“Marvel Epic Collection Moon Knight: Bad Moon Rising” by Doug Moench, David Anthony Kraft, Bill Mantlo & Steven Grant with Roger Slifer & John Warner

            The following is a review of “Marvel Epic Collection Moon Knight: Bad Moon Rising” written by Doug Moench, David Anthony Kraft, Bill Mantlo & Steven Grant with Roger Slifer & John Warner and not the “Moon Knight” series on Disney+.

            Marc Specter was a mercenary, a soldier-for-hire. He was associated with Bushman, a terrorist-for-hire on one of his missions in Egypt. Bushman took an action that Marc did not approve of and turned against Bushman. Bushman in return left Marc to die. Marc died in front of an edifice of the Egyptian God of the Moon, Khonshu. Khonshu, in return, restored Marc to life as Khonshu’s right fist. Marc was found by Frenchie, his helicopter pilot and associate, and the two formed a partnership. This also caused a split in Marc’s personalities, creating three new identities. One is Steven Grant, the millionaire who found love in the form of Marlene Fontaine. Another is Jake Lockley, the cab driver who frequents Gena’s Diner to gather information from a man named Bertrand Crawley, who hears a lot about the goings on in New York City. The third is the Moon Knight. The four identities switch at points when they are needed. Moon Knight is armed with crescent darts, a truncheon that doubles as nunchakus and a glider cape, with a cowl-mic linking him with Frenchie who brings Moon Knight to where he is needed and provides extractions, Steven constantly paying for upgraded flying transportation.

            On Marc’s first mission as Moon Knight, he was tasked with capturing young Jack Russell, a werewolf. Jack had injured his hand, and was not in prime fighting form during the abduction, and Moon Knight’s weaponry being made of silver did not help the Werewolf by Night as werewolves are weak against silver. During the battle, Werewolf by Night bit Moon Knight, not turning Moon Knight into a werewolf as Jack Russell’s werewolf curse was mystical and hereditary, but enhancing Moon Knight’s abilities during the full moon.

            As Moon Knight’s reputation grew, he found himself facing new villains, such as the Conquer- Lord, goading Moon Knight into battle after abducting Marlene and attempting to take down the mayor of New York City, engaging Moon Knight into a dangerous game of living chess.

            Moon Knight formed a temporary association with the superhero “non-team” consisting of the Valkyrie, Kyle Richmond/Nighthawk, Patsy Walker/Hellcat (pardon my language), and occasionally Bruce Banner/Hulk. This brings him into conflict with the Avenger Simon Williams/Wonder Man.

            Moon Knight and the Defenders came into conflict with Nick Fury, Jake Fury/Scorpio and S.H.I.E.L.D. as Scorpio corrupts Hulk, sending the “monster” on a rampage only the Defenders can stop.

            After the end of the battle, Moon Knight returns to his solo career.

            Then, Peter Parker/Spider-Man and Moon Knight have a misunderstanding, which culminates into a team-up against Cyclone, a villain sent by the Maggia Crime Syndicate.

            Moon Knight takes part in another team-up, this time with Ben Grimm/Thing of the superhero team the Fantastic Four against the super villain Crossfire.

            Following this, Marlene’s life is placed in jeopardy after a power play of the possession of an artifact, a statuette of the Egyptian God Horus, which was intended to be placed in a museum.

            Steven promises to attend a viewing of a lunar eclipse with an old friend, Jason. He feels called off to duty during the eclipse and misses the entire eclipse, and narrowly avoids another faceoff with the Hulk.

            Marlene’s life is once again placed in danger when someone from Marc’s past returns and commits a horrific crime spree to draw Marc and Moon Knight out to have a faceoff to settle old debts.

            Following this, the minds and sanity of Steven Grant, Jake Lockley, Moon Knight and Marc Specter are tested, and Marlene joins the action, and yet this time, her life is not the life in danger.

            Bushman then makes his dreadful return to draw out Marc Spector/Moon Knight out to settle an old score.

            Then, a crime spree against the derelicts of New York City endangers the life of Crawley as a figure from Crawley’s past comes back to haunt him, and Jake Lockley lets Crawley, Gena, and Gena’s two sons into his secret in order to better protect them and Steven Grant backs the group financially.

            Marc then finds himself baited out by an art theft who calls himself the Midnight Man.

            Finally, the Committee of 5: Boom-Boom, Razor, Ice, Dragon, and Bull surface with the goal of ending their former associate Marc Spector, and Marc’s secret circle join in the fight to gather the information needed to take down the organization.

            This book had a lot going on in it. Sometimes that’s a good thing, sometimes it’s a bad thing. This book featured a lot of the first appearances of Moon Knight in the Marvel Universe. That is why I found this book to be so disjointed. There were several stories taken out of context. Also, only four issues in the entire book to be the titular Moon Knight solo series, which caused a lot of team-ups. I hated the fact that Marlene’s life was endangered in almost every story and the damsel in distress ploy is so cliché that I found some of the book to be lame. Once or twice wouldn’t have truly soured my taste buds, but looking at the description of every story on this review involving Marlene’s life being in danger was just too much for me. In fact, I felt the character of Marlene to be too two-dimensional. I felt that she was just there to love Steven and had no other purpose. I didn’t find her character to be well developed at all. It was all the same story every time. Also, I know this was from the 1970s, so saying Steven Grant was a millionaire is laughable by today’s standards, especially with all the payments for the contracts being $100,000 or less. I know $25,000 was a big amount in the 70s, but in today, it seems like nothing. Were this written today, Steven Grant would be a billionaire and the contracts would be $1,000,000 at the least. Generations after mine would laugh at this book. I also didn’t find the villains to be well defined, either. To me, it felt like they were just there to fight Moon Knight and served no other purpose. They just didn’t seem nuanced to me. There were no follow-ups to any of the villains after their appearances in each story. Also, Marc’s portrayal of dissociative identity disorder (multiple personalities) felt totally wrong to me. He switched identities depending on what was needed. I have a friend with D.I.D. and his condition is nothing like how these writers described it. The condition does not work that way. I actually found that very offensive. I’m bipolar myself and understand mental illness, and to me, it even felt like an insult. I felt like these writers clearly did not do their research when originally writing it. I also hate how the Jake Lockley character was portrayed. He was supposed to be a cab driver, but never in this entire book did he have a fare. That’s not how cab drivers work. And the updates on Gena’s kids at the early points in the book, failing black history, what else have you, just didn’t amuse me. It was supposed to be a joke thing, but I felt like it fell flat. In fact, this whole book felt like a failure to me. I felt like all the team-ups in the book were just gimmicks. I know how it was planned like that, being a writer and avid comic book reader myself: Introduce a new character in one or two issues; bring them back here and there is spotlight series; get the readers to like the character; put the character into already ongoing successful series; the reader sees the character in the book and buys it; now the reader who is a fan on the new character sees the existing character team-up and now buys the existing character’s book because they find the existing characters interesting, or the reader is a fan of the existing character’s book, sees the new character and likes them and now reads more appearances of the new character. Perfect marketing ploy. I totally do not applaud anyone on that, as this is also at times cliché. They even do it on television shows these days. Now, I’m not saying this is necessarily a bad thing. This can work, this can fail. Obviously it worked in this case, considering there is now a Disney+ series of “Moon Knight” (which I have not watched yet, so forgive me if you have watched the show, but as I said at the start that this is only about this graphic novel and not about the show, so look past that if you love the show and are only reading this post only because of the show, clear your mind and focus on just what I’m writing and not what you think you know by watching the show. Also, the team-ups in this book can’t happen in the show at this specific point in time due to copyright infringements). I wanted to like this specific book. I’ve read many recent “Moon Knight” series and crossovers/guest-stars and enjoyed them. But from the stories from 1975-1981 just didn’t do it for me.

            Now, I have to give a numeric score on this, just to fully establish exactly how I feel about this book. I am very hard to satisfy, so higher scores probably means the book is good. I score on a scale of one to ten. One is the lowest, ten is the highest. I give this book a three. I know I was very harsh in the previous paragraph, but the book did have some good moments. There were some interesting plot twists and surprises in it, I’ll give it that, and they often felt welcome to me. I might even have given a higher score were the book not so disjointed. But, ultimately for better or worse, I have to take into account this book as a whole and score it, and I give it a three.

            Finally, I’m going to say if I recommend this book or not. If you are a fan of the “Moon Knight” comics and want to see his earliest appearances, I would totally recommend it to you. Despite all my negativity, it is rather informative on the origins of the character, but it just doesn’t match up to my standards as “good” comics. However, if you just like “Moon Knight” by the Disney+ series and now want to read the comics, I have to warn you that knowing what you’ve seen in the show and the comics seem like vastly different concepts. Honestly, though, I’m not dissuading you from reading this if you so wish. You may have a vastly different opinion than mine, and I would love to hear your thoughts and ideas. Comment, like, share, retweet, whatever you can do, I appreciate the support. I will say there have been many good “Moon Knight” stories, and I think they may be more enjoyable, but I also understand if you want to get the true origin of the character. I have read several “Moon Knight” comic stories over the years that I’ve enjoyed, so feel free to look them up if you so desire, and I totally value your opinion and would be very receptive to hear them. I get that opinions are opinions. You don’t have to agree with me, I don’t have to agree with you, we’re all entitled to feel however we want about anything, that’s a complexity of the human species.

            So I’m going to bring this to an end, seeing how I have said a lot. You may want to look at more content on this blog. I frequently post things such as reviews, essays, editorials, short stories and poetry, so keep checking, you may find more things you like. I’ll even tell you there is another post I’m about to work on and will be up in a few hours after I post this, so please keep your eye out for it. And so, until next time, Tim Cubbin… out!