Another year, another last issue for Moon Knight! Let's see: we saw Bendis's Moon Knight #12 last year, his original series wrap-up #38 in 2014, and Fist of Khonshu #6 back in 2011. Today his most recent last issue: from 2015, Moon Knight #17, "Duality" Written by Cullen Bunn, pencils by Ron Ackins, inks by Tom Palmer and Walden Wong.
This issue was the capper to the series began by Warren Ellis, with MK in a sharp white suit without the traditional cloak. And possibly less crazy than usual. Or differently crazy. Here we have another of the recent motifs of Moon Knight comics: his god Khonshu isn't just a figment of his imagination, he's totally real and rather a prick.
A new homeless shelter, managed by unsettling, always-smiling workers, brings in an old man, who notices the shelter is putting the homeless to work panhandling. Or mugging. But they have a different job in mind for anyone too observant: human sacrifice. Complete with guards that look like they're from a King Tut episode of Batman.
Luckily, the old man is a disguised Moon Knight, who manhandles the guards, but is then greeted warmly as "Father" by the smilers. They lead him to his "sister," the "mother," the priestess of Khonshu; who I thought was Nekra, but she isn't referred to by name anywhere here.
Nekra, if it is her, explains she does all this in Khonshu's name, at Khonshu's whim: as god of the moon, his aims may change like the phases. Moon Knight considers that pop-psychology mythology, but does have a bit of a hard time with her and the bizarre, armored monsters at her command. Drugged and hallucinating, MK still knows this was not Khonshu's will: he was.
Burning down the mission, Moon Knight limps away, with Khonshu by his side like the footprints in the sand parable, if Jesus was a violent nutjob. This isn't as good a done-in-one issue as Ellis's run, but at least it's not stretching two issues worth of plot into six-plus, which I kind of feel Lemire's current run is doing.
1 comment:
I have this issue! Ha ha.
I liked it, and I liked Bunn's stories myself. It;s not the same as Ellis, 'cause well shit, he's Ellis, but still, not bad. Didn't read any of Brian Wood's MK issues. Did you and were they any good?
I'm not sure about Lemire in general, as he's really hit and miss for me, but his run on MK so far is pretty good. It's defintiely the only thing I currently enjoy or bother to pay for at marvel these days.
Goddamn we need a Mr. Knight figure BADLY next year. Fingers and dicks crossed!
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