In celebration of the upcoming release of the Moon Knight series premiering March 30th on Disney Plus I’m doing a deep dive on some of the lesser explored corners of the Moonie Mythos. This time we’re taking a look at a good old fashion Moonie VS Werewolf by night spectacular. It’s brutal, it’s animalistic, and it’s oh so glorious. “In the Company of Wolves” written by Mike Benson and illustrated by Mike Deodato Jr. 
​
Driven literally underground by his very public murder of Black Spectre, Moon Knight recalls an unexplored encounter between himself and his oldest comic book adversary: Jack Russell, the Werewolf by Night! 

Jack Russell, the werewolf by night, is captured and forced to share his deadly curse with the unsuspecting foot soldiers of a high roller’s blood sport ring. His handlers collect his blood to temporarily give the unwitting human competitors the strength and appearance of werewolves. Meanwhile, Detective Flint and Moon Knight investigate a string of bloody murders, thought at first to be the handiwork of an overzealous new serial killer. It quickly becomes clear that the gory evidence left behind at the crime scenes is the work of something big. And clawed. So, Moon Knight investigates a nightclub called the Lu’Pine after gathering intel as the cab driver Jake Lockley and discovers the nightmare dog-fighting ring hidden below. 

Moon Knight frees the captured competitors, setting them on their captors and discovers that the temporary lycanthropes, while viscous, don’t hold a moonlit candle to the genuine article. Freed by the full moon’s light, Jack Russell towers over Moon Knight in his animalistic form and the caped hero and Marlene work to bring the big wolf down. Blurring the line between man and violent beast himself, Moon Knight defeats the werewolf but spares the man, allowing Russell to escape his cruel incarceration. ​

All due respect to Mr. Benson, but this one is all about the art for me. When you start a run with a talent like David Finch, you establish a different level of expectation for a book’s artwork. Mico Suayan maintained the style and tone of the book skillfully after Finch departed and Tomm Coker gave us the haunting grit of issue 13, but when you get a rip, tear, slash-fest script featuring the Jet and Silver Avenger and his first foe and Mike Deodato Jr. is on the job, well that’s something special. 

Claws, viscera, muscle, sinew, bone. These have got to be a few of Deodato’s favorite things. With multiple excellent Werewolf designs and carnage teasing the wild final clash between the massive Jack Russell and our hero, Deodato runs wild in this issue. Deodato’s Moonie design sports a massive billowing cape that just dances out of the panels. The waves and creases in the cape evoke broad dramatic motion even as the Fist of Khonshu stands still showcasing Deodato’s masterful character work. 
​
Look, I love it when Moonie crosses crescent darts with Bushman, Stained Glass Scarlet, and Morpheus as much as the next guy, but the main event of Moon Knight matchups is always going to be Werewolves for me. They share a common inspiration in the full moon, they both have aspects of themselves they can’t control or repress, and they represent insatiable appetites for carnage. This is one of the rare Werewolf storylines in the Moon Knight canon, one I recommend highly, and if you happen to find a copy in your local comic shop, you’re in for a treat: the issue includes reprints of Moon Knight’s first appearance in Werewolf by Night 32 and 33! ​

In celebration of the impending release of the Moon Knight series premiering March 30th on Disney Plus I’m doing a deep dive on some of the lesser explored corners of the Moonie Mythos. This time we’re taking a look at Moon Knight’s admission as a card-carrying member of the Avengers and this time, it’s not on the West Coast, and it’s no Secret, “The Uses of Restraint” written by Charlie Huston and illustrated by Tomm Coker. 

Moon Knight’s neutrality in the Civil War is a problem for everyone. Occupying no man’s land while flooding Detective Flint’s office with crippled cons with crescent moons carved into their foreheads, neither side wants the jet and silver wraith. Worn down by Khonshu’s unslakable bloodlust, Spector decides to try to secure a place as a member of the Avengers, the main obstacle? He has no hope of passing the psych eval. 
​
Moon Knight recruits the bottom feeding manipulator The Profile to assist him in terrifying his evaluator into rubber-stamping his application. I love the interplay between Marc and Dr. Depford, from the doctor’s initial condescending dismissal, to the moment you think Khonshu is possessing Marc and interrogating the interrogator, to the revelation that even though it’s the Profile instead, it’s no less cool because Marc knew he could do that. 

This issue is dark, gruesome, twisted, and no good place to start reading about the Civil War Event, however it shines light on Moon Knight’s ingenuity and cleverness in manipulating people’s perceptions of his madness. Though his Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) is not very thoroughly explored in this particular run, Marc’s mental illness and hallucinatory projections of Khonshu inform the visual style and perspective of the reader in this issue beautifully; twisting and distorting our expectations as Marc completes his mission. 
​
This issue traces the dark tendrils of Marc’s social circle quite atmospherically. Isolated and alone once again though he is, the darkness of his mission, and the violence it demands continues to echo in his loved ones attempts to move on as Marlene is bored by her new fling, and shocked at how easily violence (and vengeful violence at that) comes to her when they are attacked on the street. Frenchie longs to be by his friend’s side, trying to balance his unrequited love, his disgust and trauma. Marc’s duty as the Fist of Khonshu can have no competition, and anything that tries to temper that mission of vengeance, ends up crushed inside that fist. 

My favorite issues of Moon Knight are always those that explore the complexity of the character, and I love the way this one characterizes the extent of trauma that Moon Knight causes and his self-awareness and tenacity in the face of his earned isolation. Marc is ever-broken, and Huston’s view of the shattered pieces of his psyche is fascinating. 

I also love that in this issue Marc says definitely, “I don’t have powers.” As much as I love the early origins of Mark being bit by a werewolf and having strength that’s amplified based on the phase of the moon, it’s so much more interesting when Marc doesn’t have powers. As psychedelic and alien as Marc can seem in these comics, I’ve always thought having no powers made the extraordinary things he could do that much more remarkable. More noteworthy still, Huston’s characterization acknowledges that Marc used to have powers, used to slip into his alter-egos, and is now coping with repressing them, and losing those powers. Huston’s Moon Knight bears the scars of all his incarnations, and it’s such a brilliant extension of the character’s depth, and the depth of the damage to his psyche. 
​
Tomm Coker’s newspaper pulp style art is one of a kind in the pantheon of Moon Knight artists, especially his flashback panels which evoke the work of Chris Warner and E.R. Cruz and Bill Sienkiewicz while also maintaining a style all their own. The implied and applied grime in these panels, and the lithe, almost ghostly depiction of Moon Knight matches Huston’s tone perfectly. 

Moon Knight’s story set against the Civil War backdrop is such a great setting to explore his place in the superpowered community, and how he must carve out a space for himself because as a hero, he’s never fit the mold. This issue is a great snapshot of the character’s history, his impact, and his potential for interesting storytelling and I hope you all get a chance to read it!
 

​In celebration of the impending release of the Moon Knight series premiering March 30th on Disney Plus I’m doing a deep dive on some of the lesser explored corners of the Moonie Mythos. First up is an experimental and chilling issue first released in December of 2014, issue number 8 “Live” written by Brian Wood, and art by Greg Smallwood.
 
Responding to a suicide bomber seizing control of the One World Trade Center building in New York, Moon Knight coordinates with Detective Flint to scale the skyscraper and liberate the hostages, imprisoned high above the police presence and media frenzy below. We follow Moon Knight through the lenses of camera phones, local news coverage, scarab spy drones, and security camera footage as he coordinates his dissociative identity disorder alter egos to infiltrate and neutralize the hostage situation. Transitioning from affable negotiator Steven Grant to the terrifyingly efficient brutality of Jake Lockley this issue explores the potential strategic dominance Moon Knight is capable of, provided he can get his alters to cooperate. 
 
While the completion of the mission rapidly spirals away from the civility of the rules of engagement, Marc is self-aware enough to tell Flint to contact his therapist.  This signals his own instability and desperation for an anchor but also puts his therapist, whose motivations are in question at this point in the run, on Flint's radar as he (Marc) suspects her to not have his best interests at heart. 
 
In a series famed for the incredible artwork of Declan Shalvey (who adapted the now iconic Mr. Knight design from its first introduction by artist Michael Lark in issue 19 of 2010’s Secret Avengers series), Greg Smallwood (who would become the series regular artist for Jeff Lemire’s 2016 run) plays with form and expectation with his interpretation of Moon Knight in issue 8. “Live” is a brilliant, shocking issue which challenges the conventions of comic book art, scripting, and lettering by emulating mediums of modern technology. Smartphone screens, texted dialogue and narration, and security surveillance footage stand in for the traditional panel and speech bubble staples and the effect is stunning. This an issue that pushes the boundaries of comic book storytelling which in many ways is a Moon Knight tradition. Harkening back to the brilliant evolution of Bill Sienkiewicz’s art in the first Moon Knight series in 1980, (specifically issues 23-26) this issue uses every ounce of its creators’ ingenuity to capture the Jet and Silver Avenger from unique angles (pun intended). 

The haunting images of a cloak-less Moon Knight, stalking the darkened cubicle aisles of the high-rise he’s scaled are eerie, casting our hero as an enigmatically sinister crash test dummy instead of righteous savior. The uncanny valley at work is two-fold: the inhuman, vacant expression of Marc’s mask fails at appearing human, but it also fails at appearing to be Moon Knight. The design is terrifying, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see it reprised one day as a villain’s chosen costume (perhaps a Moon Jester to trade blows with our Moon Knight?). 
 
Moon Knight’s madness and brutality are at their most infamous and extreme in the 2006 Huston and Finch run “From the Bottom” in which we see a vicious fist of Khonshu carving crescent moons into the foreheads of his criminal victims, and most famously of all cutting the face off his oldest enemy Raoul Bushman and wearing it. This issue has to become part of that conversation. 
 
The rage, the cold tactical planning and coordination of Marc’s alters (alternate identities) in this issue, and the casual menace of Jake Lockley’s crippling and later bloody murder of the would-be suicide bomber plunge this characterization of Moon Knight into its darkest iteration to date. This is an unpredictable, competent, and brutal individual and if you have the misfortune to meet him there’s a good chance you’ll have to fight to stay a-“Live”.