This time, Moon Knight isn’t the only one with multiple voices in his head. Your Major Spoilers review of Moon Knight #195 awaits!
MOON KNIGHT #195
Writer: Max Bemis
Artist: Paul Davidson
Colorist: Mat Lopes
Letterer: VC’s Cory Petit
Editor: Jake Thomas
Publisher: Marvel Comics
Cover Price: $3.99
Release Date: May 23, 2018
Previously in Moon Knight: After a harrowing encounter with the Sun King, Marc is looking forward to a quiet reunion with Marlene and his newly discovered daughter Diatrice.
Certainly everything will go nice and easy…
“I SAID NO MORE WEIRDOS!”
We open this issue with a man named Maurice, interviewing a group of conceptual artist types for his newest idea, The Collective. They all get weird (in some very adult ways, I might add) before Maurice finally calls in a debt from his cousin who works for one of the old A.I.M. cells that didn’t transition to work under Sunspot/Citizen V when he took over. Their experiment gets somewhat terrifying after that, with some serious body horror consequences. Meanwhile, Marc “Moon Knight” Spector is deep in a conversation with his other selves, only to be interrupted by Marlene, who thought they were having a nice night out together. His outing with ex and daughter is interrupted by the super-crime alert on his phone (Heh), leading him out to the museum (I actually can’t tell from the art WHICH one) where The Collective has continued their assimilation of others into their new biological giant gross body horror body.
And those others include Moon Knight.
THIS ONE IS PRETTY DISTURBING
Okay, so this is one weird comic book, y’all. From Marc’s inner monologue, where his other selves and Khonshu are fishing, for some reason, to the super-goopy eyeballs-and-elbows morphing mess that is The Collective in action, every page is full of surreal moments. Even the sight of Moon Knight leaping into action is kind of impressionistic, in good ways, while the individual members of The Collective are equally unique, visually speaking. There is a lot of detail packed into the panels, and the coloring helps add to the effect, using a tan color palette the evokes our hero’s desert origins. As far as the plot goes, things in this issue are a bit off-kilter for me, with the first four pages devoted to Maurice and his friends, several imaginary moments and a sudden transition into action. The depiction of the museum fight doesn’t last very long, and the final pages are a showcase for Paul Davidson’s avant-garde visual madness, leaving us with a cliffhanger moment that promises another strange experience next month.
BOTTOM LINE: NOT JUST SILVER BATMAN
All in all, it’s interesting to see experimentation in comics, even when the story doesn’t quite land or gel with the art the way I want it to. Also, if you’re as sensitive to body horror issues as I am, this may make for an uncomfortable read, but it’s one that I’m glad I followed through with, thanks to that ending. The pacing was a little bit weird and choppy, but there are a lot of intriguing visual moments in this comic, leaving Moon Knight #195 with a better than average 2.5 out of 5 stars overall. It can sometimes be difficult for ol’ Moony to not be a lesser version of Batman or The Punisher, so I like seeing this creative team stretch their legs and his story, even with the bits that don’t quite land…
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