​My first look at Paul Davidson’s artwork in issue 195 of Moon Knight inspired confusion. I recognized the characteristic pastel pallet of colorist Matt Lopes, but for the first 6 pages of the book I couldn’t be sure I had picked up an issue of Moon Knight. The sinuous hipster characters seemed better suited to a Boom Studios or Image title than Marvel and I was unsure what to expect from such a stylistic departure from the way I had seen Moon Knight Comics in the past. Fear not dear readers for I had only to turn to page 7 for this issue to cement itself as one of my favorite Moon Knight comics of all time!
           
Issue 195 sees the birth of a new Moon Knight foe in the Collective, a jumbled hive-minded behemoth formed by an unlikely group of misfits who desire to escape the shackles of individuality. This disturbing hurricane of fleshy foibles absorbs everyone it touches adding them to the tangled mass of souls that make up its sublime and grotesque body. Marc, enjoying some much needed mental and physical downtime, is alerted to this new threat’s presence while out seeing a movie with Marlene and Diatrice in reality, and fishing with Khonshu, Steven, and Jake in his mind. Despite just having voiced his contentment to leave the real freakish villains to the likes of the X-Men, Marc dons the Jet and Silver and snaps into action.
 
Marc quips and kicks his way through a short-lived battle with the vastly overpowered Collective before being absorbed into the hive mind himself (or selves if we’re being particularly cheeky) and the issue concludes with Marc, Steven, Khonshu, and Jake faced with the technicolor acid trip that make up the Collective’s collection of psyches. This new villain (which takes broad strokes inspiration from the entity of the same name made up of all the depowered mutants following M-Day) is wacky, grotesque, and perfect for facing off with Moon Knight. Bemis has fast tracked another story arc that gives mental and physical confrontation equal time and it’s brilliant. I love seeing Khonshu in fisherman’s regalia, in fact I’ve taken to referring to him in that getup as ‘Step-Dad K-Man’, I love the back and forth commentary on leaving Sun King alive between Marc and Jake, and I especially love Diatrice’s request for Sour Patch Kids as Spector leaves the theater.
 
As well-crafted and clever as this issue is written, for me this month’s installment is all about the art. From the pink haired, tattooed and mustachioed members of the Collective, to Fisherman Khonshu, and finally to the sharp fluidity of Moon Knight himself, Paul Davidson is drawing his ass off. Davidson’s Moon Knight is a sinewy, expressive design, sporting a belt that splits into two short swords and it just looks cool. The first panel we see of Davidson’s Moonie springing into action with his cape balled in his fist is stunning and a design all his own. Set in sharp contrast is the whirling pink mass of the Collective, whose towering chaotic design is revolting in the best way.
 
Watching these two figures dance from panel to panel as they fight in the Hall of Science toppling T-Rex skeletons and dodging Helicopter machine gun fire is incredible and the final image of swirling nightmare of the Collective swallowing up Moon Knight is one of my favorite images in comics. Paul Davidson will return in issue 196 before concluding his brief run on Moon Knight, and while I would love him to stay on as a regular, I’m very grateful to have another issue to read where he will be drawing our favorite lunar vigilante. Until next time, Geek On!

We all know the Origin of Moon Knight, or if you didn’t and you’re reading this, chances are I’ve reiterated it to you a dozen times in reviews passed and you have grown sick of reading about it. Marc meets Bushman, Bushman stabs Marc, Corpse meets Khonshu, Marc becomes Moon Knight. We’ve seen it replayed and reimagined over the years, but something we’ve never hammered out for sure, is the origin of Marc Spector’s Dissociative Identity Disorder. With issue 194, author Max Bemis takes a shot at the trauma that gave birth to Steven Grant and Jake Lockley when Marc Spector was just a boy.
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Taking broad strokes of inspiration from the 1998 Bryan Singer film Apt Pupil, issue 194 recounts the story of young Marc Spector discovering that a longtime friend of his father’s, adopted Uncle Rabbi Yitz is in fact Ernst, a Metahuman Nazi War Criminal whose unnatural long life comes from torturing and killing Jews. Marc’s discovery of this friend of the family’s capacity for violence and cruelty is what Bemis, and by extension, Marc credit as the traumatic lynchpin for Marc’s creation of Steven Grant and Jake Lockley. Marc confides this story to Frenchie as a way of exercising the demon of that trauma in preparation for explaining his disorder to his daughter Diatrice. Bemis leans hard on Marc’s Jewish upbringing and the influence that Jewish humor and the religious Elder community had on Marc at an early age.

This was a tense read for me, as I braced myself for the very real possibility that Marc’s Disorder might have come out of sexual abuse. Relief is an odd word for what I felt when it was revealed that Ernst was a Nazi serial killer and psychopath rather than a pedophile, but there it is. Bemis boldly juxtaposes the flashback of a blood-covered Ernst explaining to Marc for the first time, what the Shoah (Holocaust) was and his role in it with images from the present day depicting Marc, Marlene, and Diatrice in the most domestic and happy panels ever to appear in a Moon Knight title. The weight of this description, the depth of the cruelty and horror of the holocaust hits Marc all the harder for having finally achieved some semblance of a family unit, a base of comfort and love that the thought of having ripped away would be unbearable.

Ernst and this storyline feels as if they were lifted right out of the final arc of the first run of Moon Knight wherein a group of Cabalist mystics abduct and raise from the dead Marc Spector’s recently deceased father. For Marc’s first enemy to come from so intimate a position in his life, to be so subtle and vaguely super powered as Moon Knight is himself, and for him to have disappeared so suddenly following Marc’s confrontation with him all those years ago sets the stage for a present-day return of the False-Rabbi Ernst and a showdown that will carry more weight than any that has come before. This is a really well executed issue, and while I am suffering from the origin fatigue that afflicts many of us in nerdom, this origin was paced, framed, and developed appropriately so that it felt fresh and necessary.

Though artist Ty Templeton didn’t draw much of the jet and silver avenger in this issue, the tension between the violence and cruelty of Ernst and the calm domesticity of Marc’s new family is accentuated by his clean, cartoonish style. This contrast is as much the triumph of colorist Keiren Smith, whose transitions in lighting and color scheme really leap off the page. Bemis continues to deliver a comic that feels like the Bronze Age in the modern day and if he continues to use Moon Knight to quote Seinfeld (as he does in this issue) I will buy his issues forever. Until next time, Geek On!