“Your eyes are burning holes through me — I’m not scared”
Moon Knight: Fist of Khonshu, which is, I think, the 745th different Moon Knight title that Jed MacKay has written in the past few years, comes to a close so that Marvel can launch it again with a new #1 issue. Good for them! I have no idea if this idiotic strategy of theirs works, but I guess I have to believe it does, because they keep fucking doing it. 
This bad bear is drawn by Domenico Carbone, colored by Rachelle Rosenberg, lettered by Clayton Cowles and Cory Petit, and edited by Daniel Kirchhoffer. Marvel charges $15.99 for it, and it’s 100 pages long.
MacKay has done a really nice job with Moon Knight — as I’ve often noted, for a character who’s never been really top-tier, he seems to bring out something cool in writers, and MacKay is just the latest of them — and I think, as I noted last time, that he might by now be the writer who has written the most Moon Knight stories, which is kind of keen. He’s expanded MK’s cast, of course, and he’s given him a new girlfriend, which is also fine, but in the first issue of this collection, he reminds us of all the characters that aren’t in Moon Knight comics anymore, and it’s a bit sad for a long-time fan. The lack of Frenchie and Marlene will always bug me, but such is life. In the first issue, it’s actually Marc Spector’s birthday (how does he even know what his birthday is anymore?), and MacKay and Carbone do a fun thing where the characters talk to “the reader” as if they’re attending the party, but it’s a surprise guest star that is viewing the events from “our” point of view. It’s pretty clever, and it allows MacKay to kind of reset the status quo of the book by catching us up on what’s a-goin’ on in the world of Moonie. Then we get the main plot of the book, which is the Wrecker wants Moon Knight’s help because he’s being haunted. He claims that Moon Knight owes him, which he does, a little, plus, Moon Knight points out that the people at the Midnight Mission help those in need, and the Wrecker is in need. He is being haunted, but it’s not clear why — the Wrecker has been a scumbag for a long time, so why are those he killed haunting him now? Oh, it’s a mystery, to be sure!
MacKay is a good writer of Moon Knight because he really digs into what it means to be the character and how he uses his very weird past. 
Jake Lockley shows up in this volume, for instance, and MacKay uses him cleverly. He uses Marc Spector’s past well, as he can never quite leave it behind. A lot of MK writers do this, of course, but because MacKay has been writing the character for so long, he’s done it quite well for a long time. He also uses what he’s added to the Moon Knight canon nicely, as our hero has some interesting things to draw upon to help him in his fight against the baddies. MacKay does a good job catching us up on what’s going on, as Layla el-Faouly shows up in this comic and MacKay gives us decent background on her, while Moon Knight has his fancy new Asgardian weapon to use, and MacKay makes sure we know what’s going on with that. If you picked this up without having read a Moon Knight comic, you’d probably be pretty good at following along. The presence of Lockley is probably the only thing that might confuse a new reader. I guess you can’t always go into the weirdness of Moon Knight’s identities, because it’s baked into his core these days! The biggest problem with the book is that the reason the Wrecker’s problem comes from another book several years old. You might not have read it! Now, we do get a footnote explaining where we can find out what happened with the Wrecker, and it’s fine, but it seems a bit odd to bring that into this comic. If the Wrecker is being haunted, it seems like the backstory should be more part of this book. This is where Marvel’s (and DC’s) insistence on 20-page issues comes to the fore. In issue #11, the entire issue is a quiet one, and MacKay is able to slow down and show what’s going on in the book. But that costs something, because the next four issues are plot churn, and in those 80 pages, MacKay has a lot to get to, and it seems there’s not any space to show what’s going on with the Wrecker. We get three pages showing what happened, but then, on a fourth, a character tells us what happens, and while it gets the job done, it feels like the haunting of the Wrecker should be more important in the context of the story. MacKay has to get to other things, I get it, but it still feels too perfunctory, and I wonder if the page count has something to do with that.
Anyway, it’s still a good comic, and Carbone does nice work on the art. Moon Knight has had such a ridiculous carousel of artists since MacKay took over, and it’s frustrating, certainly, but in general, we’ve gotten pretty good artists on the book, and Carbone is pretty good. 
His layouts are pretty packed and busy, but he never lets it get out of control, and his storytelling occasionally gets a bit overwhelming but never quite becomes too much. There are a few places where the blacks are a bit too much, but it’s only in a few places and doesn’t wreck anything. Carbone isn’t as fluid as you might like, but his action scenes aren’t terrible, just a tiny bit stiff. He has a grand time with Moon Knight’s cape, which artists always have fun with, and MK’s “ghost-fighting” costume is pretty darned keen. His Layla is terrific, too, which is nice, and the few times he gets to draw a monstrous Wrecker, he has fun with that, too. He does a nice design of the bad guy, too, as he slowly gets weirder and creepier as the book goes on. Carbone does a good job slowly making him go from somewhat sympathetic to downright crazy. The special effects, with Rosenberg coloring the ghosts in a very ethereal manner, work very well, too. I know Carbone is not drawing the latest new Moon Knight series, and that’s fine, but he’s pretty good on this book.
As always, I’m in the bag for Moon Knight, but MacKay continues to do a very nice job with the character, even though Marvel keeps rebooting the series and the 20-page issue thing seems to rear its ugly head more in this trade than it does in others. This is more of a “standalone” trade than some of the others, as we’re focused just on the Wrecker story, but MacKay does keep things moving forward a bit as he gears up for yet another issue #1. I will keep reading, of course!
Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆
