Look at the cover! Bill Sienkiewicz is back on Moon Knight! Oh. Wait. Look inside.
No he’s not. But it’s not bad. JM DeMatteis returns to Marvel and they give him their version of Batman to work on. He in turn decides to go back to the golden age of Moon Knight–the original Sienkiewicz/Moench stuff–to bring back his foe Scarlet.
Sadly, it uses the mystical side of Moon Knight, which is the character at his least interesting.
Scarlet uses Konshu to invade Marc Spector’s consciousness.
She attacks some of Moon Knight’s side characters. She torches Gena’s diner.
Once he arrives at the church, she seduces him…
…then asks him for help…
…Then stabs him.
Such are the ways of the femme fatale.
She’s a cult leader now, too.
And not a very nice one at that!
Of course Moon Knight isn’t dead.
Khonshu saves him.
There’s a bunch of hallucinations/memories of almost drowning as a kid, etc. It takes up half and issue and feels like filler. It’s a weak point in an otherwise pretty good story.
There is also some sledgehammer symbolism between Marlene/Khonshu and Scarlet/Jesus,
This is DeMatteis at his most self-indulgent.
And so the Moon God told Frenchie and Marlene where to go to save Moon Knight.
Every writer who takes on this character has a different spin: He’s a schizophrenic! He’s a mystical force of a Moon God! He’s knows Khonshu is a delusion! Khonshu is real! Sometimes it irritates me. Other times, I welcome it as a way to tell fresh stories about a decades-old character.
But overall, in this story, DeMatteis’ take on the presence of a God is just not working for me.
In the final conflict, Moon Knight burns down the church and beats up the cult of red nuns.
He then takes down Scarlet…
…And mansplains God to her.
And then he deals with the crazy/hallucinating/real God thing…
On the last page, we’re promised a team-up with Spider-Man against Hobgoblin.
This isn’t terrible, but it’s far from great.