Moon Knight! Moon Knight! Moon Knight!
It’s Marvel Studios’ next offering. It’s right around the corner. It feels as though everyone on the geek internet is buzzing talking about Moon Knight. From trailer breakdowns, to debates about just how much of a copy of Batman Marc Spector really is, it’s almost impossible to miss the Moon Knight discourse.
Heck, we wrote about the trailer here and highlighted the trailer release in our weekly entertainment news roundup, Did You Hear? – don’t miss it every Friday!
Marvel Studios’ Moon Knight | Official Trailer | Disney+
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Naturally, we had to jump back in!
Here at Major Spoilers “We know you love comics. We do too.” In the spirit of going to the heart of a character and celebrating what makes them the most unique from the four colour source material from whence they sprang we would be remiss if we didn’t make a recommendation for a comic book new fans of Moon Knight – or potential fans, potential interested parties – could get their hands on before the series debuts on Disney+ on March 30th, 2022.
TL;DR here is our recommendation:
MOON KNIGHT BY: WARREN ELLIS AND DECLAN SHALVEY
At first blush, you may look at this collection with confusion. “It’s only six issues!?” I hear you asking. Fear not, Spoilertie, brief though it may be, the glimpses we have seen of the Moon Knight series make it very clear this run has been heavily lifted from. To quote Hamlet:
“Brevity is the soul of wit.”
If your sole dalliance with Moon Knight in comic book form are these six issues I want you to know you will be the most well-prepared viewer in the room come March 30th. Let’s begin:
At the top of the trailer, we meet Marc Spector in bed. He hardly seems well-rested, but the imagery is clear. The question is already being asked of the audience and of the series itself: are we asleep or are we awake? Is this imagery meant to be taken literally or merely met and addressed as a metaphor? In the Ellis and Shalvey Moon Knight Marc Spector spends a good amount of time investigating victims of a sleep experiment who have been driven to the brink of – and past – their sanity.
To say nothing of Marc Spector’s notorious struggle with his own mental health. At one point in the trailer, he corrects someone who calls him “Stevie.” making it clear he prefers to go by the name “Steven.”
Like our own fearless leader, here at Major Spoilers!
Steven is one of Moon Knight’s various personalities. If you weren’t aware of this fact then some of the cracked imagery and sundry dialects heard throughout the trailer may begin to make more sense. Ellis and Shalvey’s Moon Knight takes time to explore various Moon Knight personas. How they interact with themselves and others. How each and everyone drives the vigilante, Moon Knight. How each and every one has its own unique goals. How each and everyone is human. Most famous from these six issues is the introduction and exploration of the personality known as: “Mister Knight.” In many ways, Mister Knight is a return to form. He is a classic detective. The best at what he does. The smartest man in the room at any given time.
Batman fans, I can hear you and the ghost of Ra’s Al Ghul in the background recognizing a similar trope.
The Ellis/Shalvey Moon Knight run has one final key factor the latest trailer shows us and I suspect we are going to see throughout the show: Moon Knight punches ghosts.
Egyptian mythology is rife across the Moon Knight mythos. For a contemporary reader, it’s accepted that Marc died in Egypt. In fact, the collection by Ellis and Shalvey opens with the following text:
Mercenary Marc Spector died in Egypt, under the statue of the ancient deity Khonshu.
What has this trailer for us? Egyptian artifacts! Big statues! Mummy-Ghosts which definitely seem ready to throw down in action I would bet is hoped to rival what we saw a few years ago in the three-season of Daredevil!
Knowledge is power. We grew up with this statement swirling around us. What’s awesome about seeking out knowledge of Moon Knight is the character has a fairly limited number of appearances compared to some of his Marvel Comics counterparts (haaaaay, Spider-Man, I’m looking at you!), and we are fortunate enough to be living in a time there is one single set of six issues. Why not take the time to peruse the story? If nothing else you’ll make your own reading experience more fruitful than if you simply let Ellis and Shalvey’s work lie.
Dear Spoilerite,
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