Action Figure: Moon Knight #9 Review

Not for nothin’ my man, but why do you want a Captain America shield?

Because it’s cool.

What are you, six years old?

That exchange between Moon Knight and his weapons procurer, Buck, describes Moon Knight #9 in a nutshell. It’s like little pre-adolescent Brian Michael Bendis trumpeted, “Y’know what would be fuckin’ cool? If Batman had Wolverine’s claws! And, and Spider-Man’s web shooters! And fuckin’ Captain America’s shield! Snikt! Thwip! Whooooosh!” Just before lil’ Brian’s mom Adderalled him into dullness. Blessed, quiet dullness.

The hell of it is, he’s right. Is is kinda fucking cool.

Y’know, provided you can forget the reasonably tight little story of a lone superhero on the edge of sanity that came before this issue and put yourself in the mindset of when you were seven, and you stuck your Luke Skywalker action figure in your G.I. Joe Skystriker jet and sent it to attack your little brother’s Castle Grayskull… or if you’re me, like you did when you were on Tuesday.

This issue is either a terrible place to jump into the book or the absolute best. Sure, on one hand you’ll be missing eight issues of backstory about how Marc Spector moved to L.A. to become one of that city’s only superheroes, (re)made his fortune producing a TV show of his adventures as a mercenary to finance his Moon Knight activities, how he’s been battling hallucinations of various Avengers who tell him to do things, and how he fought his way through the local mobs to find the west coast “Kingpin” and discovered it was Count Nefaria…

…but on the other hand, who gives a shit? Sure, it’s nice to know that stuff, but all you really need to know is that a dude who looks like Batman has all the coolest powers in the Marvel Universe, and how he uses them to fight a dude so powerful he once kicked Thor in the taint. Do you care how he got there? Maybe… but did you really care when the same thing happened in front of your toy box in 1979?

It would be easy to slam this book as ridiculous, adolescent wish-fulfillment on the part of writer Brian Michael Bendis, to which I can only reply: what is this, your first Bendis book? He’s been doing stuff like this since Joe Quesada let him in to play in the Marvel Universe: “Wouldn’t it be awesome if Spider-Man was on the Avengers?”, and, “If Hawkeye has all those explosive arrows strapped to his back, why doesn’t someone just shoot him in the back and blow him the hell up?”, and, right back to his earliest Marvel work: “Wouldn’t it be cool if Spider-Woman was a private eye?” Sure, it’s easy to slam Bendis sometimes (The Green Goblin becomes America’s sweetheart? Really?), but I think part of why he always endures with me is that he’s writing all the ridiculous bullshit that I used to talk about over the lunch table in high school.

Alex Maleev’s art on this book is, as always, an acquired taste. He works in subtle abstracts, with heavily-penciled lines, scratched-in inked shadows, and realistic-looking figures. It looks cool in a Bill Sienkiewicz kind of way, and it captures the grime of L.A. alleys like nobody’s business. However, his storytelling is a little dicey. There are some panels where it’s kind of hard to tell what just happened; there’s a sequence where Echo is standing near Nefaria looking all pissed while he spews blood to the left, and Echo’s staff is held to the right, and since Echo appeared out of nowhere, it took a bit for me to figure out that she hit him. Without the dialogue saying “Why did hitting Nefaria with a stick actually work?”, I might not have figured it out at all. That kind of art gaffe happens a few times in this issue, and while it might look damn good, at times it makes following the story harder than it needs to be.

It would be very simple to slam this books as stupid and childish, the kind of thing that a child would illustrate on the inside cover of his math workbook in crayons while he waited for the Ritalin to take the edge off. To which I can only reply: you are reading a fucking comic book. If you’re not here for adolescent wish-fullfiilment, why the fuck are you here?

Batman with Wolverine’s claws is cool, and Bendis isn’t the first person to think so. Have yourself a little fun and check it out.