Moon Knight #1-15

Just like last time, the Marvel Unlimited subscription has put me on a binge read Charlie Huston’s run on Moon Knight was bloody fun. Over the last year or so, I’ve really started paying attention to the character, thanks to cheap back issue sets and paperbacks.

Moon Knight really feels like it flew under the radar at Marvel. Huston is best known for being a crime novelist, and at the time Moon Knight was a largely forgotten character in the Marvel pantheon. The 2006-2007 series was a lot of dark fun, so why should you read it?

• Gore factor. Now usually I don’t go for that sort of thing. But somehow Huston’s script and the way that David Finch illustrated it is just so gross, creepy and welcoming at the same time. I know I’ve said it before, but Finch really reminds me of Todd McFarlane with how he draws. And his art is so on in this series.
• Khonshu. If you remember, the premise of Moon Knight is that he’s an avatar of the Egyptian god Khonshu and that by worshiping this god (or just generally poor mental health) he has been slowly driving him nuts. Khonshu has taken the form of the late super villain the Bushman, whom Moon Knight literally defaced and killed. This vision appears, tormenting the hero from the side.
• Call backs. I don’t know if Huston was a fan of the original Moon Knight series but he certainly references a lot of the older comics, even down to the supporting characters. His former pilot Frenchie (who reveals that he has put up with Moon Knight’s crap for so long only because he had a crush on the masked vigilante), love interest Marlene and his supporting cast are all there. He even finds himself feuding with the current incarnation of the villainous the Committee and is faced to fight his former sidekick Midnight (now a villain) to the death.
• The second six issues. The main part of this arc is Moon Knight dealing with Midnight, but the subplot involves both Iron Man and Captain America trying to recruit him to their respective sides during the Civil War period. Moon Knight has his own views which happen to not go along with each side and he finds a way to express them clearly.
• It feels like an indie super hero book. This doesn’t feel like anything Marvel would put out. It’s just really different.

So there you have it. Read Moon Knight immediately. It’s dark, brooding and gory, but still a light and fun (if that’s possible with a hero that’s cutting up people) read. It certainly makes me want to see more super hero stuff written by Huston.

 

Immortal Iron Fist #1-27

You know what I like doing? I like hording runs of complete (or near complete) series and then binge read them, kind of like how someone will burn through a whole season of something on Netflix. With Marvel Unlimited, I was able to binge read the entire Immortal Iron Fist series.

I must admit that I don’t necessarily know everything about the character. But in this short series, which ran roughly two and a half years, I was able to jump right in at full speed.

There is a lot that happens in this series, ranging from Daniel Rand having to literally fight off corporate raiders that are part Hydra, to fighting with the other immortal weapons in a tournament of celestial proportions, to finally even going to hell. All the while, there are side bars chronicling the life and death of Orson Randall (the previous Iron Fist), Daniel’s father Wendell taking the Rand family on an expedition to find K’un-L’un, and single issue stories about the various other people to wield the Iron Fist. We even explore Daniel’s personal life, whether it be how he runs his business or his relationship with Misty Knight.

The resulting series works so well, whether it be written by the series’ original team of Ed Brubaker and Matt Fraction, to the later issues by Duane Swierczynski. It is a real testament to his abilities as a writer, as he keeps the tone and pace set by Brubaker and Fraction. On the art side, the series went back and forth from David Aja and Travel Foreman seamlessly. The resulting series was just great.

Red Lanterns #27

I don’t know half of what’s happened leading up to this but it’s got a cover that makes me happy. As a long-time fan of the JLI era, getting to see Guy Gardner and Ice getting into some mischief is enough for me.

Red Lanterns #27 starts on some planet that Guy and the rest of the Red Lanterns liberated. He’s also had a bit of a change in appearance from the cover, as he now sports a mustache that Burt Reynolds would be jealous of.

The main story features Guy trying to win his ex-girlfriend Ice back, who lives in an icy cabin in the woods of Norway. It’s just like the movie Frozen, except a million times cooler. They broke up because he’s an angry, miserable son-of-a-gun but he’s much better now.

The subplot has two teams of the Red Lanterns out on patrol, two looking for the missing ring of the late-RL Ratchet, and the other two go sight-seeing around the planet Earth. Unfortunately they make fun of Guy’s hometown Baltimore, which also happens to be one of my favorite places.

Perhaps I’ll follow this series more…