When I was 15 I was reading comics at a friend’s house and he was reading a Moon Knight comic. At that time, I had honestly never heard of him, so I asked my friend who Moon Knight was and his response was, “he’s a Jewish super-hero, he’s kinda lame”. Well, I took it to heart that he was lame and never thought twice about him until, many many years later I’m playing Marvel Ultimate alliance and who appears in the line-up but Moon Knight. I checked out his powers and he was actually pretty fun to play so I played him a bit.

Not too long after I was buying a graphic novel online that I needed and I got the chance to add a copy of Moon Knight: The Bottom to my order without adding any shipping charge and it only cost $2.00! Even if the trade paper back was read by bums with sticky fingers it’d still be worth it for $2.00, so I added it to my order.

When I received my order the Moon Knight book was in remarkable shape so I figured if they were adding it on for only $2.00 it’s really got to be a stinker so I decided to read it that day just to get through it.

What I found was a book with very good artwork, intense violence and an experience that I actually really enjoyed. I can honestly say that aside from some discount Halloween decorations I got after the holiday, this is probably the best $2.00 I’ve ever spent.

Moon Knight: The Bottom is exactly the kind of story I relish. A person who was once someone of import has completely been broken down until he is almost worthless. Marc Spector, the former Moon Knight is alone, lonely, crippled, depressed, addicted, in pain and really at rock bottom. Where can he go from here, only up right? While figuratively that’s true, you can go up at a slant. Not everyone is able to return from the bottom sane and heroic, sometimes the filth at the bottom sticks to you and that’s how it is with Marc Spector, but not just in this instance. See Marc was a paid killer, a warrior and he’d hit bottom before, actually died there and was given the chance to serve an Egyptian god named Konshu in becoming vengeance incarnate. This isn’t Captain America, not everything he does can be easily justified or perceived as the right thing to do. Moon Knight was a troubled character before he hit The Bottom so again, where does he go from here?

Moon Knight isn’t going to be for everybody. Like the Punisher, he’s a vigilante and his greatest power appears to by the ability to withstand a lot of damage which makes for very bloody confrontations.

Spoiler

Marc Spector is broken and plans are put in motion to both restore him as Moon Knight and also to control him or destroy him. In the opening of the book we flashback to a truly vicious battle wherein Moon Knight cuts off the face of his arch-enemy Raoul Bushman and in the process cripples himself. That’s right, he cuts off his face!

A friend of his named Crawley stops by with some pain meds for our crippled protagonist and inadvertently sets in motion a series of schemes to get Marc Spector to become the spirit of vengeance once again. Marc Spector meets up with his old friend Jean-Paul who reveals to Marc that he’s gay and has always been in love with him. Marc takes the news fairly badly and leaves Jean-Paul immediately who is later set on to by a big bad guy that beats him senseless with his own prosthetic leg. Learning of this Marc Spector finds the ruffian and slices through half of his face.

At this point we learn that a conspiratorial group made up of children whose father’s were slain by Moon Knight want to bring back Moon Knight as their puppet. Unfortunately, the wrong plan was initiated so they decided his death is the next best thing and they hire the Taskmaster to take out Marc Spector and everyone he loves.

Even though the battle is tough, Taskmaster gets his butt kicked and we learn that the Taskmaster is scared easily and really whiny. Who would have guessed?

Spector gives in and becomes Moon Knight again, he becomes vengeance. Moon Knight then tracks down the conspirators and crashes his plane into the office where they are meeting. He faces the Taskmaster again and takes the files the group had about his life and his contacts.

Finally we learn that Konshu may have had more to do with Marc Spector becoming Moon Knight again than we might have believed.

What I’ve listed in the spoiler is all the action, but what I haven’t put in are the emotional encounters, the dark soliloquies and conversations between Marc Spector and his god Konshu.

It’s a dark and violent story. It’s also a good story, sometimes confusing and frantic, but that’s how Marc Spector himself is as he crawls back from The Bottom. I would definitly recommend this title to anyone who likes their comics dark. In fact, now I’m going to look for the rest of the Moon Knight graphic novels that follow this one.

Story
Artwork
Value
Can It Stand Alone
Cool Factor
Average