I
had just gotten a job and was always interested in comics and I
absolutely loved the 90's cartoons based off of comic characters. There was the
X-Men, Spider-Man and Batman just to name a few. Anyways I walked
into this comic shop that my mate works at and I spent almost three
hours browsing amongst Marvel, DC and all the various others. Even
though there were all these characters I already knew about, this one
volume kept calling to me, Moon Knight: The Bottom, a guy I had never
heard about but decided to buy that instead of anything else and it is something I
definitely will never regret.
Straight out I realized
this guy was a nutjob. Marc Spector had alienated himself from his
friends. He had broken and weak legs and kept seeing this apparition that
may or may not have been an Ancient Egyptian God, whom he may or may
not believe in. The God was claiming to be Khonshu, God of Vengeance
and of the Moon. So I was sucked into the world of Marc Spector, Moon
Knight immediately. I think what really sold it to me was the fact he
was a man with a shattered psyche and seemed to have absolutely
nothing going for him.
Moon Knight was a
character struggling to gain popularity in the Marvel Universe for
quite some time, so that may be why I had never heard of him. But
then a pairing of men was established, I believe it was these guys
that brought him back into the spotlight. These two men were Charlie
Huston (an author of “pulp” fiction novels) and David Finch
(Cyberforce).
To briefly talk about the
first arc which Charlie Huston had a direct hand in was called The
Bottom. The Committee (had it out for Moon Knight since his first
appearance) are trying to make Marc Spector snap. Spector is trying
to regain his strength and track down Raoul Bushman (arch nemesis).
This arc really emphasises on Spector's questionable sanity, well
actually Huston's entire thirty issue run does. Moon Knight
eventually confronts Bushman and after laying a number of punches
into him, he then carves off Bushman's tattooed face and leaves him for dead. This is when people start to decide that Moon Knight has become
dangerously violent and the reader really starts to feel that Moon
Knight has completely lost the plot!
After the first twelve
issues Charlie Huston left from having a direct hand in the writing,
he continued to help with the plotting. I am truly glad that he did
not completely leave the series as it was his writing that relaunched
Moon Knight in the first place. He understood the character that is
Moon Knight and really brought a human side about him, albeit not
accepted by the social norm. Spider-Man, Iron-Man and Captain America
all fear him. The rest of the run really explores Marc Spector's
mind and what he has to put up with day in and day out, the constant
conflicts he has inside himself. Huston writes with a “noir” spin
and it is that grit that just makes it awesome.
There were a small
selection of artists that worked on this run of Moon Knight but I
truly believe the best was the first, and that was David Finch. It is
hard to describe his artwork in words that do not ruin the
imagination. The atmosphere he brings to the panels in each issue is
truly are dark light onto our world (and that just isn't because it
is night time a lot). It is truly something that needs to be
witnessed to experience what it is I am trying to describe.
I recommend this to anyone who is a Moon Knight fan,
or a fan of noir type stories. The run ends amazingly as he starts to
figure himself out and having now brought Moon Knight back into the
spotlight I hope he does not go back to that scary place known as
Comic Book Limbo! Alfter all this story arc is what got me into collecting.