Moon Knight #1-6
Originally released in 2006
Written by Charlie Huston
Art by David Finch
Moon Knight is having a rough time. He had friends, a lover, and a sense of enjoyment about beating criminals senseless. The key word being "had" - at the start of the series, he's a wheelchair-bound alcoholic and pain pill addict whose actions prompt his girlfriend and most of his friends to leave.
I'm not familiar with Moon Knight (I've read the Warren Ellis run, but that's about it), but this seems like an extremely dark period in the character's history. The series goes back to how he wound up in a wheelchair - when battling his nemesis (who isn't named during the fight, though it's later revealed to be Raoul Bushman, a mercenary who betrayed Marc and left him for dead, leading to Marc's deal with the Egyptian god Khonshu), Moon Knight falls off a building, breaking his legs.
In a desperate attempt to drive Bushman off, Moon Knight throws his crescent-shaped daggers, stabbing the mercenary in the neck. This seems to kill Bushman, though it's unclear if this was accidental or intentional. It's definitely intentional when Moon Knight cuts off his former ally's face, though.
All of this is part of the plan of a shadowy organization called the Committee, which seeks to make Marc more predictable so he can be controlled. Going by the recap page, he worked for them in the past, back when he was a mercenary and seemingly before he developed his dissociative identity disorder.
Naturally, this doesn't work - an overzealous member of the Committee activates one of their plans too soon, which results in Marc's friend Jean-Paul "Frenchie" Duchamp being beaten to the point of being hospitalized.
This steers Marc back towards being Moon Knight, which the Committee had been trying to avoid. As a result, they decide that Contingency T needs to be carried out.
This means hiring Taskmaster to kill Marc, under the impression that he'd be alone and unable to defend himself. Taskmaster's personality shines in this brief appearance, with his sarcastic and mocking personality contrasting with the serious nature of Moon Knight and the Committee.
However, Moon Knight isn't alone - his one-time love interest Marlene is there, and as others show up, Taskmaster is driven off rather than risking further complications.
We get a good speech from Marlene about how heavily flawed and self-centered Marc can be - the moment that he starts to feel his age or things get too difficult, he quits, whereas people like Marlene and Frenchie had to deal with countless difficulties dealing with his split personalities (Marc also has Steven Grant, millionaire playboy, and Jake Lockley, lower class cab driver, as alternate personalities), along with being a vigilante whose fighting style is "get beaten up, stabbed, and shot to intimidate people with how tough I am."
Marlene takes Marc to a mansion - I'm assuming it belongs to Steven Grant, but if there were hints of Batman in his characterization before, now it's broadcasting them from the nearest rooftop with fireworks, as Moon Knight has an underground cave beneath this mansion that strongly resembles the Bat Cave.
Despite having the motivation to go back to being Moon Knight, Marc can barely stand, let alone walk. However, Marlene managed to track down the location of the Committee, so Marc does something that would be considered "in poor taste".
He crashes an aircraft into a New York City skyscraper, roughly five years after the September 11 terrorist attacks. The reason why I picked these issues for today is because I read that this incident caused Taskmaster to never take on Moon Knight again because Moon Knight caused his personal 9/11.
Surprisingly, causing a minor recreation of one of the most infamous terrorist attacks is actually the start of Moon Knight's situation improving. He regains his wealth due to some investments paying off, he's friends with Marlene and Jean-Paul again, and he's back to being Moon Knight.
My impression of Moon Knight is that he's thoroughly messed up. Maybe not to Peacemaker levels, and these first six issues don't delve into the split personality aspect of the character, but he keeps Bushman's face and puts it on a statue of Khonshu, and Khonshu appears to him in the form of Bushman's faceless corpse.
The comic can get pretty gruesome at points, which was the style at the time in the mid-2000s. We get a lot of graphic close-ups of Bushman post-face-removal, and Marc's pointed revenge against the man who assaulted Jean-Paul is painful to watch. Still, I can see why people like the character based on these issues.
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