I overpaid for a binged-up copy of this issue, but frankly at any price any copy would be too much: from 2012, Moon Knight #12, written by Brian Bendis, art by Alex Maleev and Matt Hollingsworth.
This was supposed to be a major, big-league title: Bendis and Maleev had done a long and successful run on Daredevil, and expectations were high. And...yeah. This was the version of Moon Knight whose multiple personality disorder had manifested as hallucinations of Captain America, Spider-Man, and Wolverine, which guided him like imaginary friends. MK also became involved with Echo, who had been an Avenger while disguised as Ronin; but she gets killed by Count Nefaria. (Unseen, I'm 90% sure Echo was straight-up fridged to serve as motivation for the hero's vengeance, but I didn't know if her death had stuck or not...) The plot also involved Madame Masque, Snapdragon, dirty cops, the head of Ultron, and a TV show "Legends of the Khonshu." Admittedly, I'm coming in on the last issue here, but it seems like it's all over the place. In one scene, Nefaria heat-visions his crooked cop down to a red skeleton, and his monocle doesn't even fall off. That should tell you plenty...
Even fighting with Cap's energy shield and knock-off Wolvie claws, Moon Knight is no match for Nefaria, and catches a beating. He gives up the location of the Ultron head, but that's a lie: Nefaria charges into a parking lot full of Avengers, and MK delivers the finishing blow...after Thor has already knocked him out. Heroic. Tony Stark congratulates Spector on his work keeping the Ultron head out of the bad guy's hands; even though Stark had been hunting Spector two series prior during the Initiative. (Stark may have been mindwiped or rebooted since then and not recalled that.) This ties in to the Age of Ultron series somehow, but I'm not sure how: there's some time-travel, and I had kind of thought this issue was retconned away. Echo joins Iron Man and Wolverine in Spector's head, which is somehow presented like a happy ending; and "Legends of the Khonshu" is cancelled, and Spector says he'd "rather die in a robot holocaust than spend another second in Hollywood."
Not good: this series is pretty much forgotten today. In fact, forget I brought it up, OK?
That's okay, I honestly don't remember this at all anyway.
ReplyDeleteActually, there are a LOT of comics I can say that about!
The hell did you buy this for? Morbid curiousity? Looks it could've been something.... Maybe, but Bendis just bendis'd it up, so no great loss there. Art looked..... Okay I guess. So Echo's dead huh? Honestly she never really had a chance.....
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