Marc Spector has gone Hollywood. He sold his life story as a TV show, and he uses the production as a front to protect LA as Moon Knight. This time, though, he is trying something new: instead of his usual personalities, he imagines Captain America, Spider-Man, and Wolverine as his backup. When an Ultron head turns up on the black market, Moon Knight realizes that someone is trying to become the Kingpin of LA and teams up with Echo to foil those plans.
Part of the fun of Moon Knight series is seeing how different creators will bring out different elements of the character. Bendis’s version perhaps is more Steven Grant than any other aspect of Spector. He’s clever, likable, glib, and even self-deprecating. There’s a confidence to his demeanor that stands in contrast to the previous couple of runs on the character without feeling out of place*. One of Bendis’s strengths is his ability to fill out supporting casts’ for characters, and Echo and Marc’s new weapons guy, Buck, feel like natural partners. In fact, I never found myself missing his usual supporting cast.
Alex Maleev might be my favorite Moon Knight artist. His linework strikes a careful balance between loose, sketchy figures and dynamic panel framing. There’s a strong sense of motion to his work, and it fits the fistfights, dingy settings, and big action shots perfectly. Finish his pages out with intentional, restrained colorwork by Matthew Wilson and Matt Hollingsworth, and you’ve got the recipe for stellar Moon Knight art.
This was the first solo Moon Knight book I read once I got into comics. I never finished reading it, but it holds up to revisiting those issues I read before—and remains excellent past where I stopped originally. If you’re looking for a somewhat lighter take on the character—or at the very least, a less brutal, violent take—I recommend starting here.
* In fact, that same confidence carries forward to Warren Ellis’s subsequent run.
Collected in
- Moon Knight, Vol. 1 (#1-7)
- Moon Knight by Brian Michael Bendis and Alex Maleev (#1-12) [Out later in 2017]
Credits
Writer: Brian Michael Bendis | Artist: Alex Maleev | Colorists: Matthew Wilson (1-6), Matt Hollingsworth (7) | Letterer: VC’s Cory Petit | Associate Editor: Lauren Sankovitch | Editor: Tom Brevoort