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"Moon Knight: From The Dead" by Warren Ellis Issues 1-6 (Ep. 16)
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Episode 16 is here! Ben and Antonio dive into Moon Knight: From the Dead by Warren Ellis, breaking down issues 1–6. This week we explore identity, control, and whether Moon Knight is a hero guided by purpose or something sinister and unstable.
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Hey there everybody, how's it going? Welcome back to another episode of Kickback Comics. My name is Antonio. My name is Ben, and y'all are listening to a comic book podcast. By two guys who have not read a lot of comics but are looking to read some, get involved, look at some cool stories, uh, die, come back from the dead, um, and become son of the moon. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01We love the moon over here at Kickback Comics.
SPEAKER_02We do waxing, waning crescents, all phases.
SPEAKER_01All that. Uh, this is what we're doing. We're doing a book club. Thank you guys so much for joining us. Yeah, thank you very much. Um, this week we read Moon Knight.
SPEAKER_02We did read Moon Knight. This is pretty crazy, bro. I feel like I did not know Moonlight. Moon Knight. Moonlight's a great movie, but Moon Knight, too much before this, before Marvel rivals, honestly.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, true. Oh, he's a savage and he is, bro. But yeah, it's uh it's fun. We're sort of uh expanding our Marvel universe knowledge here. Indeed. Getting into one of these uh beloved side characters, and I'm glad we did. It was it was super fun.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Um we'll jump into it. Before we get into the comic, I just want to throw out a reminder that we have a Kickback Comics Instagram going. So, you know, jump in, join the conversation there. We're sort of um starting to push that more this coming year. Yep. Uh we've got a YouTube also, we just finally got that working. So we're about to start promoting that a little bit more. Episodes are available to listen to there. And if you're listening on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, we never really say this, but uh it's super helpful if you guys throw us uh some reviews, some stars, favorite us. Maybe even five, maybe even five stars. Yeah, all that stuff. You know, we we sort of feel like we've we've gotten the podcast up and running and it's time for us to start promoting it a little bit. So um thank you. You guys, yeah, you guys who are already already here along for the ride can can be a part of that. Um yeah, thank you so much. Thanks. Alright, so we read Moon Knights. That we did. Which is a trade paperback from like 2014. I know. Um which uh again was a a random a random pick here. We've we've sort of been jumping into uh comicsology, as uh which we mentioned on our last episode, but it's it's uh it's basically a comic book subscription that's available through Kindle slash Amazon. Um and it it gives you a really wide variety of comics from all sorts of different publishers and uh lets you read the vast majority I mean for pretty much everything, it'll have the first few issues free. Uh or not free, but available with the subscription. Yeah, with the subscription.
SPEAKER_02No free lunch, but you know.
SPEAKER_01But so yeah, we we decided to try this moon knight one out and it was a really good choice. Turns out that it was uh like a pretty popular run for the character Moon Knight.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, we couldn't even get the paperback for less than like$70. Yeah, which is which is crazy. I try to normally buy most of these, but uh yeah, we did the we did the uh the subscription. But it worked out well, and yeah, this was a great, super interesting one. I I honestly had like a great time reading this. I genuinely had like a good time. Um Yeah, I I did too.
SPEAKER_01It was kind of surprising. One concept that I think we maybe haven't talked about yet, but is one of those things that people say a lot in comics like Discourse Online or whatever, is like street level heroes, you know? Oh people they make a big like you know, delineation between big cosmic superheroes, superheroes that are super duper. Right, and they're doing stuff on like country versus country, huge, you know, whatever planet versus planet planet versus planet, all that galaxy versus galaxy, etc. etc. But then it's super important also in that tapestry is to have these guys that are just like in New York City, just helping out, bro.
SPEAKER_02Friendly neighborhood, but not Spider-Man, you know what I'm saying? Exactly.
SPEAKER_01Um then the stakes are so much lower. It's like, you know, solve a crime, save a cadet person, stop some ghosts. Um the stakes are way lower. Right. Uh and the story sort of because of that can be way way simpler, way more contained, right? Yeah, focus more on tone, um, you know, and just giving us these really awesome bite-sized little uh little stories versus huge scale. And so it's you know, obviously it's cool to have the the the huge scale stuff too, but right.
SPEAKER_02But this was a fun kind of um yeah, fun dive into the world of of the smaller scale stuff. Um, and not small scale in a in a narrative sense or anything else, but just on that kind of uh uh fighting whatever else level of this stuff going on. But this was super, super cool. Um this straight paperback does issues number one through six. Um and yeah, it's this it's a self-contained episodic run where basically each issue is telling uh a pretty much standalone story. There's some kind of connection there, but um one of the reasons that it was great for us to read and great for you guys to read as well is that it's a pretty accessible entry point for this character. You get enough background to kind of get you started. Um and it didn't feel I mean, for me honestly, I didn't feel like I was like missing a whole lot. Um obviously maybe it would have been cool to like just see some more of the backstory in the um in like the art and whatever else, right? But overall I didn't feel like I was like really missing something to get this story. Right.
SPEAKER_01Which is kind of in contrast to what we read last week, uh, which was Black Panther, yeah, which we loved, but one of the things we talked about on the episode was there was clearly a lot of context, a lot of characters, a lot of story that we did not know, and it definitely would have been helpful for us to have that information. Right, right, exactly, exactly. So we've got a pretty cool little creative team for this trade paperback. The writer is Warren Ellis, the primary artist is Declan Shalvy, and the color artist is Jordi Belair. Yeah, Belair. Cool Air. Yeah, cool name.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, super cool.
SPEAKER_01Um the story, I guess, is one of the modern, more influential modern takes on Moon Knight. Uh sort of redefined the tone and aesthetic, stripped the character back down to essentials, and leaned into this sort of like psychological horror and like we just said, street level street level crime.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Um and also established the modern Mr. Knight persona, which is uh we'll get into as as we're talking about the character in general. But was pretty cool. There's like, you know, different versions of Moon Knight taking place page to page, chapter to chapter.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, this was like super fun for me as like a psychology student, uh, as my that is what my degree is in. But this was super interesting just to kind of um you know look at from the perspective, and we'll dive into kind of exactly how they describe this as well in this in uh in this little uh comic run here. But um it was just it was just fun. I don't know. Bottom line is it was it was pretty fun for me to read.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, let me throw out some uh Moon Knight character facts that we got going on the dossier over here. So Moon Knight, uh his real name is Mark Specter. He was a former mercenary and he got resurrected by the Egyptian god Kanshu in his uh in his origin. So his origin actually he first appeared in the comic Werewolf by Night number 32. Whoa. Back in 1975. Crazy. He was originally introduced uh as like a villain antagonist, not a hero. But then he was so popular that they ended up bringing him back and eventually giving him his own comic runs. So he was uh created by Doug Mensch and Don Perlin, the writer and artist duo for Werewolf by Night, I guess, back in the 70s. Um the key, some key components for Moon Knight is that he has multiple identities. He's got Mark Specter, Stephen Grant, Jake Lockley, and Mr. Knight. It's crazy.
SPEAKER_02I wasn't even thinking about that because they mentioned that at a certain point, which we'll talk about. But um, yeah, I knew obviously Mark Specter and and Mr. Knight, but the fact that those other ones also kind of lock in there is pretty interesting.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, some of the context I know one of them is like a really wealthy guy, like a Bruce Bruce Wayne type character.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that's very much the vibe I got.
SPEAKER_01Another one is uh a taxi driver, so he can go, you know, get involved, you know, get intel on the street level stuff again. And uh obviously, I guess eventually he gets offici he's like officially diagnosed with multiple personality disorders. Dissociative identity disorder is actually what they they say he's got DID, which is pretty interesting. Yeah, that's uh I mean it also I guess is part of the um the like power set from Moon Knight himself, which is interesting. Like it seems like the dissociative identity stuff is both like part of the character of Mark before he got these powers, and also aligns with the whole like conchu mythos or whatever in some way. So those two things come together and uh become like a really core part of his whole character.
SPEAKER_02They kind of like make you know, I was looking this up a little bit, and and yeah, Kanchu is a Egyptian deity. They actually spell it slightly differently than than um it is, but uh yeah, they talk about at least in this story that Kanchu also has like multiple aspects of uh itself as a god, and that kind of is reflected in uh Mark's dissociative identity disorder, which is pretty interesting.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so I guess in his backstory, he was basically a mercenary for hire, was part of some tomb raid type situation, got gunned down right at the foot of this conju statue. And they left him. They left him, and then conchu was like, okay, cool, avatar for me. Let me let me wake this guy up and make him do my bidding. Um, which is which is really cool. Like he does, he basically has this god who in our story is depicted as like the skeletal, massive bird head super cool, uh, spooky guy who's sort of you know talking in his ear and and giving him guys.
SPEAKER_02And the bird head is like true. It's like I was looking it up and it's very similar to um I don't know if it I can't remember if it was exactly on the same like kind of level as a god as as Ra, for example, like the sun god, but but I guess it would make sense if he is kind of like a moon god, but very much like in their depictions, they're actually pretty similar looking. It's that they're either gonna show up as kind of like the the bird headed person or as he's gonna show up as like a child uh with like green or blue skin and like one yeah, like one piece of hair like off to the side. They're like kind of these three main depictions um that's it of conscience, which is pretty, pretty cool.
SPEAKER_01A lot of Egyptian gods are depicted, you know, traditionally that way, like with heads of different animals, like uh Anubis or whatever has the head of a jackal. Right.
SPEAKER_02Uh Thoth is an Ibis. Bro, I loved like it was such a random thing that I was like interested in it as a kid, but I did love I don't and I don't know everything about it, so I'm not about to pull up like Ben does with like Greek mythology and stuff like that, but I loved like Egyptian stuff when I was like a kid, and there was there was some game that I played that was like from like the original Xbox or like GameCube or whatever else, and it was um it was like something like the Sphinx or whatever else, but like the whole premise of this game was like entirely based on like Egyptian um gods and different stuff like that, and so you're like you know getting uh stuff out of like the jars. I can't remember what exactly, but it's like you know, they put um the jars like the mummification jars, mmification jars and stuff like that, and uh you know, one of these guys gets basically mummified and brought back to life, funny enough, uh similar to this story. And anyway, that's a whole game. Played it a lot as a kid, but this I I do love the Egyptian uh the Egyptian stuff there.
SPEAKER_01It's so cool how games sort of expose us to all this different like big thing for me was uh I I may have mentioned before, but what kicked off my interest in in Greek mythology and everything was this game called Age of Mythology. Oh yeah, I know. I know of it, yeah. Which is basically Age of Empires but with uh supernatural stuff uh put in. And you there was sort of three factions. There's like the Greeks, the Egyptians, and the Norse. Uh-huh. And so you could choose, like it had to do with all the different pantheons and the story mode. You know, I got super into it as a kid. And all the characters you could like right-click on them, and they'd have a whole little like bio, but they were pretty in depth. They'd talk about like historical context for all these characters and whatever. And um, yeah, I loved that shit.
SPEAKER_02I love that kind of stuff. You know, it's so funny. I just realized actually looking up this game as we're talking about this. This is also how I learned how to juggle randomly enough. I just like there was like somebody juggling in like a square in this game, and I just like watched them and learned how to juggle by doing that. But anyway, shout out to um Egyptian mythology and and all of that stuff there. Super cool. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01So basically, to wrap up the concept of Moon Knight, he's this uh like super efficient mercenary type guy. He's got the the backing of an Egyptian god giving him powers. He's like a brutal vigilante, he does some detective stuff. Uh he's sort of like a supernatural agent for conshu. A lot of people, I guess, compare him to Batman. It's like a some kind of a meme. It's like, oh yeah, he's just Marvel's Batman, uh, which is interesting. He's definitely like more explicitly crazy than Batman. I think Batman is also depicted to be crazy.
SPEAKER_02It's funny what you said earlier. It's like he's explicitly mentally ill, which which Batman is not as explicitly normally, right? Right. But he definitely is.
SPEAKER_01But that's you know, some of these themes are like, you know, faith versus delusion. I think in some runs it's not clear whether Kanchu is actually there.
SPEAKER_02Like he's like, I mean, actually in this run, there's some stuff that like we'll we'll maybe even point out in particular, but there's some stuff in this run that I felt was like I didn't know if people were actually there in certain circum circumstances, which is really interesting.
SPEAKER_01And it talks about him like yelling in the streets, different people that aren't. Exactly.
SPEAKER_02Exactly. Um Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Should we jump in, uh jump in and and read the summary of our little trade here?
SPEAKER_02Let's see, I'll do this this summary here. So um Mark Specter, now operating primarily as the composed and enigmatic Mr. Knight, takes on a series of strange and brutal cases across New York City, from supernatural threats to uh deeply human violence. Each issue presents a new encounter, including a sniper haunting the city, a cell a sleep depriving cult, and a disturbing mission involving a young girl and a creature in the subway. As Moon Knight moves through these cases, his connection to Konsu and his fractured identity linger in the background, blurring the line between divine purpose and personal instability. Um the book builds a portrait of this hero who is methodical and controlled on the surface, but um whose reality may not be entirely his own. So that's kind of the basic breakdown. I think we'll we'll talk some more about the specific issues themselves, but overall, um, what did you think of this, Ben?
SPEAKER_01I thought it was super fun. Yeah. I thought it was really, really cool. I uh I remember when I started reading it, I realized that I had read the first issue uh like a year or two ago, checking it out, and I didn't make it further, which is kind of a bummer. Um this time it definitely definitely pulled me in. Yeah. But it was like like we sort of mentioned earlier, each issue was very episodic and had like a really cool little self-contained mystery. Each one had its own distinct tone and its own things uh to, you know, things that the creatives were obviously focused on.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Um I mean, I think this is this is one of the ones that I think is super fun. I mean, we've talked about really some great art. I think there's there's great writing. I think that there's like there's so many like quotes in this that I just thought were like so cool. It's like these moments that you have Moon Knight just being like a super kind of like badass, or just like saying something that kind of makes you sit back and be like, damn. Um, but I think also this was another just really great pairing between like artist and and writer. Like there's so many cool moments like that as a writer, but there are also so many cool moments as like an artist. And Ben and I were talking about this even before we jumped on here, and we're doing our best to not go crazy on pod talk outside of actually doing it. But the silhouettes that are created in this um when uh Moon Knight is either coming in or um you're kind of seeing him yeah, go off after doing something, right? It's um it's such a good job of like finding this theme to the art and like really finding like the coolest ways to portray that kind of theme through it. I think it's I think it's awesome. I had a great time.
SPEAKER_01For sure. The the color is definitely sort of like made me think of watercolors, yeah, but not in a kind in kind of a subdued way. Not like there's one there's one issue where things get more psychedelic, which I'm sure we'll talk about in a minute. But for the most part, um the colors like you can really feel like the glowing lights in of New York at night. That's another thing that's really cool about this, is pretty much all the narratives are taking place at nighttime, yeah, which is one of the core uh tenets for Moon Knight, I guess, is and for Conch. Yeah, Kanchu is responsible for taking care of the travelers of the nighttime, like people who are trying to get somewhere. Uh so that's one of the things he's always doing is making sure people are anybody who's been murdered at night, he's trying to solve that anything.
SPEAKER_02Everybody been taken at night or anything's going on. They also, I mean, what's so interesting is that they I think do a really cool um job of expanding on that, right? Where it's like obviously kind of the couple of things that we talked about where it's you know real, like real people being um taken at night or dealing with stuff at night, but there's also like dreams. Like he talks about how dreams are also under his um watch. And so making sure that the people that are dreaming and whatever else, which is such a I mean, that would be a super interesting thing to expand on. They do a great job in this, even in the one it's only one issue that they really talk about this thing, but it sounds and looks super, super cool. Um, but that's also another interesting aspect of this.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, his silhouette is really iconic. Another, you know, somewhat obvious thing, but we haven't mentioned that Moon Knight is like completely white. Yes.
SPEAKER_02Which is also super. His super thing is black and white. Like, I love the distinction. I I honestly only really like deeply noticed like how much the contrast was as I started getting to the end of the uh of the issues, but like even like in the beginning, it's like he is starkly drawn in black and white. No, like it's like there's no specks on his outfit. There's no specks on the suit, the tie is white, the shirt is white, you know, whatever else, um, which is super cool and an interesting juxtaposition against all the other stuff that's going on.
SPEAKER_01And he always looks like he's kind of illuminated, which is awesome. Like he looked feels like moonlight, you know, which is another part of him that's that's kind of part of his like, you know, quote unquote crazy persona or whatever, is people always like, why are you wearing white? Like you're to stand out like crazy. And he's like, Yeah, I want him to see me come. And like I love. That's the part I like. Yeah, exactly. So it's part of, you know, he's he wants to go, he like he wants to get hurt, kind of. He is kind of like a we like into the violence in kind of a weird way, yeah. Um and it just looks it looks amazing. So we we see his in his like superhero persona, we sort of see two versions of them. We see this guy, Mr. Knight, which he's wearing like a business suit with uh cloth like fully over his head.
SPEAKER_02And it seems that's who he he normally like, if he's interacting with like the police or like whoever else, it's it's Mr. Knight.
SPEAKER_01Because one of the and then and then in his moon knight persona, he looks like this crazy like Power Ranger like ninja kind of thing. He's got this cape going on that he can expand and like glide around, yeah, leaping off of buildings. He's got a grappling hook, kind of like Batman, you know. He's like a he's like a bright white Batman kind of when he's in his actual Moon Knight mode, you know. But one of the things that we can see, so the f this first issue is all about him trying to solve this slasher murder. Yep. And it sort of introduces the character. He pulls up in this white limousine uh and then does some investigations at the crime scene, like alongside these cops.
SPEAKER_02And the cops also, what's interesting is that the main cop guy knows his like different identities, which is so interesting.
SPEAKER_01And it's a very it's it's a cool introduction because one of these regular cops sees him coming and is like, oh my god, that's moon night. And he's like, No, if that was moon night, we would have to arrest him. He's like, That's Mr.
SPEAKER_02Knight, that's a concerned citizen. That's not Moon Knight, right? Who we would have to arrest.
SPEAKER_01So it is yeah, exactly. So it is cool. It's like the cops know like it's sort of you know, at all times to sort of between these two extremes where on one side they are like, Oh yeah, no, that's like a violent, crazy guy, but also he's super helpful and will actually solve this shit for us and we'll go down in the sewer and you know and deal with these crazy people that we realistically probably cannot deal with, at least off-rip. Um, so it is funny how it's sort of like I think maybe that's part of the Mr. Knight persona. It's like allows him to do this detective shenanigans somewhat legally, maybe it's like a costume loophole or something.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and I mean this first issue is like just pretty fun because I mean we get this uh again, starting off with this kind of like grotesque uh guy who's been, I guess he it's funny, wasn't he kind of like left in the same situation as Moon Knight was? Um, and but he's basically taking this whole perspective of like killing people, taking their body parts, trying to build like a you know, super version of himself, whatever else.
SPEAKER_01Right. He says, so basically the the to do a little mini summary, Moon Knight goes up to this crime scene, the cops uh aren't figuring it out, Mr. Knight appears, talks to the cops, gathers some clues, fight like follows those clues down in the sewer, and has a confrontation with this crazy, bloody, mutant-looking guy with like a sword for an arm. Um, and that guy says that basically his story is he was a he was an agent of shield, he was sort of like a super soldier of some kind, then an IED exploded uh and they didn't want to uh help him or fix him or whatever, according to him. So his solution was he got some kind of crazy experimental medicine they didn't want to use on him, and he would uh kidnap and murder like bodybuilder type guys. He'd stalk these like fit people at night, cut off their uh like parts of their body, and then attach them to him.
SPEAKER_02So he's like fit and strong and he kind of looks like bro, he you know he reminded me, he reminded me of like that really um like the first Wolverine movie or what it was where Deadpool has like all the swords coming out of him and whatever else. Right. Yeah, we uh Wolverine Origins, yeah. That's that's a tough uh that's a tough one.
SPEAKER_01Maybe we do a we gotta do a Wolverine episode at some point. X-Men too in general. We haven't done any X-Men.
SPEAKER_02All right, that's coming. That's coming. Just keep that in mind. I mean, this you know, we were talking about some of the quotes, and there are there are a couple that I've written down that are super great, and one of them is in um is in this issue here where this this crazy guy down there is basically saying they're they're having this conversation back and forth, and he says, No offense, buddy, but you're a mile underground wearing a white suit and a bag on your head, and you're unarmed and you're gonna die down here. And then Moon Knight says, I've died before. It was boring, so I stood up, right? Just these like quick, again bars. Yeah, exactly. Bars. This man is spitting bars. Um, and again, we get these great we'll get into this too, but I think that this has been kind of back to one of the more like interesting panel type of layouts that we see. We'll we'll talk about some specific stuff later on. But for example, when he says this quote, we're actually breaking out of the panel layout, and he is the white space between the panels as he says this, right? It's just his eyes that are the silhouette, but he's in the white space, and it's that white space is connected to all the rest of the white space between the panels. So it's a really interesting use of that space, and I think it's super cool.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's amazing. If you look at like flipping through these pages, you can see each page kind of has like three major colors. Like this one is sort of like brown, black, white. This one introducing more white. Then we see he goes down into sewers, and we this is a really cool page. I think we we both screenshot it.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, this will be on the Instagram. So go.
SPEAKER_01Check out the Instagram as we said. For sure. So we can see him descending down to the sewers uh in like a vertical long rectangle on that page, and then we see the three different layers of the city, like the subway layer, and then further underneath, we see these like homeless people uh around huddling around a fire in the tunnels, and then we get down to the the bottom layer, which is all like pipes and tech and that is you know, real underbelly of uh of Manhattan, where he has a confront confrontation with this uh you know mutant Frankenstein guy, basically um and he also womps him.
SPEAKER_02Like he just walks in and is like not scared of him at all and just does this. Again, this kind of just shows like how that kind of cool, calm, collectedness of Mr. Knight that exists, right? He it's like he walked bro, he this is one of those like crazy things where the first thing he does is he like walks in and throws, he's like got his boomerang in his hand, his little moon orang, his moon uh what are those right?
SPEAKER_01That's one of the one of the things he can do is like manifest these little moon-shaped knives things. He uses them for all sorts of stuff. He like blocks bullets with them, he's mostly throwing them, like throwing knives. I guess it's like Batman's battery.
SPEAKER_02Exactly, exactly. And so he throws it and you kind of think nothing of it. You think he's like just get getting rid of his weapon, but he's like, oh, what you didn't notice is that with all this heavy machinery, it bounced off the wall and like hit you, and like it hits this guy in the side, and that's what Moon Knight or Mr. Knight uses basically to kind of like take him out as that first shot, which is just him having this bounce off the wall, which is And the whole the whole confrontation is basically over before it started.
SPEAKER_01Like he he walks in, knifes him in this, like it looks like a piece of tech that's part of keeping him alive too. Right. So then then he just gets in monologuing, and then by the time he's ready to fight, he's like, Look, man, I've already won, like you're bleeding out. I stabbed that machine. That's clearly important. Yeah. Um, and it is, it's over in in uh, you know. Yeah, pretty quick. The guy pulls a gun on him and shoots him and blocks the bullet. Blocks the bullet with a little moon dagger.
SPEAKER_02Moon orang. Yeah, crazy. I uh and so this actually leads into one of the really interesting psychological parts of this kind of first issue. Um and we'll we'll do, I guess, some more general stuff as we as we move on here, but um this first issue we have this kind of before New York part where it looks like he's visiting with um a psychiatrist or something like that, right? The very least.
SPEAKER_01Somewhere in in Switzerland or something.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it seems like yeah, he's kind of like in the Alps or something like that. But um basically he's talking to this doctor, and what we end up learning is that um he has dissociative identity disorder, right? That's um, and so they're basically saying that he has multiple personalities. And what I kind of love about this whole part here, right, is like this is a doctor, she comes in, right? It's like totally normal. And then we get these shots of her that look like evil, right? And this is kind of the interesting thing about like disorders like this, and like, for example, like sometimes like schizophrenia and things like that, right? Is it makes you see situations or experience situations differently than they may be happening, and so maybe she is like um weird and evil, like there are these moments where basically, you know, she talks about like, oh, you know, if this thing were true, we would be under an epidemic of people like putting bags on on their heads and cutting people's faces off. Not that that wouldn't be interesting to me, right? And she like looks back and has this crazy kind of grin. Um but just super interesting the way that they introduce this psychological aspect.
SPEAKER_01Um basically this all of the this whole conversation gives us all the backstory into his mental state. I mean, this this whole first issue is honestly brilliantly done. Like the very beginning all the background we needed. Right. The very beginning is like this journalist uh writing about him. It gives all these little blurbs saying, Okay, he's he's appeared back in New York, he's this violent, crazy guy, no one trusts him. Then we cut to the him pulling up in his limousine to the crime scene, interacting with the cops. We see they grudgingly, at least the the head cop grudgingly respects him. Yep. He quickly solves the solves a crime, gets down and dirty, defeats this mutant guy, uh, and then we get the flash to, you know, this whole psychological conversation, which I think we should read some more of it because I was about to say there's some great stuff.
SPEAKER_02I don't know if there was a quote you wanted to start with.
SPEAKER_01Well, let's see, this one she says, I found it particularly resonant that Konshu is said to have four aspects pathfinder, embracer, defender, and the watcher of overnight travelers. And in your most violent moments, conshu's vengeful secret appears, the one who lives on hearts. Yeah, I loved that, bro. I was like, whoa, and so was he, honestly. But but yeah, they say basically he's got brain damage. The bad news, Mr. Spectre, if you have brain damage. Yeah. I believe you are indeed raised from the dead by an outer terrestrial entity and remade to some extent by that entity's operations. You are made to be driven by Konshu's chosen agency. You bring vengeance to those who would harm travelers by night. You cycle through these four aspects, and your brain struggling to define what has happened to it, seeks to apply identities to them. Whether that be Mark Specter, Stephen Grant, Jake Lockley, Wolverine, Spider-Man, Captain America, your brain has conjured them to expand what has happened, to explain what has happened to you. You're not insane. Your brain has been colonized by an ancient consciousness from beyond space-time. Smile.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and and again, this is like please go read this and look at the art from this because it's like so creepy what's going on at the same time.
SPEAKER_01Um and then it it wraps up with him returning to this m like haunted looking empty mansion.
SPEAKER_02Bruce Wayne type of situation. Um, and it's got this um well, so here's there's also two guys in the background of this thing where again, I don't know if they're like actually there. There are two like other just random guys that he doesn't really interact with.
SPEAKER_01Those are his uh those are his other identities. Right. Right. The one on the left, uh, I mean, we'd have to go where can but the one on the left is the Bruce Wayne rich guy. Right. The one on the right the with a cap and a mustache is the taxi driver.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and then we get the you are my son, where there's basically this creature with a a skeleton head of a bird sitting in this chair covered in cobwebs that says you are my son. Um, and then that's how that first issue ends. Crazy. Crazy. Go read it. What a cool little setup origin. Yeah. Oh man, this is like it's hard because we've we've talked and worked so hard on like not going like issue by issue in these pods, but like there are just some crazy cool stuff in each of these, which is why.
SPEAKER_01This one, this one I think kind of lends itself to us just talking them through and flipping through the pages because the these narratives are pretty contained, pretty small. Um, you know, and I I think that's I think it's I think we should let ourselves just just do that to some extent.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, all right, bro. Issue two. Crazy. This is issue two. Um, what is the name of the sniper, right?
SPEAKER_01Issue two has one of the coolest little uh panel storytelling situations. Yeah, wow. Each actually, I think each chapter low-key has something from Scott McLeod's thing for us to highlight. Shout out Scotty. Shout out uh Scott McLeod understanding comics. One day. Um, but yes. Do you want to jump into talking about this panel situation they have going?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so I'll give just kind of the brief summary of what this chapter is. Basically, there are all these people that we're getting kind of quickly introduced to. They seem like they're part of um some pretty intense operations, um, but they're all kind of like about to head home at the uh at the end of the day leading into the night, possibly. Um, and what starts happening is that we see all kind of the the first page has I think eight panels that are all um perfectly laid out there, but the bottom right panel is of somebody who's getting shot, as far as we can tell, right? And it's red. And it's red, right? That's all the other seven are kind of like normal colors expected for their situation. Um and then we go to the next one and the panel area, basically that bottom right area where that last um panel was of that guy getting shot, is no longer there, but there's words there that now say it was a night like this when they left him to die, right? We also now have another panel that has turned red and is somebody getting shot. Um it's like middle left. Yeah, middle left. And then we go to the next page, and now that panel area is missing. The other kind of first bottom right area is blank, but now this one has um some more context for what happened. Abandoned in a foreign country, no contact, no support, no way out, which actually is pretty similar to Moon Knight and what I originally thought this issue was actually going to be about, but super, super interesting and like fun way to do this. That we basically just get these panels started starting kind of being taken out as people get shot. Um, and you're left with so much like basically blank white space.
SPEAKER_01Um which is again like Moon Knight, like this blank white contrast. Another thing that's pretty you realize as you go along is that each instead of the the panels going, you know, left to right and and telling a story one by one, there's sort of each panel is makes sense page to page if you just look at that one. So like each area is telling a story, yeah. Each area, so like the top left has this uh blonde woman, and we see her first at her desk, flip the page, still at her desk, then she's going down the escalator, then she's going in the elevator, and then we finally see uh she dies getting shot through the elevator, and we can do follow each of these guys individually on these little uh final moments of their life before they get uh sniped. Yeah, and um it's yeah, it's very striking, very cool storytelling, very unique. Like this would have this would be impossible. Like this is very specific to comics, right? It's them using this as a medium and really highlighting work, telling us stories through these panels in a way that wouldn't work in any other medium, right?
SPEAKER_02I totally agree, totally agree. Super, super cool. Again, I don't know, bro. I don't know what it is about this. I mean, I kind of do, but you should go read this one, you should go check it out.
SPEAKER_01I love how they set up the uh the titles for the like the the title page. So it feels like it's very cinematic. Like they'll start with like a cold open, and it's so okay, here's these guys, watch them get sniped one by one as it becomes a whiter, whiter, and then poof, yeah.
SPEAKER_02You're like moon, and we're into the story, and it's like, okay, now it's his turn. And again, crazy, bro. This art, I don't know, bro. This this guy is kind of just going absolutely, absolutely nuts when it comes to this art. But we get this amazing shout out um Declan Shelvy. Uh, you're going absolutely nuts. And the color artist, too. Yeah, and the color artist, yes. Great point to uh to point out there. Yeah, Declan Shelvy and uh Jordy Belair, you guys are going crazy. Warren, you know we love you uh as well, but these guys are definitely going, not even but and these guys are going crazy. We get this next shot um where it's like his glider, right? Um, is this perfect kind of like, I don't know whether or not waxing or waning, right? That would kind of be up to the situation, but this crescent moon that comes down over the shadow of the moon, he drops off of it. He's got his gigantic cape, which also comes out in the shape of a moon, which is just so cool.
SPEAKER_01And it's got the the actual moon is behind him in the sky, the the night stars are there, the city skyline, and then his whole cape that's like spread out is just stark white, like absence of everything. It's so striking. It looks so cool. This is also the first time we see him in Moon Knight mode. Right. Like chapter one was This is not Mr. Knight. Mr. Knight, he's in the business suit, he's he's very sort of tongue-in-cheek and calm. Now, this whole chapter, the whole rest of the chapter, we basically just there's very little dialogue. We just see Moon Knight get to work. Yeah. Uh and he's coming down, swooping down on this rooftop. We see this guy with a huge sniper rifle. Um we learn it's not Moon Knight who's taking out these people, it's this other sniper guy. Which is cool that it left it like we weren't sure. Right. It wanted us to think, wait, is Moon Knight the one murdering all these people? Right, right. And also showing how he just is one of these guys. Like these, these, uh, so much of the themes of this is people who are vigilantes or mercenaries or whatever who just kind of get left behind. Like they have to do these terrible jobs, and then they get they get discarded.
SPEAKER_02Right. Um they come to take revenge and whatever else. And so um, you know, Moon Knight is, I guess, maybe kind of this slightly different um way of coming about this. Obviously, he's got um the god on his side.
SPEAKER_01But yeah, if it wasn't for Kanchu, yeah, maybe he'd be a different guy.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, he'd be dead. Yeah, he would be dead. That is also true. Um, but yeah, this is just it's it's some amazing action. Again, we got this great kind of juxtaposition. These are some, I think, more muted colors in general, but we still got this great juxtaposition with Moon Knight um uh as just this black and white figure versus the color of everything else that's going on.
SPEAKER_01We get um And again, this there's four four pages in a row, no dialogue, no dialogue. The storytelling is on the fifth panel, there's him saying ow when he gets shot in the webcage.
SPEAKER_02Like this is Oh, sorry, go ahead. No, you you go ahead. Bro, I was about to say, bro, there's a panel where his cape blends into the white space of yeah, that come on. Bro, when I was reading this, I like sometimes nowadays I like talk my notes to myself like out loud and then like write them down or whatever else. Bro, I actually like out loud alone in my apartment was like, damn, I had some of these panels, not even this one, but like a bunch of these. I was like, that's great.
SPEAKER_01It's amazing. And and the art is somehow understated, like it's really like quite simple, quite uh like it's more on the the cartoony end of that Scott McCloud triangle instead of the really realistic depiction. Like it's um but yeah, it's amazing. I mean, again, like the these four pages with no dialogue, we're seeing the action, and it's literally zooming in beat for beat for beat, like the guy drawing the gun, throwing the throwing the moondagger, cutting the gun in half, swinging off the roof, jumping to follow him, getting the grappling hook. Like you see grappling hook go from his hand to getting extended to where the impact is, to moon knight pulling himself up into the room. You know, like we're really it's not just showing, oh look, he's jumping around and fighting. We're really seeing like frame to frame to frame, moment to moment, exactly. Scotty boy, which is again the part of the storytelling is like the story is quite simple, but they're being so specific. They want us to know exactly how this is all going down, like how efficient Moon Knight is being with these, with his pursuit, like leaping rooftop to rooftop. It's just so uh it's so cool, it's so well done, and it's so legible. Like we're really able to easily follow all of this.
SPEAKER_02I totally, I totally agree. And I mean, there's also kind of I think there's also an interesting kind of moral to this um issue in particular, where we basically get to the end and we have Moon Knight basically putting this um sniper guy in the hands of the ninth person who he kind of would have gone after had Moon Knight not stepped in. Um and the kind of uh moral that we're left with is that this guy, um this is one of the quotes, basically, this this ninth guy um who is the one who actually shoots this guy uh right afterwards says, I suppose his gamble was just what we taught him. Guns are power, the distant projection of death is power. That's why we all change careers. We learn differently. The bank always wins, right? And so basically what we learn is that all of these um other people that were connected to this mercenary who's been going after them ended up changing careers from being in these special forces operations to um either working at like banks or kind of on the financial side of things. And the kind of moral at least of this part is that the bank always wins, which is I think is super interesting.
SPEAKER_01And again, we can wrap up that we can summarize this whole issue in a couple sentences. It's like group of people each getting murdered one by one, Moon Knight becomes aware of the murders, kills the s like stops the sniper, and then the final guy who was about to be murdered kills the sniper, end scene.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. It's just very Right, it's right to the point. There are actually, and there are specific issues, maybe it's even that one, but like there's some of these that are actually specifically like very short. And and I think that that again just shows like how effective the storytelling is here, where you can have these shorter ones or longer ones, and you still feel like you're getting as much as you need out of those stories.
SPEAKER_01You can also really feel how as like a if you're a traditional comic book reader, like we obviously have been reading most of these in these trade paperback collected editions, thinking them of of more like sort of like these mini novels. Right. But you can totally see how reading this month to month would be really exciting. And like you go to your local comic book store, you're gonna pick up your maybe like four or five different issues you had pre-ordered. Right. And then each month you just get this cool little container.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, like, damn, that was that was crazy. But yeah, so that's issue two, bro. We got we got four more, which is crazy. Um and issue number three, I was actually we learned kind of a little bit earlier is some of some people's favorites. I think I think it's interesting to me. I don't know if I have a favorite off rip of all of these. Um they're all so cool. I know they are just yeah, exactly. They all have their own kind of cool things. Um this one is like a spooky kind of Halloween. Supernatural. Yeah. I wonder when this came out.
SPEAKER_01I wonder if it was like a maybe it did, yeah. But this one's called Box. Yeah. Uh basically, we see this beautiful, there's also so many amazing uh just depictions of New York. Yeah. We both went to school in New York. We've mentioned before. Good amount of time there. Yeah, and um, you know, this this really captures some of that energy, like New York in the winter, right? And what it really feels like walking around in Hell's Kitchen and these beautiful skylines with very sort of more dreary, realistic foregrounds, you know.
SPEAKER_02It's it's very um, yeah, super, super cool. Um but yeah, this one is like supernatural in a sense. We basically have these um these people that are like walking around, regular people that are walking around, they end up hearing something that sounds kind of like a music box, and we see these um ghost like punks. Old school punks. Yeah, old school punks come out of nowhere. And then we also we also end up learning that this is this is gonna be a Mr. Knight um storyline for the most part for this one. Um he pulls up, he's got his white car, it says his license plate says Spectre SP KTR, which is pretty sick. Um but he basically goes out there and is kind of trying to figure out what's going on, and he fights against these punks that he can see. Um, and I I don't even know if it's clear that initially everybody else it looks like I guess they're fighting everybody else too. But they're just sort of the these like green ghosts appear and just start beating up, beating up civilians. Yeah, and he tries to fight against them and he punches through them. And so this is kind of one of the first times actually also where we see um Moon Knight or Mr. Knight kind of get his shit rocked. Like he can't fight against this, and he's left, and this is actually maybe even crazier, one of the only times that we see an additional color on him other than black and white. We actually get red um on his blood on Mr. Knight here, which is super, super interesting.
SPEAKER_01Um But yeah, I mean again, very simple setup. There's ghosts attacking people, he pulls up to fight the ghosts, tries to punch them, doesn't do anything, they rock his shit.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, they rock his shit. And then we get back to this um kind of Bruce Wayne type of situation that we have with Mr. Knight and um I can't remember if it's Mark Specter, that's the the version of him that has to be. The main one, yeah, is Mark Specter. Right, right. But so he comes back and again this is a license plate to spectrum. Yeah, this is one of the kind of moments where he's talking to kind of like his alter egos, his other um personalities exist in the room with him, um, which make these interesting conversations because he's talking to himself. Um, and he also kind of hears from the other side of him that's supposed to be this god Conshu. Um, and again, I love it. It's like, of course you do, my son. They're ghosts. You know full well that the angry dead can reach out and touch the living. I did, right? Um just again, just like it just looks so damn cool, bro. I don't know what it is about this thing, but it it it really was just like such an awesome thing to look at, just in general.
SPEAKER_01Um basically he has a conversation with Konsu and he's saying, Okay, I uh ghosts are randomly attacking people downtown Manhattan. They can touch me and I can't touch them. What am I supposed to do? Sprinkle holy water over downtown exercise spring street? Uh and basically Conchu's answer is look, man, you gotta you gotta gear up. You gotta gear up.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01He says, You possess all kinds of armor and armament for fighting the living. How can you not have garments for fighting the dead? So basically, we see him open up this whole like tomb raider room he has in his mansion.
SPEAKER_02He's got so many Egyptian artifacts. That's a whole different story of this man collecting those. But um Right.
SPEAKER_01And that we literally see mummies, uh, statues of what we can imagine is conchu in different forms. You know, he's basically got all this all this conchu gear. Because look, it's got the moon. Like this is probably the moon. Oh, it's a stat look, it's got the mess. It's basically moon night. It's a statue, Egyptian statue.
SPEAKER_02Because doesn't he also when he sees like Moon Knight when he gets back up after being killed back when he was like a mercenary or whatever else, he pulls like the cloak off of the statue that was there, which is a whole interesting thing. But yeah, that's makes sense. Tracks, but pretty crazy.
SPEAKER_01But yeah, so uh, this is basically just a gear-up scene. He pulls back up to these ghosts and he's wearing like this crazy cool silhouette though, silhouette.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02When he's like an amazing but when he's flying in, bro, you get like the city, and then you see this like what looks like again, looks like a crescent moon in the skyline. You're like, ah, regular crescent moon, and then bam, it's moon night that's coming in. Super cool.
SPEAKER_01And everything is glowing green. You can see the sort of ghostly situation as the snow is falling. This shot is also going to be on the Instagram, so uh make sure you guys check that out. Take a look, yeah. But basically, he pulls up with this crazy armor that's like conscious armor, basically. Yeah, he's got like a whole uh like skull, bird skull he's wearing on his head. It almost looks Japanese inspired in a way that's cool. It kind of looks like samurai armor if you want to. Yeah, it's interesting.
SPEAKER_02It's kind of like yeah, it's like a combination of like Egyptian and and which honestly, when I say it, is like such a non-explored combination of things, as far as I know. Somebody do something with that or or point me where it is, but super cool.
SPEAKER_01But yeah, he basically pulls up with this amazing uh getup, all this traditional, traditional uh like relics and artifacts, and it's still all just stark white. Yep and uh he quick, you know, we quickly see he can actually fight the ghosts now. He he tears them up, it's like not even close. Yeah, pommels um pretty violent. I mean, it's all violent. He punches this dude's face off, decapitates this guy, rips this guy's arm off, um, but then follows follows the ghosts to uh the source, which seems to be this room. Uh what here, do you want to describe it?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it's this room kind of like in, I don't know if it's like in the basement or just like the lower part of um this building that's under renovation. And he basically walks into this room and sees these uh four or five skeletons that are all sitting in there um that look again like these punk guys, and there's this little box, music box looking thing, which again, very similar to um what we had heard the people hearing in the beginning. But he looks at this music box and reads the bottom and it says, Johnny be good, um, love mom. And I wonder if Johnny be good. That's a song. I know, right? Yes. But um he looks down at the what the skeleton says, Are you Johnny? Did you at Did you get an attack of conscience? It can happen. Did you sit here with the childhood music box waiting for your fellow gang members to come back? Um and he walks off with the um box and basically spreads what I can only assume are like the ashes um into uh into the river, which is crazy. Oh yeah, he throws the whole box. Yeah, you're right. You're right. But super cool. We kind of learn that these like spirits are inside this box. There's actually one frame of him kind of like almost like looking through the crack of the box and seeing these green um, for lack of a better term, specters that are in there. Um and uh and then he yeah, he drops the box off, giving it kind of like a proper um burial, which is super and again, this is using like the white this burial like last moment is using the white space of uh these panel areas to again make this this big moment uh show up there. Super cool. I don't I'm gonna just keep saying super cool, but I don't know.
SPEAKER_01It's amazing. And again, so contained, so simple. Ghosts appear, ghosts beat him up, he figures out what outfit he needs to wear, pulls back up, beats up the ghosts, finds the music box, is like, all right, you guys are at peace now, chucks it in the river. That's a wrap. That's a wrap. Yeah, crazy. Issue number three. And it's all vibe, right? Like the story is so simple, but it's still so uh engaging to get through. Cause it's just such, you know, I again you you're saying it's so cool. Like I'm gonna keep saying the same things, but it's just it's such efficient, good storytelling. Yeah, uh, it's really satisfying to read, and uh, you know, can't recommend enough. Check this one out, guys. Comixology.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and this is you know, one of the one last thing I'll say that's um oh man, I just noticed another part where his cape is part of the um uh part of like the white spectrum. Like the gutter, the background? Yeah, super, super cool. But um, man, I gotta stop saying that, but I can't. Um uh we also kind of learn also his interaction with his tech here, right? This is one thing that we kind of see a little bit later as well with his glider, where he'll say things like, you know, match my speed, pursuit mode uh on the deck, 300 feet, hunting mode, right? And he'll um basically talk back and forth, well, not back and forth, but basically talk to his glider, and that's kind of how his tech works in this case, which is interesting.
SPEAKER_01And he was doing the same thing with his limousine earlier.
SPEAKER_02His limousine is self-driving.
SPEAKER_01Right. So he's got he's got cool mercenary tech, um, but it's also maybe on some conju mode too. Maybe that's how like I don't know. But he's again talking to himself.
SPEAKER_02Right, yeah. So we don't even know. And I think that's like again the fun part of this. But anyway, so that's issue number three. Issue number four. Um This one's crazy. I don't I can't I can't help myself, bro. All of these are good. All of these are good. Please go take a look.
SPEAKER_01Again, another really simple story, but they do a whole other thing with the art. This one gets so psychedelic, specifically psychedelic, so colorful. This is like the brightest uh, you know, incorporation, the the biggest uh like rainbows of colors on single pages instead of maybe just sticking to that rule of like three or four colors. Right. You know, we're we're gonna let's get into it right now. But this one is really like the splash of color in this little trade paper.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah, exactly. And so we basically what we end up learning starting off with this is that Mr. Knight, um, in particular, who's in this uh you know, crazy car and whatever, all sitting in his suit, um, is meeting with this guy, um, Dr. Skelton, right, who knew this other doctor named Not a spooky name at all. Yeah, not a spooky name at all. Dr. Peter, um, what is it, all ra uh all rain or something like that. Um but basically what we end up learning is that they were doing sleep research. Um and Moon Knight is particularly interested in that um because uh he is one also somebody that's supposed to be kind of like watching over the people in the night, which we learned through this issue in particular, um, that uh dreams are also encapsulated in that. But one of the interesting things about this guy's patients or people that he's kind of like working on, which we kind of learn later on, um, is that they're all having the same dream um and they're being driven insane by having this same dream and they're trying to figure out what's going on with that. And so Mr. Knight has been recruited to this. And also it's kind of funny this um I kind of love how we get these like little like evil-looking moments of all these people where um he he's talking to this doctor, and uh the doctor's explaining to him all this stuff about sleep is a process that allows the brain to remove toxins from its tissue via the lymphatic system, you know, etc. And then he says, I wouldn't expect you to know what any of that means. Kind of like grinning at him in this like I'm better, like I'm smarter than you. It really is kind of like this evil, it's not like oh poking fun kind of face. It's like these weirdly evil things. And I think that's another interesting like mental health aspect of this, right? Is like it can contaminate the way that you uh interact with people in some ways like this, which is pretty interesting.
SPEAKER_01For sure. And we don't know if uh like Moon Knight is a reliable narrator in certain ways. Like we don't know if he is interpreting interpreting all these things in the wrong way. Uh and it definitely leaves it leaves it ambiguous for us. Um but yeah, this guy basically is is mocking him, saying, I wouldn't expect you to understand any of these things, my sleep research is so advanced. And Moon Knight basically just is saying, Look, you gotta show me your facilities, I gotta check out your patients. I am precisely qualified. Uh dreamers are people who travel at night, and that's my specialist subject.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, super I was about to say it again, but super cool. Super amazing, super fun. And then we get our our kind of like title card again where we learn that this this uh issue is called sleep. We also get a little um a little shot of the amount of color that we're gonna be seeing later on, which is pretty fun as well.
SPEAKER_01Um But ba basically what happens, he the guy brings him to his facility, shows him all these empty beds, saying this is where his patients were, they're all gone now, um, until this is solved. We were attempting to induce lucid dream states and guiding the dreamer's physical mechanisms through chemical messaging. Everything was on everybody was on drips and sensors. Uh so basically, Moon Knight, there's this there's this uh quite creepy looking door. Yeah. And Moon Knight's like, yeah, I'm just gonna go in this room and I'm gonna sleep and I'm gonna meditate and uh solve it this way.
SPEAKER_02I also love there's a great great quote here where um Moon Knight basically tells him, or Mr. Knight tells this guy that he's gonna do that. He's like, the phenomenon is hyperlocal, it's this building, so I tend to let the enemy get a good look at me so I can get a good look at them. And the guy says, That's your plan. It occurs to me that you you might be already or you might already be insane, and and Mr. Knight just says, Me too. Do you sleep here? Right, and he just keeps on going. He's like, Yeah, probably. Yeah. That's super fun. Um but yeah, he goes and lies down.
SPEAKER_01He goes and lies down in this sort of like coffin, very intimidating. The there's like weird perspective to make it look uh it just it's a spooky room. It's a spooky, empty room.
SPEAKER_02And we also learn, actually, one thing to point out is that one of the quote-unquote patients that he's been working with, um, they're all these all these patients, by the way, are in hospitals, and one of them supposedly bit through her own fingers while asleep and didn't wake up from it. And once they got her to wake up, she started screaming about needing to escape her own body. So this is a very not only is it the same dream it is, but it's an extremely intense something that they're experiencing. Um sinister. Yeah, very sinister. Um, and yeah, so uh Mr. Knight says, you know, I have to go to work now, and then he lies down and just says, Consu, I know you can hear me, put me to sleep, right? Which is pretty interesting. And he just knocks out.
SPEAKER_01And then we just cut to all these uh just incredible psychedelic green mushrooms like growing out of the floor, and then he falls through the floor into just this outer space filled with fungi and mushrooms, and we've got greens and blues and reds and the night sky. We see him falling. The panels now are these like jagged little strips of like bright sunset colors, and we can see he's like flying over this planet infested with mushrooms and yeah, and fungi and everything else, and then you see him kind of like you see these this like skeleton uh kind of skull that has mushrooms growing out of it.
SPEAKER_02You see him kind of landing or flying over this part that looks kind of like a brain, um, as well.
SPEAKER_01Um but yeah, just and this this page, this is gonna be on the on the Instagram as well, but you can we can see him, it's like this above shot of this giant uh like outer space skull. Mushrooms are growing out of the mouth and the eye sockets, and then over the course of the panels, as they they're like long uh horizontal rectangles, we see the crescent shape of Moon Knight swooping down closer and closer to the skull.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and there's another moment where the cape blends into the space in between, which is super, super cool. Um, and uh then we get to this next point where he runs into somebody who says, uh, this one guy who's got his back turned, he's got the kind of hospital gown on, and he says, I can't sleep, I can't wake up, and he turns around and it's this crazy moment where he's got the fungi growing out of his eyes. Um and we start seeing more, hearing more of his dialogue where he says, I'm trapped in here, I don't know where I am. Um what does he say? Cryptoccus and uh uh dimethyltryptamine. Wow, thank God I did that one. But he basically Moon Knight uh starts um and this is actually this is Moon Knight. That's an interesting thing I didn't notice, is that he's Mr. Knight when he falls asleep, and then he's Moon Knight in this uh dream space.
SPEAKER_01Wow, that's such a good note, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Which is so interesting. Um but so he kind of starts picking up what's going on. He says, I don't know if I'm dreaming uh that I'm dead or dead from dreaming. Um and he starts asking himself, Am I dead? Are you trapped inside my corpse with me? Help me. I think I'm dead, but I I think I'm dead, but I can't stop dreaming. And this I mean, this is like such a beautiful collection of moments here where we get this orange and red and all these um uh like bodies that are flying over him, and he's kind of being blinded by the light, and then he sees this gigantic like alien fungal I don't even know that comes out of nowhere.
SPEAKER_01Skeletal insect like thing. I mean, this this whole chapter is just is Moon Knight sort of following following this trail, just trying to get to the bottom of this sort of psychedelic space, and he's listening, like there's no violence in this one. He's not fighting anything, he's literally just following the voice and uh trying to understand what's happening to this uh this consciousness.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Uh and then he snaps awake.
SPEAKER_02Which and this is like the only time I feel like we ever see him like shocked or anything like that. He wakes up in like a crazy, you know, like that moment where you like kind of like more intense than you, like feeling like you're falling or whatever else when you're asleep, right? You jolt up, right? That's kind of what he looks like here, which is rare to see. And he busts through the door of this room. Um, and the guy's like, what's going on? He's like, Oh god, it's gotten to you too. And Moon Knight, or Mr. Night, I guess, in this case, just starts beating the hell out of this dude.
SPEAKER_01Grabs his hair, slams him face first into the desk, breaks his nose, throws him on the ground, drags him into the room, rips up the floorboards, and there's uh there's a corpse. Yep. Corpse covered in rats, and all these rats start running out. Fungus is growing out of this uh this corpse's head, and obviously super reminiscent of um the dream state.
SPEAKER_02The dream state we just saw. Yeah, and we end up learning that this this guy, this um scientist, whatever doctor basically said one of the first this guy is one of the first test subjects off the books. I found him on Craigslist. I found out too late that he had some kind of fungal infection in his brain that was killing him. He died in the dream state. I couldn't have anyone find out. I wrapped him up and put him in the floor just for now, just until. And then Mr. Knight says, look at him down there in the damp rank with whatever crap you are putting into him. His brain is um spirulated. We you've been breathing in his dreams. Right? Just and again, this is like again, if you were reading this issue by issue, right? What a crazy like moment to end this on. Again, it like feels so supernatural, feels so crazy, and it kind of is, but then we get this kind of like real world explanation for it, um, which is which is just fun. And it's super creepy, this whole thing. And that's kind of the fun juxtaposition, is that you get this crazy colorful thing which comes back to the real world, which is like creepy and gross and like sad and like you know, whatever else.
SPEAKER_01And also beautiful, like the all of the the the depictions of that dream state were um you know amazing.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, gorgeous, yeah, in that juxtaposition. But yeah, that's issue number four. So again, there has not been a non-banger of an issue that we've read so far.
SPEAKER_01Um and again, not to keep hitting that same same beat, but I will at the end of each of each one of these mysterious sleep scenario. Yeah, he goes in to investigate, realizes there's a hidden corpse under the floorboards with dream fungus coming out of it. Right. Beats up the guy responsible, tries to bring peace to that guy who's stuck in the street. Right, the the guy who was stuck in his dreams. Yeah. End of story.
SPEAKER_02End of story. And now we're on to issue number five. Um, and this is actually again, this is one that we almost started talking about like crazy before the this one's even You want to take the reins on this one?
SPEAKER_01Well, I get I mean, this one's so simple. Uh basically there's uh there's been a disappearance. We see this this tall building with a guy out front, and our uh, you know, now iconic white limousine rolls up uh and he he threatens the guy with this crazy Egyptian sword. Yep. Uh and he says, How many people? He says, basically, um, you took someone who was traveling at night on their way home from a school event. You don't do that in New York City. How many people are holding that person in there? The guy says, A dozen, maybe more. And he says, Where's your abductee? Fifth floor. Of a sixth floor building, I presume your friends are pretty much spread out. He says, I guess. And he says, All right then, I may as well go through the front door. Yeah. So then we literally just cut to the rooftop, this uh, you know, Moon Knight's baton, whatever it is, and then we see this little girl, uh, and it says Scarlet, which is the name of the issue.
SPEAKER_02And she's like tied up on this bed in this, you know, creepy ass old building, right? So we're like, okay, here are the stakes. He's going in, he's gotta save this, and then we get this moment where we see all oh, this is so great. We see all six of the floors that he's about to have to kind of fight through to get to this girl. Yep.
SPEAKER_01And it's very have you ever seen The Raid? I don't know if I have. It was like a really iconic movie. Let me actually let me do a little Google so I can find some info on that. But um, I I think that's really what this is super inspired by. Yeah, here we go. The Raid Redemption 2011 action thriller. Um, so it's a critically acclaimed Indonesian action thriller directed by Gareth Evans. I so I had neighbors actually that I carpooled with in like middle school, and they I remember my friend Hatch and his parents, they he they took us to see this. Oh wow. And it's basically there's this prison building, and the guy, this police officer, has to fight his.
SPEAKER_02But it does feel like a reference for sure.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so I think it's really this is the raid. Uh and it's like he has to fight his way floor by floor by floor. It's kind of like a John Wick or an Ipmon or whatever, like one of those uh Chinese. I gotta watch Ipmon, dude. Oh, dude, it's crazy. Actually, Chad and I just the other night saw it was on Hulu and we just watched I just watched all the fights. So funny. But that's a great movie. But yes, I mean the so this whole whole story, again, so simple. We literally see him just fight action beat floor by floor. Each one has its own like unique opponents that he has to deal with. He's fighting them in you know different, different ways, highlighting things.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, we see his resourcefulness. Um, even when he fights against some guy who's super, you know, is way bigger than him or whatever else, he basically uses um he uses his his boomerang, his moomerangs, but um also uses his cape as something to basically wrap around this guy's head and throw him over the um over the side railing uh to get rid of him. And that's but yeah, he's going through each of these floors, fighting against these guys, showing off all of his different skills. Um one of my favorite ones is this like um uh looks like almost like secret forces type of looking guy, but he's probably not because it's this is kind of like gang violence type of thing. But he's walking down the stairs um looking for uh and then again, this is Mr. Knight, and he throws one of the Moonarangs at this dude's foot and it catches him right in the foot as he's stepping down onto one of the um one of the stairs and it catches him right there and he just falls forward on his face because his foot is stuck to the uh the stairboard, which is just I don't know, man, it's just fun.
SPEAKER_01Oh yeah, again, it's I it's action beat to action beat, moment to moment. They're literally showing us every single thing Moon Knight's doing. Like it's it's so readable. Like this first guy, he walks up to him, uh Moon Knight pulls out his weapon, smacks a guy in the face with it, knees him in the stomach, smacks him in the head, another guy starts approaching. Moon Knight starts running, throws uh what are we calling these things? The moons cross. Moon oranges. Yeah, throws him through Yeah, so Moon Knight's running towards him, throws a moon orang, sticks him in the finger in his gun hand, drops the gun, smacks him in the face with the baton, onto the next floor, starts running upstairs. You know, it's like it's just uh it's such good, it's it, you know, very specific story.
SPEAKER_02Interesting that he he really does seem to like show that he can block bullets. That's like a thing that he can do because he does that also here. Um and some guy like breaks his baton and then he kind of uses that it's broken to um take this guy out as well, which is which is just wild. Um actually, I was gonna ask you about this um fifth floor one where he fights against this guy with the two golden knives. Yeah. Because that feels like different for some reason than the rest of them.
SPEAKER_01I don't know who these guys are. I mean, maybe they're references to different things, but we see like the the first guy he fights is just in some normal clothes. This guy's in like a business suit, then he fights these two more guys just in jeans and whatever. Then he fights a like a pro wrestler.
SPEAKER_02Pink belt, pink boots.
SPEAKER_01Like he seems like too.
SPEAKER_02I wonder wrestler of some kind. I wonder if these are also like there could be like an anime thing here, because there's also like a couple of anime, like like Hunter X Hunter has a thing where they're like fighting through floors of whatever else, right?
SPEAKER_01But I I that I got to that part in a Hunter X Hunter. I didn't make it any further.
SPEAKER_02I went at the time. I'm in like the ant arcs for anybody that knows what that is. But anyway, um, yeah, so there could be some of that here too. But there's this guy in particular, like Ben was saying, like, until kind of the wrestler, they're pretty like normal looking, like, you know, just bad guy, grunts, whatever else, right? Then we get this wrestler who's got this interesting outfit, and then on this fifth floor, we get this guy who comes in with these two, he's like wielding two gold blades, actually blocks Moon Knight's first moon orang that he throws at him, which is not something that we've seen so far. He also cuts um Moon Knight, Mr. Knight's tie, and then is almost about to get him until um Moon Knight basically tricks him uh and makes him stab himself in his own knee, um, and then tosses him, right? So, but then again, we get this. I don't know what's going on here, which is really interesting because we go from that guy who's also in like a purple suit. That's the other important thing. Is he's a purple suit, his haircut looks super cool, whatever else.
SPEAKER_01It's like almost like a like black black exploitation era character.
SPEAKER_02It kind of does, yeah. And then but then right after that, he fights some guy who's like sitting in a chair with a beer with like a t-shirt and like camo shorts on. Yeah, like who are these goons? Yeah, I don't know who these goons are. I don't know what gangs these are that all hang out at the same place or whatever else.
SPEAKER_01But um But we see it's uh it's also as he's getting f like going up floor by floor, his costume is sort of getting more sparse. Like he starts with his full song.
SPEAKER_02So he rolls up his sleeves. That was the other thing I wrote down. I was like, this is the first time that we see him with additional color. Uh again, like these moments of seeing additional color instead of black and white on him.
SPEAKER_01Right. He starts using the baton, the baton breaks, then he discards that, then he ends up taking his jacket off to wrap it around the guy's head. Yeah, then he rolls up his sleeves. It's yeah, first time we're seeing his skin, his forearms. It's like making him making him more human as he goes up these stairs, right? That's an interesting thought. Mm-hmm. And then cutting his tie off. Now his now we can see the skin at his neck. Uh, you know, it's it's wild. And we get to the very top, and the guy the with this final guy who's who has the prisoner, which is like this little girl, and he says, uh, let's see, let's just read this. The guy says, the door opens and he sees this guy pointing the gun to the little girl's head, and he's just holding this bloody baseball bat that he's been pulled. Picked up from one of these guys. So that this goon says, Pretty sure my gun has a better reach than your bat. And Mr. Knight says, But I love this bat, and you owe me a trenchon, and you can't kill me. You could kill her, it's true, but what saves your life after she's dead? Everybody already th everybody already thinks the kid's dead. That loss is accepted. Have you accepted yours? Are you ready to die today? You could use that gun on her now, but she's the only thing keeping you alive. Make your call.
SPEAKER_02And this whole time he's been walking up to this dude while monologuing at him, and then grabs the gun out of his hand and just smacks him with the bat and probably just kills him in one shot right there.
SPEAKER_01Um and then again the conversation with Scarlet is very to the point and uh and simple. He says, Hello, Scarlet, I guess I look I'm I hello, Scarlet. I guess I must look pretty weird. She says, Yeah. And he says, My name is Mr. Knight. The police will be here to pick you up in a little bit. You can tell them that you met me. And she says, Your face. He says, It's a mask. Did they hurt you at all? She said, No, they just carried me places. And she says, It's not a mask, it's your face. Cut back to Mr. Knight, smart kid.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I I like that's also kind of an interesting one, which is also uh throwback to one of our favorites, uh Rorschach with his mask that is also his face.
SPEAKER_01Oh, this mask is so Rorschach.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it kind of is.
SPEAKER_01We got the black and white, and also Batman, which is our other vigilante character, where it's like, who's the real character, Bruce Wayne? Is it Bruce Wayne pretending to be Batman, or is it Batman is the persona and then he pretends to be Bruce Wayne when he's when he, you know. It's cool how all three of these a lot of overlap there. It's I'm really glad you brought Rorschach back up because that's a that's another very uh, you know, definitely there's some inspiration going uh both ways, probably, honestly. Yeah, which is interesting. But yeah, Moon Knight, Rorschach, Batman. We love these uh, you know, dark edge lord, yeah, uh night detectives, violent night detectives. Right. Um it's it's really cool. And then our final scene is we we see again see him talking to himself, talking to his drone.
SPEAKER_02He's just saying, uh He's calling like his car back and basically saying, you know, give uh leave a message for Detective Flint giving this location drone predator mode, this location mantle. This guy's like running out of the door, and we get this like really small moment of seeing the silhouette of the drone on the ground, like this moon, again, crescent moon coming at this guy, and then it just smashes into this roof um and just obliterates this guy. Totally fucks the guy. I don't know how this dude didn't die.
SPEAKER_01His legs are twisted over, like he looks like a spider you just stomped on. Like his legs, it's it's bad news. He's fucked up. And Moon Knight just says, Listen, where you're going, tell your friends, everyone you meet, tell them all when you see me coming, run. Run. Yeah, crazy. And that's the end of the that's the end of the issue. Literally just him fighting his way up some stairs, yeah. Um and saving a little girl and telling everybody, like, look, kidnapping people at night.
SPEAKER_02Bad idea. Don't do it anymore. Yeah, bad idea. Yeah, crazy. Um, and then we get into issue six. And so this is one of the issues that kind of has um a callback to the beginning, I think, of what we were looking at where
SPEAKER_01It's like the one of the only long longer narrative parts of this trade paperback.
SPEAKER_02Right, right, exactly. So we kind of get like the other side of what's happening from this original um police situation that he's in, where Mr. Knight shows up, he's talking to the cops, um, he's saying, we kind of actually get a a a redo of this moment where he says, Officer, I appreciate your perspective, but I'm not talking about going underground, or but what I'm talking about is going underground into the uh hideout of a highly trained killer, uh, which will be where he keeps all his weapons. I'd prefer to do that part for you. And then um Mr. Knight actually leaves this scene and we get focused in on this individual cop um who's like basically we kind of learn has this little bit of a complex of being like, you know, why is this guy like this? Oh, because he's special, because he's better than us, because he's your weird buddy. And the the chief says, because you're dumb, you have a crappy attitude, and you're gonna be a street police until you die, which is crazy, bro. You're not inspiring any like camaraderie, but we get this, and then we actually get a bunch of background on this guy where basically his entire life he's been told that he's not good enough. It's like, you know, only girls cry, stop it, don't be emotional. You didn't try hard enough, you don't get to make the rules. Why don't you have a girlfriend? Nobody respects you when you do these things. You're gonna be a cop while people your age are fighting for freedom. Uh, you don't even want to know, you don't even know what you want. You're gonna blow through or you're gonna yeah, you're gonna blow through life like a ghost. You're never gonna be good enough, right? So this guy seriously has a complex about this kind of stuff. Um, and he basically starts looking into Moon Knight, um, trying to figure out who he is, what his deal is. Um because he's so resentful of it. Yeah, he's so resentful of this. Um Yeah.
SPEAKER_01It sort of reminds me immediately. I mean, it it feels like commentary on sort of like modern era toxic masculinity, like red pillows.
SPEAKER_02Which is funny again, this is like 2014, right? Which and like you could put this out today and I would be just as happy. Right.
SPEAKER_01You know, um Yeah, I mean those these type of individuals are I mean, it's sort of like a school shooter archetype thing. Like this is it's still as relevant now as it was then, you know?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, very, very true. Um, and we also actually get a little bit of a um little bit of background on like one of possibly one of the villains um that um uh Moon Knight, Mr. Knight, etc. have been dealing with, known as the Black Spectre. Um we also get I I guess this is where I was like kind of interested by um all these names that show there's these known antagonists like Raul Bushman, Scarlett Fascinera, uh Carson Knowles, Robert Markham. Um, and Robert Markham, I actually, funny enough, there was another moment where that showed up, and I ended up looking up this name. Um, kind of random. I wonder if this is any kind of inspirational, but Robert Markham is a pseudonym used by this one author who basically wrote um basically continued the James Bond novels after the original writer of those novels died.
SPEAKER_01Oh wow, that makes sense. I mean, this author is also British, right? So who knows? And also that's another James Bond is a great analogy. There's a lot of uh like um certainly the more modern era, not not James Bond in the traditional, like braggadocious like hitting on women vibe, but like uh the Daniel Craig James Bond. Like the James Bond of our era. There's definitely Mr. Knight has some Daniel Craig James Bond situation going on, right? Pulling up with his white suit, very, very matter-of-fact, likes punching people.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, very classic. Um, but yeah, so this guy is getting really obsessed. We're seeing you know all of these um photos and different things that he has of of Moon Knight and Mr. Knight. He's going into the evidence cache to try and um basically pull out some different evidence. I guess it's this um the case with the guy that we found in the old vault underground, um, which is probably related to this, but he basically checks it out, uses a fake ID. The fake ID too.
SPEAKER_01I this looks I think that's supposed to be Hawkeye. Oh, which is like you can see, I think that the But it's a shield agent also that he takes this from.
SPEAKER_02And actually, also another example.
SPEAKER_01Who is who is Hawkeye?
SPEAKER_02I think it's like he can use Hawkeye's ID to get away with stuff. Yeah, it's funny. I wonder if that's anything. But also that guy who was underground way back in issue number one, if we remember, uh, he was also supposedly, I think, an agent of Shield or something like that at some point. Um, or somebody else was. Long story short, SHIELD does exist in this in this story as well. Um, but we see this guy uh getting more and more obsessed. Now he's got a poster on his wall um or on his door of Moon Knight that he's been throwing darts at, right? And he's like, it's like so funny. He's like becoming this villain where he's like, darts have got to be easier than those dumb moon boomerangs, affectionately known as moonerangs by us, but he's like training.
SPEAKER_01I just I just googled it. It's Moon Knight's signature throwing blades are called crescent darts or crescent blades. Crescent blades. I'm Moonerang, baby. Moon Moonerang's way better. We're rocking with moonerang. But I think that's part of the deal. What this is a dart like crescent dart. Like this guy's trying to trying to turn himself into Moon Knight.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and that's also what we learn in this issue as well.
SPEAKER_01Um you can see him lifting weights, he's at the gun range, practicing, like he's like not good enough.
SPEAKER_02Not good, he's just trying to like, you know, be the best, whatever else. And then he starts going around impersonating a shield agent, um basically going to who I assume is either um Mark Spector's ex-girlfriend or ex-wife or whatever else. Um, and we end up learning that they're not in contact anymore. Um, she basically says, Um, you know, look, you wouldn't have come to me unless you'd read whatever dossier you keep on him. Shout out dossier. Um he died, he came back. I fell in love with the man I thought he came back as, but it turned out that either that man was never really there or he never really came back from the dead, which is a again writing, just kind of like cool writing, just a bottom line.
SPEAKER_01This guy too, Jean Jean-Paul DeChamp, uh he he's like this uh French waiter, it looks like, but he's somebody that was had um like special ops backstory with uh with Spectre.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so I just actually looked him up. So he is an ex-foreign or ex-French foreign legion officer and a mercenary who became a partner and trusted friend of Mark Spectre. So there you go. But so this guy, um this guy impersonating the shield agents, this cop, is basically going and asking all of Mark Spectre's old um people that he that he worked with, um, kind of what's going on, where is he at, right? And they're all um or people that he was in love with, etc. Um, basically like, you know, where is he, what's going on? And they're all just like, I don't know, I haven't seen him, I don't know what he's about. Um and what's funny is this guy also kind of starts calling him out on his bullshit where he's like, he's like, you know, about the drone, and the guy's like, what about it? And he's like, I thought you were an agent of SHIELD. You can't recognize a drone when you see it. Uh and that car that they caught a glimpse of on the local news. Um, let's see, what does he say? So he says, it was my husband that spotted it, doesn't drive like a city car, right? Um, and basically he's like explaining to this guy who he can kind of already tell is like not really um who he says he is, but um he says uh you know he's he he works with quote unquote a drone, a self-driving car, you idiot. He's not working with anyone, and that is just as well. People do not survive working with him. But I will tell you, and he points the guy he says, but I will tell you another thing, Agent of Shield. He will never stop. He will go on and on using up people, spending his bottomless pit of blood money, and he cannot die. Which again, just crazy um uh understanding of who this again, background on this character. We don't need uh, you know, we don't leave this again, leave these stories feeling like we're missing out on who this guy is, right? Even though we don't know exactly who these people are to him without looking it up, we can understand that they were important to him and that they have a deep understanding of who he is, and that gives us um some more understanding of his character.
SPEAKER_01But we see our our our current protagonist, this uh this cop just is descending further and further into his own type of madness. We keep seeing these shots of him uh in his apartment with his girlfriend. We can see his girlfriend is reading a ghost punks. So this is this has all been happening along in the background over the course of these stories we've been reading, right? Um, which is kind of cool. So at the beginning, it's the cop that he met uh when he was first investigating, like when we first saw Mr. Knight in issue one. So that's the first time we met this guy. And then um, you know, he's on this sort of like evil training arc over the course of Moon Knight's adventures, and then they're gonna converge. So you see, he's kind of been modeling himself after this guy, Black Spectre, who's uh you know, a villain from Moon Knight's Dossier. Uh and he says, so he's been obsessing with him. He says he nearly does it, he nearly kills Moon Knight, he nearly takes over the city. His girlfriend says, But he was a bad guy. He says, right, he tries to become the opposite of Moon Knight. His motives are all screwed up. If I became Black Spectre, I could just replace Moon Knight. He doesn't need a crew, I don't need a crew. Uh, you know, can you imagine that old bastard Flint's face when I eventually reveal that the freak beat detective in a mask is really a street cop he disrespected?
SPEAKER_02Um, no more nah, no more sweeper squad uniform backup duty for me. I'll be on homicide and wearing a sharp suit in a second, right? His whole thing, he has this crazy again complex. He doesn't feel good enough. Um, he feels this connection with this character, Black Spectre, who um is trying to basically give this other backstory where he says, you know, this guy wants to become mayor, he wants to uh top what his father did and make his wife sorry she ran off with some other guy. Again, finding connection with this character who has a similar kind of complex. And he says, but he sees Moon Knight and he sees a guy who's admired for doing the stage job in disguise. So he loses it, comes up with his own second identity, Black Spectre, puts his crew together, um, and yeah, like Ben said, you know, nearly kills Moon Knight. Um and this leads into just this crazy this dude really gets nuts so fast. And so his girlfriend rightfully so is like, wait, how do you replace Moon Knight? And he's like, I'm gonna have to kill him. Uh shouldn't be a problem. You know, Carson Knowles uh was an idiot all that time in Warzones and he never learned how to plan an IED. And she's like, What? And he's like, What? Um, you know, you don't know where he lives, you can't just blow him up in his car, and he's like, Why not? And she says, Because it's murder, and you'd have to do it in the city with people. And then this is crazy where he says, See, there's another thing too. Moon Knight works alone, no ties, he's technically dead. And he throws a dart right at his girlfriend's face, and as far as we know, kills her.
SPEAKER_01Crazy. So he's really descending. He's this guy's toast. And we see he's putting on some black gloves as he does it. Yep. So this is sort of the beginning of his taking on the moniker.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. His uh yeah, black specter. And he sets himself up with all this like gasoline and explosives and guns. And then we get this crazy shot of him in New York City with the whole again, it's like Black Spectre is like the opposite of Moon Knight. Moon Knight is like all white, and this guy's wearing all black, and that's kind of the big distinction here.
SPEAKER_01And this Manhattan skyline, again, is incredible. Crazy. And we yeah, and again, you see his costume is fine. I mean, he's all he's wearing all black, but it look this looks like a guy in a leather suit versus Moon Knight's just like supernatural, glowing, beautiful sort of situation. Um, but yeah, I mean, it's it's pretty straightforward. He plants this car bomb, he's waiting for Moon Knight to come down the street.
SPEAKER_02Uh he's also been like beating up people, he's killed people and taken people hostage. Again, try to he's thinking that like, you know, all his um the means, uh whatever, whatever. Events justify the means. Thank you very much. Um but so yeah, he's he's basically set up these bombs. He's got Moon Knight's car coming down the street. He's like, Oh damn it, I'm ready. I'm ready. There are these three phones that are set up. They're they're sending messages to make these bombs go off. There's two of them that send the message, and these bombs blow up. Um, and the it's again, these are crazy colors. Everything is splitting, there's fire everywhere. Um, and he's like, damn it, I was sure I wired that other car up properly. Oh well, somebody else's problem. And he's like, I got you. Where are your special powers now? Where's all your you know, he's like, again, um, you know, he's got issues, whatever else, right? Um trying to blow up Mr. Knight, his limousine. And then you'll never guess who shows up on the dang glider, whatever else, his drone. Um, it's uh this is Mr. Knight, actually. So not Moon Knight who shows up, but Mr. Knight. Um and this guy's shooting at him. Again, we get these crazy explosions with the silhouette of the white moon drone. He man, dude, so cool. The the drone gets actually, I think, either shot out of the sky or destroyed by the explosions. Um, Mr. Knight is falling out with it. He gets hit by one of the darts, um, which is crazy that uh that actually ended up happening. This guy's it's funny also, it's a hilarious moment where this guy's holding both a dart and a gun. He's got a gun in one hand and a dart in the other, which is just a hilarious juxtaposition. But what he doesn't realize is that third phone, that third bomb that he had, where he's like, hey, what happened? The message finally sends and it blows up and it blows up right behind him.
SPEAKER_01Which again is kind of highlighting this guy's incompetence, which is which is too bad. I mean, not too bad, but the the whole time he's like you know, hating himself, all this self-hatred. You're never enough, you're always messing things up, blah, blah, blah, blah.
SPEAKER_02And then we do see, even in his like evil machinations, where he thinks he's the guy and he's done all this prep and he's whatever else, he still cannot.
SPEAKER_01He still he messes up one of the car bombs and then he runs out and stands next to that car. One of the cars he had a bomb set up, yeah, which then explodes himself. You know, it's like obviously Moon Knight comes in and is uh, you know, flying into the rescue, but he ultimately doesn't even really need to do anything because this guy blows himself up. Blows himself up.
SPEAKER_02And then read, yeah, read this last you could probably read all this dialogue at the end here.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. So Moon Knight pulls up and he just looks down at him, he says, Who the hell are you supposed to be? And he's like, Black Black Spectre. He says, Let me tell you a thing about Black Spectre. He really just wanted to be loved. He wanted his dad and his wife to love him, wanted his crew to love him, wanted the whole city to love him. But I don't know you. And then he rips his uh mask off so he can see his face. Yeah. He says, He rips off Black Spectre's mask to be sure. Moonlight ain't taking off nothing. Right, true. And he's standing there stark white in front of all these flames. This is the first time we see the white contrast in front of red, which looks crazy. And again, he's just super calm, cool, collected. I'm in, you know, right in the middle of all the fire. And he says, Let me tell you a thing about me. People who love me suffer and die. I never want to be loved. And then we see him walking away, and that the dart that he'd uh Black Spectre had thrown in his arm earlier, he pulls the dart out and it drops to the floor and just says, That's why I always win. With the silhouette of the crescent moon up in the sky. And then bang, title card at the very end of the issue this time. Yeah, right. Moon Knight Spectre. So I mean, this is a very he's sort of showing like this guy was driven mad. This is very similar, the Black Spectre, right? The this character we see who's this new Black Spectre, he did want approval from everyone around him. He wanted approval from his crew, he wanted the whole city to love him. He felt like he didn't get enough respect, right? And that's you know, Moon Knight is sort of putting himself in juxtaposition to that, saying, I don't I don't need anybody's love. I don't want to be loved. That's why I win. I'm just I'm just out here. Which again is actually kind of interesting. It's sort of like uh almost like a a take on Buddhism or something where you can one of the ways, you know, like acknowledging that life is full of suffering and hardships, and one of the ways that you can fix that is to completely remove yourself from as much of that. Like don't have attachments, you know, you're not gonna get heartbroken if you're never in love with anybody. You're not gonna feel lost if you don't have any items.
SPEAKER_02I'll tell you one thing, you're gonna feel something. Right. And it's not gonna feel good. Right. You're gonna eat it.
SPEAKER_01But again, it's cool. It's like this the moon night, we're kind of, you know, I'm really glad you brought up Rorschach because it's like we're sort of we're we're we've sort of equal parts, uh, like we feel bad for him. Yeah. At the same time that we're like impressed by him. Like the the the way he's doing all these things is like he's literally this you know, mentally unwell person talking to himself, his own identities, and this god that's like has residency in his brain, and just going around at night, beating the shit out of criminals, doing nothing else.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01It's not a very uh not a very pleasant existence for our guy.
SPEAKER_02No, no, it's not. And actually, one thing I'll I'll read actually just at the end of this is is and and maybe we should we should have even read this at the beginning, but there's this nice little summary that I'll give of just this, which is kind of just a fun marvel, you know. I can imagine it in like, you know, whoever's voice type of thing. But he says it says, you know, Mark Specter is Moon Knight, or is he? It's hard to tell these days, especially when New York's wildest vigilante protects the streets with two-fisted justice and three, that's right, three different personalities. But even with the mystical force of Egyptian moon god Kanshu fueling his crusade, how does the night's greatest detective, uh, Batman, uh, save a city that's as twisted as he is? The road to victory is going to hurt a lot. Be there as Moon Knight punches ghosts, exclamation mark, investigates a sleep experiment that's driving its patients insane, travels to the mushroom graveyard planet, double exclamation mark, faces the black spectre and takes on twenty mob enforcers to save an abductee alone. Marvel's most mind-bending adventure begins as Moon Knight sleuths his way to the rotten core of New York's most bizarre mysteries. Wow.
SPEAKER_01Yep.
SPEAKER_02Great. But anyway, this was as you can probably tell, this was uh very cool, super cool.
SPEAKER_01Um this was a fun little, fun little side quest for us, I feel like.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it definitely was. I mean, I I finished this and I I just again, it's one of these kind of beautiful things where I finish it and I just really genuinely enjoyed myself. So can't recommend this one enough. There's obviously some other great, amazing ones that we've read. Um, but this is definitely going in in some of my favorites of what we've read so far for sure.
SPEAKER_01And it's cool that it's a new character.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01It's cool that it's a new character and one that still fits in that larger picture of the Marvel story. And it's it's cool to slowly be filling in all these gaps and giving ourselves this context. As we read more and more Marvel, it's only gonna um, you know, help us appreciate it even more. So yeah, absolutely. Wow. So this was amazing. Go read it. Moon Knight from the Dead. From the dead 2014 trade paperback.
SPEAKER_02Comixology.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's probably the best way to, unless you see it in a bookstore somewhere.
SPEAKER_02But if you do and it's and it's cheap, let me know because I I will also go buy it.
SPEAKER_01Um thank you guys so much for listening. Thank you. Uh once more, follow us on Instagram. Give these episodes a like and a favorite and a rating uh on whatever platform you're listening. And uh we're yeah, we're appreciative. Thank you guys for joining us.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, thank you very much. Moon night. Boom, moon oranges. There you go. Peace. Peace. Nice.