Moon Knight Vol. 2 #1 – 6 (June – December 1985)
Written by Alan Zelenetz (#1-4), Jim Owsley (#6)
Plot by Chris Warner (#5)
Script by Jo Duffy (#5)
Penciled by Chris Warner (#1-5), Larry Hama (#4), Mark Beachum (#6)
Inked by E.R. Cruz (#1-3), Danny Bulanadi (#4), Alan Kupperberg (#5), Geof Isherwood (#6)
Coloured by Christie Scheele (#1-5), George Roussos (#6)
Spoilers (from thirty-eight years ago)
I don’t remember if the first issue of this series was my first Moon Knight comic, but I know it’s the first Moon Knight comic I remember buying. It was a first issue, at a time when those carried so much promise (not like these days, where books relaunch on an annual basis). I know I knew who Moon Knight was, but I didn’t know a whole lot about him, and I remember thinking that the redesign of his costume, with the ankh on his chest instead of a crescent moon looked really cool to me. I was ten, so everything here felt pretty new.
I also remember being really disappointed when this book didn’t make it past the sixth issue.
I’m curious to see what was actually in this series. I know I read that first issue many times, but today I don’t remember any of it, aside from it strengthening Moon Knight’s connection with the moon and the Egyptian aspects of his origin story.
So, was this book as good as I remember it? Let’s find out together.
Let’s track who turned up in the title:
Villains
- Anubis the Jackal (Ahmad Azis; #1)
- Dr. Arthur Harrow (O.M.N.I.U.M.; #2)
- Morpheus (Robert Markham; #3)
- Bluebeard (Arnold Perril; #4)
- Worshippers of the White Cobra (Virgil and David Morgan; #5)
- Mother White (#6)
Guest Stars
- Saduhl Singh (#5)
- Assassins of Sadhul Singh (#5)
Supporting Characters
- Marlene Alraune (#1-4)
- The Priests of Khonshu (#1-6)
- Frenchie (Jean-Paul; #1, 5)
- Dr. Victoria Grail (#2)
- Spence (#3-5)
- Lieutenant Flint (#3-4)
- Kate Brick (#4)
- Eric Fontaine (#4)
- Lynora Goode (#6)
Let’s take a look at what happened in these books, with some commentary as we go:
- I’m surprised to see that it was an entire year between the end of the first volume, and this second one, which was tagged “Fist of Khonshu”. It opens with a few pages that recap, with a little more detail, Moon Knight’s origin. We see Marc Spector crawling through the desert and being taken into the Tomb of Seti, where Marlene recognizes him as working for Bushman. Marc dies, the statue of Khonshu standing near him appears to glimmer, and he is restored. He takes the cloak off the statue and says he has work to do to gain vengeance. As he leaves, we see that someone in Egyptian garb is watching. We see how Marc became Moon Knight, and how after his father’s death (as we saw at the end of Volume 1), Marlene convinced him to live just as Marc, giving up the identities of Steven Grant and Moon Knight (and presumably, Jake Lockley who is not named). Now, in the present, Marc runs an art gallery in Paris (called Spector) where he’s arranged to auction off the Khonshu statue. A Texan who wants to buy it is gassed by a man with a jackal-headed cane. A different man, holding the cane, bids four million for the statue. In New York, Marc and Marlene are hanging out at the pool of a club. Marlene seems very happy, but Marc wants to know who the anonymous buyer of the statue is. We see this buyer – Sheikh Ahmad Azis, who lives on a private island off of Kuwait. As Marc sleeps, he dreams that Khonshu floats above him, showing him the symbol of the jackal and saying that it is evil. When he wakes up, Marlene is not too happy to learn that he continues to see the statue out his window. The statue arrives on the island, and Azis walks through a recreation of an Egyptian temple. He puts on a jackal head and calls himself Anubis the Jackal; he intends to destroy Khonshu’s statue so the god can no longer defend mankind. Marc leaves New York for Egypt, and Marlene kind of delivers an ultimatum. They argue and she storms off. A guy with a jackal cane approaches, and Marc knocks the cane away as it releases its gas. The guy runs from Marc, and jumps through a window, swearing “death to Khonshu” as he dies. Marc arrives in Egypt and drives through the desert, discovering an untouched cave that is also a temple. He finds a door marked by an ankh, and when it opens, discovers three old priests of Khonshu, who want him to recover the statue. They call him the Fist of Khonshu and open a trunk that contains a new costume and some ancient weapons for him. There is an ankh that glows when he’s in danger, a boomerang (did Egyptians use boomerangs?), wristbands, scarab darts, throwing irons, a lasso-grapple, and bola. When he puts on the new costume, the ankh replaces the crescent moon on his chest, and his belt, wristbands and ankle bands are gold. Warner draws his mask so that we can see his facial expressions. He leaves the cave, which disappears, changes his clothes, and drives off into the desert. Some men on camels attack him, but when it’s clear he’ll defeat them, they kill themselves with cyanide capsules. A phone call to Frenchie, who is cavorting with a woman in Paris, reveals the buyer of the statue, so Marc sails to Kuwait. He arrives on the island in daylight and is immediately attacked. He decides to retreat but his boat is destroyed. He does a good job of fighting but there are so many attackers and soon he is captured. He wakes to find himself wrapped like a mummy and lying on an altar, with the black-wrapped statue of Khonshu standing nearby. Anubis explains that he was the brother to Seti, and was buried alive in his tomb. When Marc was revived, so was he, and he searched out the statue of Khonshu to destroy it. He demonstrates that he has ruby lasers in his mask (this is getting very Stargate), and he begins a ceremony. Khonshu speaks to Marc, telling him that he is stronger in a full moon, and so our hero breaks his bonds and attacks. He fights his way through Anubis’s men as the winds pick up. In a storm, Anubis misses MK, but gets him on the ground. As his laser eyes warm up for another blast, he hits him with his ankh. Anubis tosses his broken headpiece, and his false tomb collapses around him, crushing him. Marc sees Khonshu’s statue start to glow, and there is a huge cyclone. Marc finds himself alone with the statue; Anubis’s whole complex is gone. He lifts his satchel full of weapons and accepts that he is in Khonshu’s debt again.
- In the forests of the Yucatan, three men covered in wires and electrodes bring two prisoners to an old temple. An American with a half-paralyzed face meets them and accepts the new test subjects. Marc is at a jazz bar in New York, hoping to find Marlene, who has been ducking him. He watches a tough guy hit on and harass a woman, and goes to break it up. He ends up pushing the guy through the window and into the river, and has to go into the water to save him. Marc’s impressed with how strong he is now when the moon is out. As he climbs up to the pier the jazz club is on, he spots Marlene, but she runs from him. He chases the cab she got in with his car, but is interrupted when the Priests of Khonshu contact him with a mission. He sees the guy in Mexico, someone strapped to a table, and a woman’s face. We see that Marc is in Mexico, not sure what he should do next when the woman from his vision walks past him. While he sneaks off to change into Moon Knight, she is abducted by two guys. MK jumps on their van and frees her. They share some Alice in Wonderland themed banter that is kind of forced, and we learn that her name is Dr. Victoria Grail, and that she’s there investigating Dr. Arthur Harrow for the medical journal she works for. She suspects that his work, which is supposed to be on jaguars and armadillos is more likely based on human experimentation. She thinks he’s continuing the experiments conducted at Auschwitz, and wants to stop him. We see Harrow at his lab, where he experiments on one of his new subjects. He’s working at blocking pain, because his face hurts him a lot, and has a bit of a breakthrough. He gets a call from his boss; he’s involved in a group called O.M.N.I.U.M., and they think that he’s been discovered and are sending a robot-plane to evacuate him that evening. In New York, Marlene works out in the apartment she’s house-sitting in, and she ponders how to make things work now that she’s left Marc. She doesn’t have a lot of her own money (he didn’t pay her for managing his companies?), and decides she has to ignore her pride and go back to someone named Jules (she also refers to herself as ‘Fontaine’, which is the last name she had in her first appearance, but she was always referred to as ‘Alraune’ after that, so that’s weird). Moon Knight and Grail break into Harrow’s lab, which is no longer inside a temple. Harrow releases a Jaguar, which MK takes down. He throws a desk through a hollow wall and discovers a staircase that leads to Harrow’s lab. A half-dozen of his zombified test subjects prevent MK from stopping Harrow’s escape. Grail reminds him not to hurt them, and the two make their way to a locked door. MK rips it off the wall and they rush into a corridor (we see from an external shot that they’re now in a temple again). Harrow makes it to the top, where a helicopter (not the robot-plane that was promised before) comes to pick him up. He tosses a bomb, but MK gets Grail out of the way. They recognize that he got away but at least his work has been exposed. They kiss. Later, Harrow reports to his boss, who is sending him to Paraguay to continue his research, and the guy makes vague threats against Moon Knight.
- At a psychiatric ward, a nurse realizes that Robert Markham is not getting the correct medication. At just that moment, he turns back into Morpheus (who we were told was cured in his last appearance in Volume 1) and uses his ebon energy to kill her. He does the same to some guards, seals off the ward, and recruits four other patients to serve him. Marc bikes around his Long Island neighbourhood before returning home and talking to Spence, the guy who is the director of acquisitions for his art galleries, and who is apparently from Alaska and has a husky with him. Marc gets a phone call from Marlene – it just so happens she’s gone back to school for social work, and is working at the same hospital Morpheus has taken over. Marc rushes off, making an excuse to Spence, and thinks about how saving Marlene might win her back to him. The priests of Khonshu appear to him to admonish him for being selfish. He feels chastised. Morpheus confers some of his power to his followers, which Marlene watches happen. She decides she has to act and tries to sneak up on him, but is discovered and taken hostage. He says he’s going to sacrifice her on his altar (he thinks he’s a god now). Detective Flint has been promoted to Lieutenant (still no first name for him though), and Moon Knight approaches him. He tells him that Morpheus is on the top floor, and that the mayor has told the cops to not shoot anyone. They see that Morpheus has Marlene at the window, and Marc insists on being allowed to go in. Flint gives permission and a tear gas canister. Marc scales the hospital, and upon entering finds one of the patients who makes him think he’s in a war zone. Marc remembers the deal with Morpheus’s powers and doesn’t believe what he sees, but a woman he mistakes for Marlene hits him with a hammer. Morpheus carries Marlene to the roof so he can sacrifice her at midnight. Marc thinks one of the patients is huge and is crushing him, but another makes him see a tunnel with worms or something. He pops the tear gas as the police storm the ward. Flint has with him a doctor who carries a drug that would put Morpheus to sleep. Marc heads up to the roof using his grappling hook, and as Morpheus lifts Marlene into the air with his ebon energy, Marc throws his darts, which have been covered in the medicine. Only one hits, and doesn’t take immediate effect. Morpheus blows Marc off the roof, but he manages to catch the edge and climb back up. Morpheus falls unconscious, and Marc comforts Marlene. Later, they go out for dinner together, and as Marc tries to get her to move back in with him, she reveals that she has decided to return to her ex-husband Eric. From Marc’s face, it doesn’t look like he knew that guy existed. Also, if her ex’s name is Eric, who is the Jules she thought about last issue?
- Some guy dressed a bit like a pirate, calling himself Bluebeard, drags a woman into a castle where he has three other women chained to posts. He uses his keys to control her mind, and tells her that once he has a fifth bride, he’s going to kill them all. Lieutenant Flint, some cops, and a reporter named Perril are in an apartment talking about the woman’s abduction. Moon Knight enters after the reporter leaves, because Flint has been looking for him. He shows him an article from the New York Metro, which MK dismisses as a ‘rag’ (but thinks about how he’s friends with Kate Brick, the publisher). It’s about the Bluebeard abductions, but Marc says that he’s not available for random crime fighting anymore, and he leaves. Marc thinks about how he has to make himself available to the Priests of Khonshu, and knows that he can’t afford the time to become a general purpose vigilante; he also knows that this is why Marlene left him. The next day, Peril lets Brick know that he got another letter from Bluebeard, and is working at writing up the article about it. We learn that Brick was going to fire Perril when Bluebeard started writing to him. Marc works out, and thinks about Marlene. Spence joins him, and shows off how fit he is. Brick is getting ready to go to Marc’s art auction (she’s thinking about buying a Van Gogh, which was probably a lot cheaper when this came out than it would be today) when Bluebeard comes to her door. Marc has a vision of the Priests, and realizes that Brick has been taken by Bluebeard. He heads to her apartment, where Flint fills him in. Moon Knight goes to a thug bar for information, and learns about Perril’s articles. He breaks into Perril’s apartment and discovers that he’s already received more letters from Bluebeard, dated days in the future. He also figures out where his castle is based on a poster on the wall. He heads to an abandoned amusement park in the Jersey Palisades, where Bluebeard is about to behead Brick. Moon Knight shows up and knocks his axe out of his hands. Bluebeard uses his keys to control Marc, but he’s able to still throw a dart and disarm him. He fights Bluebeard, and when he knocks him out and knocks off his beard, Brick recognizes him as Perril. She explains that he’d written some science articles about neuron rays, and she fired him, but he got the Bluebeard letters so she kept him around. Now she realizes that neuron rays are real, and are in his keys. The next day, Marc goes to see Marlene at her ex-husband, Eric Fontaine’s house (this finally explains why Marlene has had two last names in her history). She’s surprised to see him, and she introduces him to Eric, who is in a wheelchair.
- In Chicago, a young girl is snatched off the street. Somewhere in India, an old man tells his three followers that their enemies, the Worshippers of the White Cobra have turned up in Chicago; he sends his gun, his fist, and his blade to go kill them. Marc is holding a party at his mansion to celebrate opening a new branch of his art gallery, and Frenchie (whose name is spelled incorrectly, as is colourist Christie Scheele’s, in the same way on the first page) asks why Marlene left him, but Marc can’t talk about that in front of Spence. Instead, he goes for a walk with a woman he’s just met, but as he starts to flirt with her, the Priests of Khonshu appear to him, and the woman thinks he’s crazy for yelling at something that isn’t there. The Priests give Marc a vision of Chicago, some children, and the masked assassins. In Chicago, those three assassins arrive at the offices of Morgan and Morgan. One of the Morgan brothers is in his office, and the assassins call him a White Cobra murderer, sharing they were sent by Saduhl Singh to kill him. They attack, killing his guards, and when it’s clear that Mr. Morgan won’t say where his brother is, they kill him. More guards come and shoot two of the assassins. Fist is killed immediately, while Blade commits suicide. The third escapes out the broken window, and the other Morgan brother arrives. He reveals that the assassins are women and is upset that one escaped. Marc has arrived in Chicago and gets to the Morgan and Morgan building in time to see the crowd and emergency services responding to what happened. He learns that the two dead women were carrying saris as their bodies were brought outside (which makes no sense), and he runs off. Later, we see a woman in a sari return to her hotel room, only to find Moon Knight waiting inside for her. They talk, and he reveals he knows who she is. She explains that the Morgan brothers are immortals who extend life by killing children, and that she’s been sent to stop him. MK challenges her on all the other deaths that happened, and she asks him about the master he serves, which causes him to pause. She attacks and escapes, and Moon Knight figures she’s returning to kill the last Morgan brother. He rushes into the building, following a trail of bodies. David Morgan prepares his ritual, with four drugged kids laid out before him to sacrifice. He figures he’ll gain more energy from them now that his brother is dead, but Gun interrupts him, holding a gun to his head. MK knocks it out of her hand with his boomerang, and they fight. Morgan shoots at MK, but he kicks him, and the crushes the gun with his foot. He tells Gun that he’s there to save lives. The authorities arrive, and while they take Morgan and Gun into custody, Morgan realizes that he’s missed his midnight deadline, and he crumbles into dust. Gun grabs a cop’s gun and says that she could have saved so many lives by just delaying both Morgans, and shoots herself in the chest.
- There’s a Statement of Ownership for 1985 in this issue, but it doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. It lists Moon Knight as having an average press run of 323 000, but also says that the issue closest to the filing date only had a press run of 64 000, which makes me wonder what the upper end must have been. Also, since this comic was so new, was this just based on the first two or three issues? It also reports average newsstand returns of 184 000, with none returned on the latest issue to the filing date. I’d like to know more about what these numbers mean, as they are strange to me.
- I’ve always loved the cover to issue six, which depicts Moon Knight in his non-ankh costume outside of a church as snow falls. It has nothing to do with the comic inside, but it’s a beautiful piece of Bill Sienkiewicz art. Then you open the comic to learn that Moon Knight is on a Caribbean island for the whole issue! What surprised me, reading this for the first time in at least thirty years, is that Christopher Priest, then still going by Jim Owsley, wrote the issue! Priest is probably my favourite superhero writer, and this issue leaves me wondering what a 1980s Priest Moon Knight series could have been like. Anyway, Moon Knight is on this unnamed Caribbean island, staking out Mother White’s Pancake House. Inside, four men give Mother White her ‘skag’, and ask to partake of the sacrament with her. Moon Knight (wearing the ankh costume, but with gloves now) breaks through the window and starts to fight the men. A kid dressed only in his underwear comes running out of the basement, and Mother White starts shooting with an M60. MK scoops up the kid and runs out, bumping into a woman as she walks in. The woman tells Mother White she sent her report, and is rewarded with some skag. MK returns the child to his home in the slums. MK goes to find a phone to call ‘Frenchy’ (the editing is so bad on this series) to get information on a car he saw. The woman we saw, who carries a gun, shoots up the heroin in the bathroom of her very nice apartment. She finds Moon Knight in her living room; he identifies her as Lynora Goode, a US customs special agent who protects Mother White from her bosses in return for drugs. The local cops talk to Mother White, and after they leave, we notice that she has vampire teeth. Lynora talks to Moon Knight about how stopping Mother White won’t make any difference, because someone else will start doing the same thing the next day. She asks Marc to spend the night with her, which he refuses, and when she asks how he learned about this situation, he remembers the Priests of Khonshu coming to him with it, but doesn’t share it. The next morning, Lynora goes to see White, who knows she had MK in her place. She goes to see Marc, who is standing around in a trenchcoat, and he confronts her for selling him out. He tells her to leave, and is confronted by three of White’s men. He quickly changes into his MK stuff and fights them, but is knocked out and taken away (I guess we’ll just ignore the fact that these vampires are out in the daytime). Back at home, Lynora struggles with what she did and smashes her apartment. Moon Knight is chained up in the basement of the pancake house, and Mother White stands over him in a robe, ready to take her sacrament. She reveals that she and her “sons” deal narcotics so they can pay off the police to ignore the fact that she abducts children. Lynora comes in holding her gun, asking for the key to let MK go. He says something about the full moon and takes four panels to break the chains, during which time White grabs Lynora’s gun. MK knocks over the brazier that provided the only light in the room, and then takes out White’s men (he doesn’t notice that one of them flees). White grabs her M60 and starts shooting; MK knocks her down a hole. She keeps shooting, and Lynora points out that the gas main is down there so they flee as the building explodes. Later, Marc is at the airport getting ready to leave when he hears on the TV that one suspect escaped the Pancake House fire. Lynora is at her place, throwing out her last syringe of ‘skag’ and choosing to get her life on track and her daughter back. That last one of White’s men busts in and shoots her. Moon Knight arrives, scaring the guy, and he jumps out the window.
It’s weird that I remember being enamored of this run as a kid, because I did not really enjoy it very much at all, and I’m left with so many questions, chief among them being, why was this only six issues? At the end of the first volume, Denny O’Neil hinted that they were relaunching the series to be able to provide it to newsstand as well as direct market customers, and that might explain the move away from so much of what kept the original book in a darker, more rarefied corner of the Marvel Universe. But what happened to end the book so quickly?
It’s interesting that of the six issues, there was only one letters page, and it didn’t contain any information about the book. Then the writer left after four issues, and we got two more issues that didn’t touch on the supposedly shocking ending of issue four, and that was it until Moon Knight joined up with the West Coast Avengers and none of his storylines continued.
So let’s break down a few things that were curious about this run. I think the biggest thing to discuss is the way that Marc seemed to integrate all of his other identities, or ignore them. From his run in Hulk!, the focus on what made Moon Knight stand apart was that he had either multiple personality disorder, or he just adopted different identities as his needs required. So, ex-mercenary Marc Spector spent most of his life as big money guy Steven Grant, and that’s who Marlene was in a relationship with. When he needed to tap into his network, or cruise the city for information, he was Jake Lockley, the cabbie.
In this book, he’s just Marc Spector, all the time, even when he’s Moon Knight. And most curiously, Marc Spector runs an international collection of art galleries? It is a very out-of-character turn for Marc, and doesn’t make a lot of sense.
I like the idea that Marlene left him when he took up the Moon Knight mantle again, even though at the end of the last run, she seemed to be encouraging his vigilantism. Now she wants nothing to do with him, to the point that she runs when she sees him. It’s very curious that we discover she has an ex-husband, and that she “decides to go back to him” to help her get over her relationship with Marc (I don’t know when his feelings came into this). I guess it was supposed to be a big deal that he’s in a wheelchair, but maybe we’ll never know what’s up with that. When Zelenetz left the book, it looks like he took Marlene and her ex with him.
Frenchie gets very little space in this run, and when he does show up or get mentioned, his name is often misspelled. There is no helicopter in this book, so he’s no longer Marc’s pilot, and I guess they’ve become friends? He’s not really a presence in this book at all.
Gena, Crawley, Ricky, Ray, Samuels, and Nedda, the people that were developed as Jake’s support network or Steven’s servants are all nowhere to be seen in this run (Samuels’s name does get dropped once). Instead, we have Spence, a guy from Alaska (he might be Inuit?) is Marc’s new buddy, although he doesn’t know about Moon Knight, and is also the guy really running the galleries. He’s never really developed, so he doesn’t matter. At least Flint shows up, although he still doesn’t have a first name.
A really big change in this run, that I kind of like, is the way the Priests of Khonshu provide MK with his missions. He seems annoyed by it, but there wasn’t time to develop that. Instead, these presumably immortal priests of an ancient god who live in Egypt kept sending him out for missions in his neighbourhood (aside from the trips in the issues Zelenetz didn’t write). The connection to Khonshu, and the inclusion of a raison d’être for Moon Knight was welcome, I just wish it had been developed more. I’m not sure if it was ever explained why he stopped getting instructions from them in later runs.
I do like aspects of the new Moon Knight costume too. I thought the ankh on his chest looked cool, although I think it also makes him less Moon Knight and more a different character, so I was pleased to see that done away with. The ancient weapons are cool, but I’m not sure that Egyptians used boomerangs, and that seems kind of lame too. I like the look of the scarab darts he threw, but like the ankh, they move him off-brand.
There were two things that really bothered me about the costume, or how it was drawn. I hate that he didn’t wear gloves (except for issue six, or where there were colouring mistakes). It makes no sense that he’d be covered head to two, yet have his hands exposed.
I also hated the way his face mask was drawn. During the Bill Sienkiewicz days, his face was often kept in shadows, with only his eyes showing in an abstracted way because of his mask. Somehow, Sienkiewicz, Nowlan, and the other artists conveyed a lot of emotion through those eyes, and it helped make MK someone to be feared by criminals. It really looked cool.
In this run, his face is covered in white, but all of his facial features are shown. It makes him look like The Spectre more than Moon Knight, and it just generally irritated me as the book progressed.
I do like the art in this book. Chris Warner is a cool artist, whose attention to detail in his art is praiseworthy, even if it makes his action sequences look a little stiff at times. I always think of how much better his art would look in a larger format, like a European-sized comic, where we could look at some of the details more closely.
I have infinite respect for Denny O’Neil, whom I think is one of the most important writers in comics in the 80s and 90s, and who did so much to shape many series through his editing, but in this book, it’s clear he was not paying a lot of attention. There were art errors (like the disappearing gloves), and a lack of consistency in character’s names and their spelling. It’s all little stuff, but it helps explain why Zelenetz’s issues were not as exciting as they could have been, and how there was a general stiffness and lack of vision to this run.
Is that why it got axed? Was it just that no one cared all that much? I gladly would have kept buying this book at the time, and knowing that Priest wrote the last issue makes me wish he’d gotten a year with it, or more.
After this book died (I’ve noticed that it’s sometimes referred to as a miniseries, but there is no evidence within it that this was ever the plan), Moon Knight went to ground for a while, before he turned up in the West Coast Avengers (check the archive link to read my thoughts on that series). I remember that Frenchie was back as his pilot then, and the moon-themed helicopter was back in the mix. As well, he had the crescent moon back on his chest, but kept the golden belt and arm and ankle bands from this run. After everyone realized that he didn’t really belong on the Avengers, he got his own book again, which I bought for a few years, but remember very little of now. We’ll look at it next time (at least until it got really 90s and I dropped it, but I might fill in the gaps in my run if I enjoy it).
If you’d like to see the archives of all of my retro review columns, click here.
