Broken Frontier

Moon Knight continues to revel in his return to active duty, but the heroes rallying against the registration act may have a say on which side he chooses to fight for.

This issue of Moon Knight is a Civil War tie-in, as Marc Spector intends to announce to the world his return to active duty. Of course, it doesn’t take long before Spider-Man ventures into the night to verify Moon Knight’s return, and his appearance surely signifies an eventual meeting with the resistance group may be in the cards for our daunting hero.

It begins with Moon Knight forcibly taking down some undesirables when Spider-Man shows up to spoil the fun. Of course Moon Knight could care less, since he obviously has more on his mind than hobnobbing with members of the superhero fraternity. He ignores Spidey’s quips and then heads to a nearby limo being driven by his faithful servant Samules. He’s driven home, and once in the safe confines of his secret lair he goes about the task of salvaging his moon jet. Unfortunately Marc can’t seem to get things going with it, so he seeks out the help of some old friends to aid him. Surprisingly, along the way he ends up coming face to face with one of the greatest soldiers ever and this man definitely has something very important to say to Marc.

I don’t often like tie-in issues, but this one made sense given Moon Knight’s sudden reappearance in the Marvel Universe. He’s such a gritty character and it’s only obvious the resistance team of heroes would want to recruit him. Writer Charlie Huston handled the proceedings accordingly, and I thought he managed to weave in the current events of Civil War and blend them well into the plot of this issue. My only complaint though is that I found a bit of his dialogue excessive when two characters or more are carrying on a conversation together. I know it’s a more cinematic device often seen in screenplay writing, but the approach to it here hampers some of the effectiveness of this story.

Again, this issue was drawn by artist David Finch and he was bang on once more with his gritty approach to storytelling. I’ve really come to enjoy his work here on this series, and he’s helped to make this incarnation of Moon Knight a very memorable one for me. I know he is due to be exiting from this series shortly and I am going to miss his gritty style. I hope the next artist that comes aboard this series handles the art chores as well as David did and can continue to keep pace with Charlie’s crime infused scripts.

This series has certainly found a very comfortable niche to work within over the last several months. In fact, I have grown very fond of this new incarnation of Moon Knight, and his true potential as a bona fide hero looks to be achieved after just seven issues. That’s a good sign, and it will be interesting to see where writer Charlie Huston goes with this given Marc’s fragile mental state. Heroes like Moon Knight need to be on the edge at all times in order to excel, and so far he seems to be thriving perfectly as a man to be reckoned with.