.

Tony Isabella and Bo Hampton made MK #34. Moon Knight is pursuing someone into a closed up chemical plant. Frank, the teen he’s pursuing, jumps at him, and he tosses him into some boxes. The kid appears dope sick, and from MK’s thought bubbles, we learn he went nuts in Gena’s Diner earlier. As MK calls Frenchie to arrange medical support, the kid bolts. In a flashback, we see that Jake, Crawley, and Gena were talking about “kids these days”, and how street gangs are becoming more vicious. Gena talks about how she’s raised more kids than just Ricky and Ray, and they’ve all turned out okay. At the same time, Frank and some of the other “Raiders” come in through the back of the diner and attack, generally going on a rampage. Frank knows Gena, and while he complains about being hungry, he takes a bite out of her forearm. One of the others knocks Jake out with a board. When he comes to, he rushes to see Gena, who is being taken away by paramedics. She tells Jake that she wants Frank, whom she treated as her own child, to pay, so Jake changes into Moon Knight and goes hunting. Later, Gena is back at the diner, and she sends Crawley home so she can be alone and reclaim her space. MK enters the abandoned chemical factory, and finds a girl who appears very sick. He realizes he’s been in this factory, which smells very bad, once before as Steven. He and other investors had tried to save the place but failed, and also failed to clean the site up properly. MK descends deeper into the factory, most of which is belowground. Frenchie tells him that Frank got past the cops. We see that he’s returned to Gena’s. MK finds a bunch of very sick teens, who mention that their leader, Alcaide, has become almost like an animal. One of the kids points MK in the right direction, and he finds drums filled with something labeled “Primal Project”. This reminds him of his days as a mercenary, when Marc led some guy named Wenzel through the jungle in South America, looking for a scientist. They were attacked by some feral guy who turned out to be the man they were looking for. They found a tent with drums of the Primal stuff, which was supposed to make men docile (because of course that would be the right name for something like that). After being attacked again, they blew up the stores of the chemicals. Alcaide confronts Moon Knight, and we see that he’s been transformed almost into a werewolf. As MK and Alcaide fight, Frank goes after Gena. Gena smacks him in the face with a carafe and breaks a chair over him, while a cop rushes in to back MK up and gets an empty drum thrown into his chest. MK manages to knock out Alcaide, while Gena calls the cops. Later, Gena, Crawley, and Jake are in the diner, and she talks about how upset she is that Frank joined a gang (they’ve come to realize the kids were out of control because of Primal). She sends the two men home and locks up, before sitting in a corner by herself.
There’s a strange backup to issue thirty-four that is narrated by a Cryptkeeper-type character called Scorecard (he’s dressed a bit like a catcher in baseball). He wants to decide if MK is really making a difference through his actions. We see him stop a pair of teens wearing monster makeup to scare a Jewish shopkeeper. After MK saves the day, he shows a basic understanding of Yiddish (this is the first hint we’ve had that Marc is Jewish). At the same time, Gena talks to Ricky and Ray about how she’s been talking to her brother in Houston (it’s suggested that they’re moving). Scorecard hears good things about MK from Frenchie, Marlene, and Crawley. Detective Flint has arranged to meet MK on a corner, and MK saves him from a would-be mugger. Flint tells MK to go see the cop he rescued in the prior story. He goes to visit him in the hospital (he broke some ribs when he was hit with the oil drum), and the cop praises him. Tallying up the score, the Scorekeeper doesn’t like what he sees and walks away. This was a weird story.
Issue thirty-five was double-sized, and sold at both direct market stores and newsstands (it’s becoming obvious that this title was in trouble, sales-wise, hence the guest appearance by the X-Men). Moon Knight spots the Fly, usually a Spider-Man villain, breaking into a penthouse apartment and burgling it. As the Fly prepares to leave, MK moves to jump him from behind, but the Fly has great peripheral vision, and surprises him. He uses his powerful wings to slam MK against a wall, hurting him badly. After the Fly has left, Frenchie comes down to the terrace to look for MK, and finds him unable to stand up. Later, we see that Steven has been taken to the hospital for emergency surgery on his spine, but the doctor isn’t sure he’ll be able to walk again. In Paris, a very tall Russian girl attacks a ballerina who has defected from Russia. The tall girl has power over the wind, and because she’s angry with the defector for abandoning Russia, she sends her flying high into the air. At Steven’s place, he struggles with the physiotherapy that Marlene is taking him through; he’s worried he can’t be Moon Knight anymore. Samuels announces guests, and Gena and Crawley come to visit. They talk about Gena’s kids (as usual) and how because of the violence in New York, she’s thinking about moving to Houston. Gena prepares to leave, but Crawley hangs back to mention that he could use more work from Steven, but refuses the money Marlene tries to give him. Steven is left doubting that there’s a place for MK in his future, and goes to talk to the Khonshu statue. Steven talks about just being Steven, and decides to focus on that. Soon, he and Marlene are at the ballet theatre in Manhattan, which Steven has been bankrolling. They’ve convinced a star dancer, Sergey Valberg, to allow the media into a practice session. We see that the woman from France has slipped in as well. When Valberg starts dancing, this woman approaches him, scaring everyone except Steven and Marlene away with her wind. Valberg knows her, and calls her Bora. We learn that he was her teacher, and that after she became a mutant, grew to seven feet, and developed her wind powers, she had to give up dancing. Now she wants to kill any dancer who has left Russia. She starts whipping up winds, and dropping the temperature in the practice studio. Outside it, Marlene is unconscious, and Steven struggles to crawl across the room to help. Valberg refuses to give in to fear, and starts to dance even as the temperature continues to drop. He dies dancing, and Bora just walks away. That night, Nedda lets Marlene know that Steven is on the roof with Frenchie and Samuels, and that he’s in costume. Steven is determined to become Moon Knight again, and to go after Bora. Staring at the moon, Steven insists that he can keep fighting, and he stands on his own, wearing his cowl. The next day, as MK, he goes to visit Charles Xavier to ask for insight on Bora. Xavier suggests that she is opening portals to bring wind from her home. MK believes that Bora will strike at the ballet’s opening night, since there are four more defectors in the company. He leaves, and Xavier speaks to Colossus and Nightcrawler; together they decide that the X-Men should go to the ballet too. Frenchie flirts with Storm outside (this is the leather and mohawk era, so can you blame him?) and she disperses a storm that was setting in. The night of the ballet, Nightcrawler scans the audience and is surprised by the Thing. Ben explains that Moon Knight asked the Fantastic Four to come in case there’s trouble that he can’t handle. We see that Nightcrawler is with Xavier, Storm, Colossus, and Kitty Pryde. MK sits in a private box as the ballet begins, and doesn’t have to wait long for Bora to start blowing everyone around. Xavier stops Storm from jumping in, as does Reed for Johnny, as they both know that Moon Knight needs to deal with this himself. He draws her attention, then triggers a number of loud alarms and lights he’d had installed to help break her concentration. The FF start helping the audience evacuate, while MK tries to crawl through buffeting winds to reach Bora. Storm wants to help, which would make a lot of sense, but Xavier gets the X-Men to use their powers to help the crowd as well. Kitty phases people out through a wall. The Thing struggles to keep a balcony from collapsing, but gets help from Colossus. Bora keeps hitting MK with harder and colder winds. Nightcrawler teleports beside her, which gives MK the chance to slap a chloroform covered rag over her mouth so she falls asleep. Later, Steven is relaxing at home, and tells Marlene that he’s never going to quit again.

Behind an amazing Mike Kaluta cover, issue thirty-six is the first of the new creative team, Alan Zelenetz and Bo Hampton. The issue starts four thousand years prior, in Nubia. A necromancer named Amutef was about to sacrifice a cat when Thosbi, leading some priests of Khonshu, stopped him. They killed and mummified him, and used a pendant to keep his soul trapped in his body; Amutef was able to move his soul into the amulet (I want to mention that all these Ancient Egyptians/Nubians are white). In the present, Marlene is shown to be wearing the amulet as she and Steven attend the opening of the new Egyptian wing at a museum (Steven helped bankroll it). They notice that a guard isn’t letting Dr. Strange into the exhibit, not believing his talk of a curse. He sees Marlene’s pendant, but can’t act quickly enough to stop Amutef’s spirit from entering her body, although she just thinks she has a headache, and Steven blows him off. A cat rushes into the gallery and attacks Marlene; Steven and Marlene leave. Strange follows them from above, confirms to himself that Marlene is in danger, and recognizes another spirit inside Grant; he places a protective spell around her and goes home. At Steven’s mansion, he and Marlene talk about how he doesn’t believe in the supernatural, while acknowledging that he came back to life at the feet of a statue of an ancient god. Amutef recognizes that Thosbi is inside Steven. For some reason, Hampton has drawn MK as having a typical helicopter. He and Frenchie head out. Strange recognizes that he needs to get Steven Grant on his side to help Marlene. Moon Knight attempts to himself on some muggers in the park, but somehow gets his cape tangled in some tree branches. He still manages to stop the muggers, with a bit of help from Flint. As he walks through the park, he questions what happened with his cape; Dr. Strange arrives and tries to explain that demons possessed the trees and tried to grab him. Strange tries to explain what’s happening with Marlene, but MK is not interested in hearing what he has to say. He has a doctor examine Marlene, and the doctor suspects she has a cold. After Steven leaves in the helicopter, Amutef sends demons to attack. At the same time, Amutef, in Marlene’s body, opens the door to the terrace and finds a number of cats approaching. Dr. Strange has to help Moon Knight and Frenchie by fighting off the demons, which is not easy. MK is still suspicious of him, but Strange is insistent and finally gets through to him. They return to the mansion. At the same time, Nedda comes to complain to Marlene about all the cats turning up, and tries to protect her as the animals enter the house. MK busts through the window, and Strange uses magic to get rid of the cats. He says that Marlene’s possession is going to be permanent soon; they put her in a chair opposite Steven, and Strange starts casting spells. Amutef reveals himself, and Thosbi emerges from Steven’s body; they fight across planes of existence and all of time, until Thosbi is successful and appears to return to Steven. Marlene is fine, and as Strange leaves, Steven finally decides to believe what he’s been saying.
In Chicago, Elias Spector, Marc’s father, calls for him as he lies in a hospital bed, dying. Rabbi Davis, his student, wants to be given the right to make decisions, but the doctor insists he contact his estranged son. Marlene is working out at Steven’s place, then goes to check on him. He’s going through Marc Spector’s old files (it’s odd to me that a mercenary for hire would keep film archives of his work). As they talk about his violent past, Marlene gets a phone call and lets Marc know that his father is dying. Steven doesn’t want to go see his father. He starts to explain how his parents came to America after Hitler took over Czechoslovakia, thereby escaping the Holocaust. He was poor, and very religious. Marc thought he was weak because he wouldn’t fight back when some tough guys beat him up for being Jewish. As Marc grew older, he got into boxing, and when his father confronted him about it at a match, he knocked him down and left his house. He then signed up with the army and then became a mercenary. Marlene talks to him about how he bottles up so much hostility, and encourages him to go see his father. He heads out as Moon Knight (once again, Hampton draws them using a conventional helicopter). They spot a building on fire, and another man rushing in. It’s a synagogue, and the older man has gone in to save the Torah. MK saves them both, and thinks about how his father would have done the same thing. He sees that a swastika has been spray-painted on the synagogue door. Frenchie has tracked the people they saw leaving the fire, and MK confronts them. The men attack him, and MK fights back with a lot of force. Detective Flint arrives (Frenchie called the cops, but I’m not sure why Flint would come alone) and sees MK go so far as to threaten the one man who gave up on fighting. Flint calls him out for being so brutal, and MK walks away; he calls Frenchie to get him to call Marlene and have her book flights to Chicago. They arrive the next morning, and already Marc’s father has passed. They attend his funeral, where Rabbi Davis speaks of his father’s spirituality and morality. Marlene feels like many of the things Davis is saying could equally apply to Steven Grant. After the service, Davis doesn’t seem all that happy to learn that Marc is staying for a few days. That night, Marc feels the need to visit his father’s grave, and hops the fence of the cemetery. He comes across a few guys trashing gravestones and painting swastikas, and attacks them. Marc sprays some paint on his face to hide his identity, but needs Marlene to save him. As Marc asks the only conscious kid why he’s doing this, and learns that he’s getting paid for it, Marlene notices that Elias Spector’s grave is empty. We see a guy in a hood and robes standing over Elias’s coffin.

Issue thirty-seven has five pin-ups centring on Crawley by Bill Sienkiewicz. On each, Crawley narrates his account of how he helps Moon Knight. This issue also ends with an editorial by Denny O’Neil asking readers to share their thoughts on whether or not Moon Knight should return to newsstands. This is odd, since the next issue is the last one.
The Statement of Ownership for 1983 reports an average press run of 89 000 copies (and no newsstand returns, obviously).
The robed guy, Zohar, sits over Elias’s body babbling about truth and stuff. Moon Knight continues to investigate the theft of his father’s body, and breaks into the penthouse apartment of a mob-type named Curly. Curly knocks him off the balcony, but MK catches the edge and returns to interrogate Curly. He beats on him, but learns very little; he doesn’t know who hired him to get some kids to trash the cemetery, and he knows nothing about the body snatching. MK feels bad, and that Marlene was right; he’s too close to this case to deal with it objectively and thinks about giving up. A scholar named Mr. Weiss leaves Elias Spector’s house after having worked with Marlene to arrange Marc’s father’s papers and manuscripts, which are being donated to the seminary library. After Weiss leaves, Marlene considers Marc’s childhood. She hears something, and comes across Zohar stealing the manuscripts. He blasts her with mystical energy. Later, she explains it to Steven who gets angry. We see Zohar embracing Elias’s body and planning on getting revenge on Marc. At the seminary, Marc, Marlene, and Weiss talk about what’s happened, and Weis explains kabbalah and Jewish mysticism to Marlene, including the legends about reanimating dead bodies. Marc has a meeting arranged with Rabbi Davis; instead, it’s Zohar that meets him, but Marc realizes he is the rabbi. Marc moves to attack him, but Zohar shocks him and then dumps a stained glass window on him. Marlene is sitting in on one of Weiss’s lectures about the tetragrammaton when Zohar breaks in and demands that these secrets belong only to him. Some of the students try to fight him, but he blasts them and sets the room on fire. Moon Knight arrives on the scene, and despite hearing Marlene call to him, runs after Zohar, who has run from the cops. He enters Davis’s basement apartment, and discovers a door to the cellar. Down there, he finds Zohar. He manages to use a mirror to reflect Zohar’s blast back onto him. He unmasks him, confirming that he is Davis. That’s when his father’s body sits up and comes after him. Marc struggles with the fact that the last time they communicated, he’d punched him, and doesn’t have it in him to do it again. Marlene rushes into the room, and applying the things she learned from Weiss, erases one of the Hebrew letters on Elias’s forehead, thus returning him to death. The next day, as Steven and Marlene board an airplane, they talk about how Marlene was right about his emotions, but also how he feels like he’s come to a resolution with a number of his feelings about his past.

The end of this series came pretty abruptly, although all the signs were there. I think what really signaled the end of this book was Moench’s departure, and the shift in tone when Zelenetz took over was kind of sudden.

Moench was Moon Knight’s creator, and he shepherded him through a lot of character development and refinement, but looking at this run from the perspective of everything that came after it, I’m surprised by how much of what is central to the character now is missing.

I always thought that Moon Knight was supposed to be Marvel’s take on Batman – the rich playboy with a butler, the colour scheme that is such a contrast to the Dark Knight – but now I’m not so sure. I actually think that Moench’s take was heavily influenced by older pulp heroes like The Shadow, who relied on a network of assistants to do his job.

Because let’s face it, Moon Knight is not a particularly effective hero for most of this run. He is constantly getting beaten up or beaten down, and seems to get rescued by Marlene an awful lot. What I find odd is how little MK is able to do on his own. Unlike Batman, he needs Frenchie to fly him around, and needs Crawley (and sometimes Ricky and Ray) to tell him who he needs to target or deal with.

One thing that’s missing is a good understanding of why this support network is so supportive. Crawley got a little character arc, and Marlene’s devotion to Steven is obvious, but why is Frenchie so committed to the mission? We learn what happened to his former girlfriend, and we know that he and Marc were friends, but is that enough for him to devote his life to him? He doesn’t even get a last name in this whole run. Gena’s kids are in it for the adventure, and that’s fine, but why is Gena so devoted to this? Why does Detective Flint trust MK so much (and what’s his first name)? And why are Samuels and Nedda such faithful servants in such a crazy situation? All of these characters deserved more exploration (especially after Samuels almost got killed in the sewers).

And then there’s the multiple personality disorder angle. I got the feeling that under Moench’s control, Marc’s various identities weren’t really separate from one another, but were more a matter of convenience. He does insist on being called by the correct name depending on what guise he’s in, but I didn’t get the feeling that Jake is someone different from Steven, and each identity is working in concert, with full access to each other’s memories. There is that one point where, under Morpheus’s influence (I think that’s when it was), Moon Knight sees his other identities as separate beings that are all angry with him, but it was rare. Marlene seems very aware of how unusual this lifestyle is, but she never advocated for MK to get help or to confront reality. Maybe that’s just a product of a macho fear of therapy that was more ingrained in the 80s, but it does leave aspects of the run confusing as Marc’s life was presented.

I like the idea of him creating Steven Grant as a way of escaping Marc Spector’s past, and using the money that Marc amassed to do and fund good works is a nice twist on all the other superheroes who are basically trust fund babies. It’s not until Isabella and Zelenetz come on as writers that he starts to dig into the MPD side of things a little, but even then, it feels cautious and downplayed. (Zelenetz is also the one who seems most interested in exploring the Egyptian connection to Moon Knight’s origins, starting in his random backup stories).

Moench’s pulp approach to the character is probably a big part of why he doesn’t really interact with the rest of the Marvel Universe in his run, aside from a cameo by the Thing and a Daredevil guest spot early on. It wouldn’t make sense to have MK interacting with characters like Captain America or even Spider-Man. I like that when the Marvel universe does encroach, it’s in the form of Brother Voodoo. As the run came to its end, Isabella and Zelenetz squeezed in characters like the X-Men and Doctor Strange, perhaps in an effort to boost sales.

One thing that really limited Moon Knight from the beginning is how often his antagonists end up dead. It never seemed like Moench was working to build a stable of rogues he could draw from again and again, but he also didn’t have MK fight established characters from other titles. It’s a little surprising how often he goes up against street gangs or everyday people. At the same time, at this stage in his career, MK wasn’t really up to fighting some of the people that Spider-Man would fight (I mean, the Fly put him in surgery!). It’s an interesting choice. I noticed that early on, Moench wrote out the notion that he received some moon-based strength after being bitten by Jack Russell. At the same time, Moon Knight is definitely not an everyman hero, given that he’s rich and has multiple identities/personalities.

The main thing that we need to talk about here is Bill Sienkiewicz’s art. Sienkiewicz is easily one of the most important comics artists of the 1980s, and reading the roughly thirty issues he worked on, you can really see how much he grew in a short period of time. The early issues are handled pretty straight-forwardly, in the Neal Adams school. By the time he left the book, he was experimenting with crayon, and employing interesting perspectives and camera angles. No one was doing pages like the one where he had Marlene and MK standing over Marlene’s brother’s body tucked into one corner, while the foreground shows a single flower and a snow-covered field.

This book started to take on a cinematic quality that was so rare at that time. He also got really good at using Moon Knight’s cowl and face covering to convey emotion. It was all conveyed by the placement of MK’s eyes and the shape of his hood. It’s pretty brilliant stuff.

I feel bad for the artists that had to follow Sienkiewicz. Kevin Nowlan’s work only rarely looks like his later work, and it feels like he focused on a fluidity that was more natural than Sienkiewicz’s jagged angles. Bo Hampton is another super-talented artist whose work is solid, but is maybe a bit of a letdown after the heights this book went to.

The sense of experimentation that Sienkiewicz brought to this comic as he developed was always reflected first in the covers, even the ones that weren’t by Sienkiewicz. Once the comic started being direct market-only, the covers got stranger and more appealing. O’Neil mentions at one point that they might have been the first comic to have so many black and white covers, and that caught my eye because I hadn’t noticed it before.

This book really did seem to crash and burn, and was then replaced by another ongoing series that only lasted six issues, sadly. I don’t know the story behind all of these changes, but I figure it had something to do with the experiments the direct-only titles were undertaking, and then perhaps a miscalculation of how comics shop popularity translated into newsstand sales. I’m going to be looking at that six-issue series next, after a very short detour.

If you’d like to see the archives of all of my retro review columns, click here.

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Moon Knight #1-38 By Moench, Sienkiewicz, Nowlan & Others For Marvel Comics

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