Sunday Splash Page #364

"Brutal Moon Rising," in Moon Knight (vol. 5) #5, by Warren Ellis (writer), Declan Shalvey (artist), Jordie Bellaire (color artist), Chris Eliopoulos (letterer)

The first Moon Knight title I bought was volume 3, the one where Charlie Huston and David Finch brought Moon Knight back as an especially brutal, especially nuts, guy. Cutting dudes' faces off and carving crescent moons in their foreheads. I didn't start buying it until #20, by which point Mike Benson was writing. Mike Deodato drew that issue - involving a run-in with Werewolf by Night, who Deodato drew as roughly 15 feet tall. Then Mark Texeira drew a run-in with Osborn's Thunderbolts, before Benson sent Marc south of the border (drawn by Jefte Paolo).

The only issue of that I still have is the Deodato one, which had no splash page, so on to the next. Except the next volume was the one Bendis wrote, where Marc's dis-associative disorder took the form of Captain America, Spider-Man, and Wolverine. Hard pass.

Bringing us to this, which I picked up several years ago in the cheapest back issues I could find. It's Warren Ellis, so the usual caveats about him being a horrible creep apply. If it matters, and I don't blame you if it doesn't, this book's a lot like Two-Step, in that Ellis seems to provide just enough story to allow the artists (in this case, Declan Shalvey and Jordie Bellaire) to go nuts.

Each issue - there are six before another creative team takes over the book - is a done-in-one where Moon Knight handles some issue related to his role as protector of those who travel at night. A SHIELD agent decommissioned after being badly injured attacks people to steal their body parts and rebuild himself. A little girl is abducted on the way home from school for ransom. In each case, Moon Knight goes after them and brings the violence. Sometimes subtle, he beats the organ thief with with seems a throwaway flick of the wrist when he first enters the room. But issue 5 is basically just Moon Knight tearing his way through the entire kidnapping crew.

Shalvey gives Moon Knight his now-common "Mr. Knight" look, the all-white suit with the mask, but also an armor made of bones that lets him punch ghosts in issue #3, where he has to confront a gang that died decades ago, only for their ghosts to suddenly appear. Bellaire colors the suit in such a way that the reflected colors and lights of his surroundings don't touch the suit. It's white, or the shadows are black. That's it, as though he's something entirely separate from the world around him. Walking through it, beating the shit out of things in it, but not part of it.

Which matches the state Ellis puts him in, where Marc lives alone in a mansion full of stuff he doesn't remember buying. Has a limo that drives itself, a moon-plane-thing that responds to voice commands. His old supporting cast - Frenchie, Marlene - have no contact with him now, which seems to be a mutual agreement. They recognize Marc is nothing but death, and he thinks wanting nothing means he can't lose anything, so he can't lose.