Welcome, dear readers, to another week of comics and commentary at Comics! The Blog!We kick things off, as always, by handing out awards for the Best of the Week – beginning with two Award postings, followed closely by the past week’s Best.
One of the most impressive things about the new Moon Knight series is that it is unflinchingly ballsy and adventurous. It takes guts to take a hero who’s often lacked a consistent characterization, give him a new key element of his characterization in the series’ debut issue, then move into two different genre variations in the following issues. Moon Knight #2 presented a high concept, high tension thriller with a villain who was a mirror image of Marc Spector, a mercenary left for dead who went the other way. Last week, Issue #3 took a completely different approach by switching from the hyper-realistic corporate assassination to supernatural dread and otherworldly terror.
Let’s not bury the lede any further, though: Moon Knight #3 is a comic where the hero punches ghost punks so hard their arms, heads or torsos just flat-out come off. It is intense.
Of course, it’s not intense just because of the supernatural viscera. It’s intense because Warren Ellis, Declan Shalvey and Jordie Bellaire build off the spookiness from the first issue after letting it lay dormant for a month. With these shifts in mood from issue to issue, but book keeps the reader on edge; it’s after a break from Khonshu’s revelation that Marc is his “son,” representing an aspect of him, that a return to the supernatural is even more impactful. It’s got even more impact with Chris Eliopoulos‘ white-on-black, all caps lettering emanating from Khonshu’s emotionless bird skull. Bellaire similarly avails herself with aplomb, whether it’s the dark wash of black shadow flowing out from Khonshu, the sickly green glow of the ghosts or the wash-less white outfit of Moon Knight that dominates any panel it’s in. She even makes the intrusion of Spector’s humanity – a red bloom of blood spreading out over his immaculate white costume – feel like it’s something from another world.
All these details, whether they’re Eliopoulos‘ lettering, Bellaire‘s colours or the way Shalvey draws the familial similarity between Khonshu’s skull and Spector’s armour, works smartly with the fact that this is a straightforward script from Ellis, who presents his version of the old chestnut where a hero fights a new villain, gets demolished, powers up with new equipment and then demolishes the villain right back. Coming from a writer like Ellis who’s known for his complexity, the directness of the script hits like a punch. Ellis and his team are confident enough to do something so straightforward and nail it so completely in the details. Even Ellis‘ framing use of the music box pulls the issue together with some poetic ambiguity still remaining.
Ghosts, like superheroes, are often stories of consequences and tragedy. The ghosts in Moon Knight #3 are there because of a sad, understandable burst of violence. Marc Spector lives in the shadow of his death, a different kind of ghost. The series continues its dance of death, entrancing the readers with its confidence and mysteries.