Broken Frontier

Moon Knight’s triumphant return to the Marvel Universe continues in the most uncompromising way possible once we learn the truth behind his paralysis.

I thought the first issue gut punched readers with a story that unveiled a much different looking and acting Marc Spector. Well, after reading the second issue the gut punching only worsens once we realize how Marc ended up a broken and crippled man.

The story continues with Marc confined to his wheelchair and lost within his tormented remembrances of the past. This time around we learn that Marc crusaded as Moon Knight and was caught in a deadly confrontation with his old nemesis the Bushman. The two foes took their heated battle to the rooftops above the city, and tragic consequences resulted for both men. Marc lost the use of both legs after a horrible fall from the roof, and that was just the tip of the iceberg. The Bushman survived the fall and he came right back at him with a vengeance, so Marc was forced to do the unthinkable and take his nemesis’ life all in the name of Khonshu.

As uncompromising as that was, writer Charlie Huston seems determined to "devalue" the merits of being Moon Knight. I am sure this is being done for the sake of telling a superior story, and this is indeed a gritty and painful examination of a hero’s fall from grace. You’ve got to love the dramatic turn of events here, and I firmly believe the writer intends to fully urbanize the mythos of Moon Knight before returning him as a bona fide hero in the Marvel Universe.

On the other hand, artist David Finch has surely self-imposed his own gritty flair upon the character. His rendering of the cast, scenes and setting is a downright nasty display of modern urban crime in full swing. I must say that I am enjoying his work here more than I did when he started on New Avengers, and his style is more suited to a book like Moon Knight. If I have one minor complaint though, it would be his excessive over usage of close-ups to convey tension and dramatic effect. I am not sure how other readers are feeling about this, but I am getting annoyed by it and I think he needs to pull back a bit more in some of the shots.

Overall though, this is an interesting return to a character that needed more stories to be told about him. I know we are just two issues in and it’s a bit early to be comparing this series to the classic Moench and Sienkiewicz run from the mid 80’s. Maybe we should wait awhile and see how this new series shapes up, but in the meantime I think it’s safe to say that we are off to a good start here.