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pluralstories: draft submission for Moon Knight (Comics)
A writeup of the Moon Knight comics for pluralstories! I’m posting a draft here first, so I can share it around with other fans and get feedback. Because with 40+ years of issues to go through, the odds that I’ve forgotten or misremembered something are…high.
Specific things to look for:
- Things to warn for? There’s no formal list of required warnings, and I’m assuming “canon-typical superhero violence” doesn’t rate. Just give a shout if you think I’ve skipped anything warn-worthy.
- Plural tags? This post explains some tags the comm uses, and this page has the full list. Spot-check whether you think I’m using them right on your favorite (or least-favorite!) run.
- Creators: Let me know if I’ve missed writers/artists who had a significant role during a given volume. Doesn’t have to be “wrote the whole thing”, but at least make it “did more than one issue.”
- Which runs to read: It’s not about quality, so please, no comments like “you should include run X, it’s so good!” or “don’t recommend run Y, it’s the worst!” This is specifically a list of “which MK comics to read for significant Headmate Content.” We have to include Bendis and Bemis. I’m sorry.
I’m also putting in some images, because this is long and I want to break it up a bit.
Title: Moon Knight
Creator/s: Various; I’ll list them below with specific volumes
Medium, Genre, and Format: Comics, superhero, most of the ones in this post are available in print collections and/or digitally on Marvel Unlimited
Year Released: 1980-present
Is it long, medium, or short?: Long
It is for kids, teens, or adults only?: Teens+
Accessibility Notes: Most of these are available in print collections of some sort, as well as digitally through Marvel. Nothing audio or screenreadable as far as I know.
Blurb: After dying and being resurrected (for the first time, but not the last) by the Egyptian god of the moon, mercenary Marc Spector sets out to atone for the harm he caused…by becoming a moon-themed superhero. That’s on top of being Steven Grant, rich CEO/investor in unspecified businesses. And being Jake Lockley, who ranges from “friendly, easygoing, regular guy” to “comedically murderous sociopath” depending on who’s writing this run. (The current series is striking a middle ground of “avuncular scoundrel with a heart of gold”.)
Why is it worth your time?: Marvel Comics’ longest-running and most-successful attempt to portray a superhero with DID. (Some writers don’t actually attempt it — but we’re limiting this roundup to the runs where they remembered.)
“Most-successful” still means plenty of flaws, drawbacks, and general comic-book nonsense! But at its best, the writing is a heartfelt, complex, insightful, funny portrayal of A Troubled System Doing Their Best, which a lot of IRL plural readers have found relatable.
Read this: Moon Knight Volume 1 (1980), mostly written by Doug Moench, with art by Bill Sienkiewicz.
“It’s easy to do, dear Steven — excuse me, dear Jake. You’ve got so many different names, identities, and moods, even you forget who you are half the time.”
Steven lives in a mansion with his girlfriend/sparring partner Marlene, and tries to convince himself he’s just Marc in denial. Jake drives a cab, hangs out with his friends at a local diner, and tries to convince everyone he’s just Marc playing a role. Marc goes Moon Knighting with his friend/pilot Duchamp, and tries to convince himself that he can just disappear into his other “personas.”
Although the writers haven’t committed to any mental-health diagnosis, the headmates have a little too much depth for “one guy with different aliases.” There’s no abuse backstory for the system, but it comes up with some of the minor characters, and it’s a source of sympathy even if they’re antagonists. The supporting cast is colorful and charming, including a love interest who isn’t just there to look pretty — she does research and undercover work for Moon Knight missions, and though she doesn’t like fights, she can hold her own if she gets caught up in one.
…and, okay, it’s still the ’80s. Sometimes women get kidnapped and end up in their underwear for no reason. Other times you get sketchy racial portrayals of non-white antagonists. Some of the villain plots are just aggressively, cartoonishly stupid. But the good parts are good!
Plural tags: abuse low-focus, relationships: friendship, romantic, teamwork, type: switching
Content warnings: ’80s-typical issues with race and gender.
Skip these: Moon Knight Vol 2 (Fist of Khonshu) (1985); Marc Spector: Moon Knight (1989); Moon Knight Vol 3 (Resurrection War) (1998); Moon Knight Vol 4 (High Strangeness) (1998); Moon Knight Vol 5 (the Benson/Huston/Hurwitz run) (2006); Vengeance of the Moon Knight (2009); Shadowland: Moon Knight (2010).
After leaving his first book in a relatively healthy place, Marc spends the next bunch in a cycle of “driving his loved ones away, somehow winning them back, then driving them away again in an even darker-and-edgier way than he managed last time.” Steven and Jake’s appearances range from “brief cameo in one issue I guess” to “they call him Jake for a short arc, but he’s still written exactly like Marc” to “Steven and Jake who?”
(At least it lays the groundwork for a theme that later runs will pick up: having the support of his headmates makes Marc more healthy and mentally stable, not less.)
Read this: Moon Knight Vol 6 (2011), “the Bendis run,” written by Brian Michael Bendis, art by Alex Maleev.
“There’s nothing wrong with a good old-fashioned team-up.”
Marc breaks out of his unhealthy cycles by doing something completely different with his life: moving to Hollywood and producing a TV series! Instead of pushing Duchamp and Marlene to un-cut him off yet again, he works on some new connections: an ex-SHIELD agent for a pilot/gadget guy, and fellow quasi-Avenger Echo for a co-vigilante/love interest.
He also meets new headmates — specifically, introjects of Spider-Man, Captain America, and Wolverine. (Marc used to do friendly team-ups with Spidey back when he lived in NYC, and was briefly recruited to the Secret Avengers under Cap. He, uh, has never met Wolverine? Just roll with it.)
Together they sort out a single over-arching plot in the LA underworld. Also, that TV show somehow gets made in the background, even though Marc basically never goes to work.
(…I’m calling this run “nonswitching” because I don’t think any of the introjects actually use the body, in spite of Marc trying to physically imitate their weapons and fighting styles. I think they just hang around, giving advice and being chatty.)
Plural tags: abuse not mentioned, cofronting, identityblending, people: copies, type: nonswitching, voices
Content warnings: Character death, specifically that Echo gets fridged (future comics will completely ignore this), and Inner Wolverine gets turned into The Murderous Headmate at the end. Some general “it’s the ’10s, we should be better than this” sexism in how Echo gets written.
Skip this: Moon Knight vol 7 (the Ellis+Bunn run) (2014). First run to say “DID”, but in the context of “you don’t have that, everyone you thought of as ‘identities’ was just Khonshu-induced brain damage,” and Jake+Steven are reduced to silent visions that Marc doesn’t interact with.
Good news: it’s the last run that tries to pull something like that.
Read this: Moon Knight vol 8 (2016), issues #1-14, “the Lemire run,” written by Jeff Lemire, art by Greg Smallwood.
“I am Marc Spector. I am Steven Grant. I am Jake Lockley, and we are going to be okay. We are going to live with who we are. We are Moon Knight. And we never needed you.”
Marc wakes up in the mental hospital where he’s been living, lost in delusional fantasies of being a caped vigilante. Or has he? No, the whole thing is a setup by the goddess Ammit, to keep Khonshu’s Avatar trapped and helpless while she takes over the world. Or is it?
The trippy, twisty, reality-bending, beautifully-drawn run that redefined Moon Knight — this time, in a way readers actually liked. Marc flounders around in a world with multiple levels of reality, regularly slipping into different scenes from his past, trying to rescue a handful of people who might be his old friends or just his memories…and finally getting a substantial team-up with Jake and Steven.
Reimagined and expanded flashbacks finally establish that Steven and Jake didn’t just appear when Marc was an adult; they’ve been a system since childhood. The headmates spend a few issues split across different reality-sequences, with stunningly different art styles; but the plots keep blurring together, until they find their way into the same scene again. Sometimes we get gritty montages from Marc’s mercenary past; sometimes we get a sci-fi dream about fighting werewolves on the moon.
This isn’t a good place to start reading Moon Knight, because it’s dense with references to feelings and relationships that won’t land if you don’t have the context. And it’s confusing enough even with context! At least read some of the ’80s run first. But then, yeah, read this one.
Plural tags: abuse low-focus, cofronting, fusion/integration, memory work, otherworld, realitymashing, relationships: family, relationships: teamwork, type: medical, type: spiritual, type: switching
Content warnings: Medical abuse and general poor treatment in the hospital scenes (which might be due to them being run by evil gods, but then again, it might not). Abuse and manipulation from Khonshu. A potentially distressing “Marc gets rid of Jake and Steven” sequence partway through; it’s a fakeout, they’ll be back.
Read this: Moon Knight: Legacy (2017), issues #188-200, “the Bemis run,” written by Max Bemis, artists including Jacen Burrows and Paul Davidson.
(No, we didn’t skip the start of the run. Issue #14 of vol 8 is followed directly by issue #188, for Comics Reasons. Some places will sort it as “issue #38 of vol 1 is followed by issue #188.”)
“The inside of Marc Spector’s head is a picturesque, violent landscape touched by Egyptian mythology, Judaic folklore and fragments of his past. But it ain’t always a pretty place.”
The action returns to the real world, for some more typical short-form Marvel adventures…except that now Jake and Steven get to be consistently present! (Along with an unusually-helpful Khonshu. Who doesn’t do any of his usual god-level things, so, this might actually be a Khonshu introject?) Sometimes they’re co-conscious in the physical world, sometimes they’re all interacting in headspace, sometimes there’s a psychic realm where they can manifest separately.
The run I get the most mad about, because it has that great setup with so much potential, and then sours it with things like “Jake gets character-assassinated into a wacky sociopath with a secret-baby plot.” Pushes things to the weirdest and most dramatic places possible, which at best means “this is the funniest Moon Knight scene I’ve ever read,” and at worst, “this is the edgiest edgelord cringe.” Drops lines like “Don’t eat that rabies-ridden dolphin meat” in total earnest.
Another reader said “Damn it Bemis, I really need you to stop writing actually good character moments I enjoy and tricking me into thinking for a brief moment this could be a run I liked, rather than one that makes me want to tear my hair out,” which pretty much sums it up.
Plural tags: abuse intermediate-focus, cofronting, otherworld, people: nonhumans, realitymashing, relationships: family, relationships: teamwork, type: medical, type: spiritual, type: switching
Content warnings: Extra violence and some fairly gruesome injuries. The system gets some retconned explicit childhood trauma, in the form of “little Marc’s favorite rabbi was secretly a Nazi serial killer.” The main present-day child character isn’t harmed in any major way, but does get kidnapped and/or threatened a lot.
Read this: Moon Knight vol 9 (2021), “the MacKay run,” written by Jed MacKay, art by Alessandro Cappuccio and Federico Sabbatini.
“We’re not crazy, Marc. Well, maybe Grant is. You seen how much he pays for a suit? No, ‘crazy’ is what stupid people call things they don’t take the time to understand. You, me, Grant…we’re a team. Or we should be.”
So, after the Bemis run ended, the main Avengers comic did this arc in which Khonshu orders Marc to attack a bunch of the Avengers. Which he does. (Everyone he’s managed to reconnect with decides this is a good reason to cut him off again.) The Avengers ultimately put Khonshu in super-god-prison, but let Marc go free…as long as he follows certain conditions.
This is the run that combines “Marc has a new set of Moon Knight adventures” with “Marc goes to court-ordered super-therapy.”
Steven and Jake don’t appear until the end of the end of the first story arc — but when they do, it’s to reveal they were giving Marc space on purpose, and to call out how much he’s struggling without them. After that, while they don’t get to be in every issue, they get regular appearances that showcase how Jake and Steven both have personal skills that Marc doesn’t, and how much better they work as a team.
Plural tags: abuse low-focus, memory work, otherworld, realitymashing, relationships: family, relationships: teamwork, type: medical, type: switching
Content warnings: violence (not as gratuitous as the last run), a recurring theme of mind-control/violation-of-autonomy from the villains, major character death
Maybe read these, maybe don’t:
Moon Knight: City of the Dead (2023). A 5-issue limited series, and Steven+Jake get a solid appearance in issue 5…but that’s after 4 issues where not even their names come up, so my expectations were very low. Maybe just read issue 5.
Vengeance of the Moon Knight vol 2 (2024). [Updated, July 2024] The 2021 run ends with the system’s (5th or 6th) death, and this run focuses on the supporting cast, investigating a mysterious new person who's trying to take up the Moon Knight mantle. MacKay is still the writer, so the surviving characters respect the Marc+Steven+Jake team and reminisce about all of them, but Team MK isn't actually present on-page.