Broken Frontier

Marvel’s previous Moon Knight series portrayed the one time ‘Fist of Khonshu’ as a somewhat less than stable character, and dealt as much with him being hunted as a menace as it did with him hunting criminals. That series ended with Moon Knight faking his own death and fleeing to Mexico, which was probably about the only way he could have stayed out of jail long term. Now he’s back, and the status quo has changed again.

Vengeance of the Moon Knight is an odd title for this new series, since for the first time in years the Moon Knight it presents is not obsessed with vengeance. Instead, Gregg Hurwitz gives us a Moon Knight on the road to redemption, a hero acting like a hero once again, simply out there catching crooks rather than carving chunks off them.

After the excesses of the previous volume, Vengeance is something of a breath of fresh air, in fact. Though the darker side of the character is obviously still there, barely suppressed: he is still haunted by Bushman urging him to violence, and at one point he has to restrain himself from scalping a crook with a meat grinder.

The face under the cowl is the same, of course, but as in the last issues of the previous series this Moon Knight is not Marc Spector but his alter ego, cab driver Jake Lockley. The Spector persona is apparently dead, suggesting that Moon Knight’s mental state is as confused as ever. But how this squares with ‘Spector’ appearing in a recent issue of Hulk I’m not sure. Lockley is back living in the splendor once enjoyed by his other self, Steven Grant, making him probably the only cabbie in New York to employ a butler.

The separate areas of Moon Knight’s life are colliding with each other. How long will it be before one of his other selves breaks free once more? And just how healthy can this guy be, anyway, when his very identity is a fiction he once created as a disguise?

The question this series seems to be asking is: “Can a blood-soaked vigilante become a true hero again, however much he wishes it?” Judging by this excellently plotted first issue it’s going to be fun finding out.

Oh, and there’s also a reprint of November 1980’s Moon Knight #1 for good measure!