Apparently Moon Knight/Khonshu tried taking over the world, or something stupid, in a recent Jason Aaron Avengers arc (I gave up on that series after the dismal first volume so I’m guessing from details gleaned from this book) and now he’s running a religious mission in the city… for reasons? And just in time too as a number of done-in-one-issue-sized threats for him to deal with have conveniently started to pop up!
I’m not sure what people see in Jed MacKay because what little I’ve read of his (Daredevil, Taskmaster, Black Cat) has been representative of the current dire state of Marvel: uninspired, poorly put-together and thoroughly uninteresting product. His Moon Knight is only slightly better than I’d expected but it’s still quite pants.
The stories here are uncreative and plain stupid. One features a janitor who controls minds with his sweat (really!) while another Fist of Khonshu appears (“Hunter’s Moon” which sounds like a cheap aftershave) only for Moon Knight to defeat him with a baseball bat to the head. He fights a group of vampires, as well as Some Guy who’s trying to control him by hacking his bank account. They’re such unimaginative stories to read.
The characters are unimpressive - I can name one supporting character’s name, Soldier (and, yes, he WAS a soldier - that’s how cerebral MacKay is!), but none of the others. The threats Moon Knight faces aren’t credible. Some idiot called Zodiac is trotted out after the parade of others have been summarily defeated before he’s taken out as well. It’s just not interesting to see Moon Knight effortlessly take out enemies one after the other.
It’s not clear why Moon Knight sometimes appears interchangeably as Mr Knight and Moon Knight either. I guess Mr Knight is his administrative/normal-ish side when he’s going to therapy and dealing with the running of his mission, and Moon Knight is for when he’s doing generic superhero action? It’s not established though and I get the feeling that MacKay doesn’t have a particularly firm grip on the character which is why his writing of Moon Knight is very superficial.
Alessandro Cappuccio’s art isn’t bad, though it’s not as striking as Steve McNiven’s covers unfortunately, and I suppose the stories are varied enough to not make for a relentlessly tedious read. Mostly though I was barely engaged with this bland, forgettable comic - if you’re after some decent Moon Knight comics, check out the ones by Warren Ellis and Brian Wood instead.
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