The cover shows Moon Knight facing a three-fold mirror, with each of his other personalities emerging from the reflective services, with weapons, attacking him. Moon Knight’s schizophrenia hasn’t been a huge part of the series so far—it’s made appearances now and again—so this issue’s cover announces that it’ll be coming to the fore. Oh, and Marvel’s editors can’t spell the word, “scary.”
The story starts with Peter Alraune–the brother of Marlene, who is the girlfriend of Steven Grant (Moon Knight’s millionaire alter-ego)–having a nightmare.
He wakes up and knows who’s responsible for this…He rushes into this identity as Moon Knight and confronts his old foe, Morpheus The Dream Demon.
Morpheus is up to no good again, and he’s possessing people in their sleep to make them attack Moon Knight—and one of the people he’s using is Marlene’s brother, Peter. There are multiple sequences mixing dreams and reality.
They’re all very well done. And one has a cameo…
Crazy Magazine mascot Obnoxio makes an appearance! The attacks continue so Moon Knight and his team have to hole up.
It’s unusual for a hero to sit and wait to be attacked–especially a tactical streetfighter like Moon Knight.
He sets a trap.
They are able to lure the villain out.
In the end, it turns out that Peter Alraune has some kind of psychic power and his own nightmares actually created Morpheus, not the other way around.
So Marlene’s brother is the real threat.
To end the threat and atone, Peter kills Morpheus and kills himself at the same time.
Which leads to the above, absolutely stunning final page of Marlene crying.
Issue #23 has another “Tales of Koshnu” backup. It’s not terrible. It plays with the historical legend that Adolph Hitler was superstitious, and has Koshnu messing with him. It’s by Alan Zelenetz and Greg LaRoque.
Issue #23 also has (yet another) cover suitable for framing. I wish I had original art from this series.
