On the day of Moon Knight #10âs publication, the second episode of the Disney+ show will air. The first episode introduced one of superhero comicsâ most bizarre and fascinating characters to a massive audience. Many of Marvelâs recent movie offerings feel the need to acknowledge directly how silly its subject matter is, apologize for it, and, if possible, move away from it, all while offering unfinished CGI, gray masses of bodies in weirdly lit fields, and in-movie commercials for the next installment. The Marvel TV Shows have had a better time of it; WandaVision was allowed to be a tiny bit experimental, was allowed to be a tiny bit weird, at least in its first few episodes, and Loki was allowed to approach comic book nonsense without too many winks. Moon Knight started, I think, as the strongest of all them yet, and others seem to agree. It didnât just have meta-banter; it had real jokes. When Oscar Isaac mumbles to Ethan Hawke that heâs heard of Avatar, yeah, he remembers, itâs the one with the blue people, oh wait, maybe he meant the animeâ heâs not quipping at the camera, but rather neurotically failing to talk his way out of a situation. It also plays the horror of Steven Grantâs situationâ not knowing what parts of his life are realâ straight. Moon Knight himself is allowed to be grotesque. If the series continues with this approach, it should be a lot of fun.
This isnât a review of the second episode or the television series (no screeners for me, alas), but it remains the most important context for this comic book. Likely the comic only was allowed to exist because of the existence of the tv show; if the book finds a wider audience than the ultra-niche, tiny group of American Direct Market comics readers, or if this essay finds a wider audience than the even tinier crowd of people who read obscure fansites devoted to American Direct Market publisher comics, it will be because the television show has boosted this article in some algorithm. A search engine will look for things mentioning Moon Knight, Marvel Comics, Khonshu, Steven Grant, Marc Spector, and so on and so forth, and it will, possibly, find this article.
But I donât want to try to speak to that wider audience here, or persuade them to read this comic. After 14 years of the MCU, it has become very clear that the vast majority of people who enjoy those movies and tv shows, even the vast majority of the super-fans, the ones that build their sense of self on their consumption of the Disney Corporationâs entertainment products, are not willing to read a comic book. It doesnât matter how good the comic is; it doesnât matter how accessible the comic is; it doesnât matter how easily one might access that comic. Moon Knight watchers will not become Moon Knight readers. Perhaps this is due to an aversion to reading in general; perhaps this is due to an aversion to any stories not in canon with the universe one loves. I wonât criticize MCU fans for either of these faults, given how common they are among comic readers too.
No, Iâm talking about the TV Show because I expect, even if Episode 2 exceeds the success of Episode 1, the publication of that episode and of this issue on the same day only serves to emphasize how much more interesting and how much more fun these comics will always be compared to their mainstream counterparts.
This is the comicsâ Moon Knightâs status quo: the fist of Khonshu imprisoned that god for crimes against the cosmos. Moon Knight remains in service to the ideals of his religion even while he rejects the religionâs god, vowing to protect all travelers by night. In service to this, he has opened a detective agency, where he works with a vampire, a deradicalized HYDRA agent, and a sentient house. His supporting cast is rounded out by Tigra, an Avenger/Cat Lady, and Hunterâs Moon, the other fist of Khonshu. His primary villain is Zodiac, who creates the constellations of plot across which the Moon Knight proceeds. Oh, and heâs got a therapist, who functions as a framing device and partial narrator, who is an expert in the neurology and psychology of human beings whose minds have been touched and altered by gods, aliens, or other higher powers.Â
Moving quickly, you could probably read these 10 comics in the same time it would take you to watch the first two episodes of the tv show. In that time you would experience not only the establishment of the above status quo, but multiple individual stories and at least one larger story arc. Youâd get to see Moon Knight offer a haunted house a job. Youâd follow the Hunterâs Moon as he tracked down a rogue myth, a legend that was promising to evolve into a new god. Throw in the Devilâs Reign tie-in, and youâd get to see Moon Knight enter what is, functionally, a pro-wrestling prison tournament.
If youâre a long-time fan of the character, you also get to see stories from classic runs take new interesting turns (e.g. the rogue myth), you get to see recent character arcs extended (e.g. Marc finally working on his mental health with a therapist), and you get to see the influence of the wider shared universe (e.g. the Devilâs Reign issue). The MCU isnât really designed for any of this; it hasnât existed long enough for a pull into old material, it tends to drop or repeat character arcs as plans shift between one movie and the next, and stories canât be happening simultaneously, or else one might split the audience. The closest the MCU has gotten to approaching Comic Book Continuity is No Way Home, a movie which, rather than consider what interesting stories might be told with characters from the past, primarily is constructed in reverse, looking for a story in which the appearance of past characters might be justified.
Thus far, this volume of Moon Knight has exemplified everything I love about comics. It asks questions like âWait, if Moon Knight is âThe Fist of Khonshuâ– arenât there normally two fists?â or, âIf human beings really could get visions from godlike beings, how would that affect their brains?â or, âIf a haunted house is sentient, couldnât you do things like hire it for a job?â It juxtaposes extremely thoughtful genre fiction about the creation and evolution of myth with moments where a guy in a moon costume beats up another guy in a different moon costume with a baseball bat. Moon Knight #10 continues what weâve seen in previous issuesâ he meets with his therapist and encounters a new challenge from Zodiacâ but much of what we see is new. As the characters note on the first page, this is an issue of change. A character is added to the supporting cast, one whose mind mirrors Marcâs, though he was broken by something human rather than divine. A threat rises up not from Moon Knightâs past but a strange, grotesque, obscure corner of another heroâs continuity. Most importantly, the line between the frame narrative and the central narrative begins to break. The familiar rhythms of the book have shifted, and what comes next is uncertain.Â
I like intensely psychological fiction, intensely theological fiction, weird and silly superheroes, noir stories, and detectives. I was always going to love Moon Knight, but what really elevates the character for me is how all these aspects unite to create strange stories about trust. Grant, in the Moon Knight pilot, quickly learns that he canât trust his own knowledge, memory, or even basic sense of time, while at the same time his survival depends on trusting the same things responsible for that uncertainty. In this volume of Moon Knight, weâve seen the character divorce his trust in his god with his trust in the principles that god upheld; weâve seen characters learn to trust him and vice versa; weâve seen his attempts to trust himself, and others attempt to prey upon Marc Spectorâs difficulty with this. Moon Knight #10 is a story about decisions Marc makes concerning who to trust, but what makes it a truly fascinating point in this run is how it turns on the reader trusting aspects of the narrative, like how the reader has learned to trust that this story structurally will function each issue in certain ways.
Comics, and superhero comics, have made moves like this before. Itâs the kind of shift that lands best in a longform serial story that the show likely couldnât (or shouldnât) try without running for years. Maybe, maybe, a structural twist could work in one of the Marvel movies, as they function as one ongoing serial, but no single property has had enough entries to mark out its own specific rules and rhythms. With the decision to refrain from recasting and to reject any kind of sliding timescale, I donât think weâre ever going to see any Marvel movie achieve the kinds of things you see in any modern issue of Moon Knight, or, hell, in any random issue of Marvelâs publishing line. Moon Knight is one of the best comics Marvel is publishing right now, but it is taking advantage of strengths inherent to the medium, the genre, and the setting as a whole.
This is why I wanted to talk about Moon Knight #10 within the context of Moon Knight on Disney+. If you devote enough time and money to a shared universe on the screen, youâll be able to tell some fun stories; but the possibilities are always, no matter how much money Disney spends, no matter how much content they churn, no matter how dominant they become a monopoly, always limited, compared to what stories you can find in the funny mags. Theyâll never reach those stories just grounded in four colors, newspaper print, and 83 years of history.
Of course, it doesnât matter; thatâs the other reason why I wanted to write about this issue in this context. Moon Knight the show could descend into the trash heap of television, become one of the worst stories to ever air, while Moon Knight the comic could revolutionize the entire medium of comics, and it wouldnât matter. The Direct Market audience might grow slightly; the Disney+ subscription base might shrink slightly; our cultural landscapes would remain roughly the same.
Oh well. Maybe the Hunterâs Moon will show up in season 2. Wouldnât that be neat?
Robert Secundus is an amateur-angelologist-for-hire.
