Merry Christmas Eve morning if you're on this side of the date line! I tried that comic store near me, and it had the one comic I wanted from last week, and one of the two from this week. It'll probably work for the weeks where I've mostly got Marvel or DC, but I don't think it's going to be the place to go for the smaller publishers.
Moon Knight's not in any condition to fight Zodiac, by Hunter's Moon shows up to help and Zodiac bails. Then Dr. Badr patches Marc up while offering up his backstory. During this, Marc is in some dream realm, dressed as Moon Knight, walking past Badr's memories. They lead to a temple, where a statue of Khonshu towers above Marc beneath an open sky. Contrast to Marc, who keeps a more modest Khonshu statue in his office, where it never sees the sky.
Badr talks about how he studied religion all his life, but grew frustrated that he couldn't find the connection so many others did. He figured he said the prayers, followed the rites, why wasn't it working? Then Khonshu saved him after he was attacked by vampires (which at least explains his antipathy towards them), and finally, he felt the actual presence of god. So it pisses him off Spector seemingly just threw it away.
We know from last issue Spector was raised in a religious family, by a rabbi. Like Badr, he couldn't feel it, either. I think in both cases it's a lack of belief, not being able to feel the presence of god. Though Badr saw others who could and wondered what he was missing, while Marc couldn't understand how his father could continue to believe given all the shit the world rained down on them. That's the difference. As Badr said, he's searched for this his whole life. Marc was saved by Khonshu and so he served him, but it was nothing he'd been seeking.
So when he felt Khonshu went too far, Marc turned from him. "Thanks for saving my life that one time, but you and me are done-zo." From Marc's perspective, being Moon Knight has done him as much harm as good, because he looks at it purely from the physical (mortal?) plane. The friends he lost, lovers estranged. For Badr, it's a spiritual thing, so he hasn't hit the limit of his gratitude, and maybe he never will. But I think it's definitely something he doesn't understand about Spector.
Anyway, Marc's feeling a lot better after a day of being wrapped up like a mummy and sleeping in a sarcophagus, and he's ready to defend the territory he's sworn to protect, whatever Zodiac tries.
Ben's doing OK fighting Brusque until the glow of the weird vial takes all his strength. Ben gets flattened, but is kept from being noticed by the cops by a kid covering him with a sheet. Because Ben's under house arrest. Like there wasn't a big crowd of people who all saw the Thing. Anyway, the kid, Bobby Spector, knows where Brusque went with Amaryllis, which is a "New Manhattan" under the regular one. Ben and Brusque fight again, Ben gets saved by Bobby throwing his a white cloth that turns into a steel glove, Brusque loses the vial, and then his dark heart erupts from his chest. Then the guy who runs the underground community tells Ben, Amaryllis and Bobby they have to stay forever, but he has a heart attack and dies.
This is definitely one of those things where shithead gods fuck around with mortals because of some stupid bet. I don't know why, I don't know what the rules are, I don't know who Bobby or Amaryllis are in all this. Bobby seems to know too much and is too vague about how to trust. Amaryllis is usually less suspicious, but every so often she does or says something that feels like she knows more about what's going on than she should. Trying to stab Brusque with his little glowing vial. It's a blunt plastic tube. Why would she think that was going to work? Jabbing a finger in his eye woulda worked better. Unless she knew something. Plus, he comment about the guy being so filled with evil glee it killed him feels really on the nose. Also seems odd Ben just shrugs off the guy keeling over like that.
At one point during Ben and Brusque's rematch, Bellaire starts coloring all the panels where they're actually fighting in this solid orange-red. Not quite as red as the panel where Ben sees all the corpses of the people Brusque killed down there. It does have the effect of making even the moments when Ben is trying to be gentle seems brutal. There's a panel where Ben takes a piece of rebar from Brusque and wraps it around him to pin his arms, and between the coloring, the veins in Brusque's arms and the blood, it sure looks like Ben bear-hugged him to death.
I liked how, in their first fight, Brusque clocks Ben across the face and the tires leave a tread mark across Ben's face. Only for a single silent panel, before Ben uppercuts hard enough his shirt explodes, but it's a nice detail.
3 comments:
Is the Under-Manhattan in Thing above, below, or to the side of the Under-Manhattan that was full of tramps and ruled by Morbius in that Old (!) Todd McFarlane Adjectiveless Spider-Man story? Or the one the Morlocks lived in? I feel that we need a map to straighten this all out.
Merry Chrimble!
It's far enough down to have buildings multiple stories tall. Brusque's fort is tall enough it takes two Hulk-leaps for Ben to scale the wall (although he says he's not no dad-blamed Hulk), which has gotta be pretty tall.
So I'm guessing below Morbius' joint or the Morlocks, but not down as far as the Mole Man's territory. Heck, Tom Taylor added some entire subterranean copy of Manhattan in his Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, that was at least 1000 feet down, I think.
I would figure those other two were both just in the regular sewer systems, but maybe different boroughs? Like the Morlocks were in Brooklyn and Morbius was chilling in the Bronx or something.
This is definitely the sort of thing they would do a map for if they were still doing the Official Handbook.
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