Moon Knight has been a character that I love despite never getting above B-level status. It's not like Marvel hasn't tried. Years ago they went out and got Charlie Huston, a crime fiction novelist, to relaunch him. It started out as a great series, but after Huston left, it eventually devolved into a confusing mess.  It was even relaunched with a new title and #1. After that series ended, they put one of the best creative teams they had, Bendis and Maleev, on to relaunch again. That run, which I still say were good comics, but not good Moon Knight comics, lasted 12 issues. And so he sat on the bench until they handed the reigns over to Warren Ellis to try and reinvent The Fist of Khonshu once more. Sadly, he's missed the mark.

The dialogue works, and Moon Knight does sounds like Moon Knight. But even so, I'd be hard pressed to call him a super hero. Marc has fully embraced his richness to an almost Iron Man degree full of talking computers and auto driving cars. What bothers me is that I was hoping that was going to lead into more of an exploration into his old team and how he's assimilating back to New York. Instead he's basically Batman. Rolls up on a crime scene, deduces, and then goes off to solve it. Moon Knight has pretty much always had some kind of backup team, but apparently no longer. It's just such a hard left turn, even moreso than Bendis' "now I'm Spider-Man" story. Ellis does find a nice way to reconcile the Bendis run with previous incarnations of the character, which I appreciate. The bummer is that it does more to destroy the core of the character I fell in love with.

every girl's crazy 'bout a sharp dressed man

On the art half of things, the book looks great. Declan Shalvey and Jordie Bellair were not a names I was familiar with previously, but they nail the look. The characters look great and the coloring, or lack thereof in the case of Moon Knight's white suit, is a perfect match for the tone. While I'm not sure how I feel about switching Moonie to a white suit instead of a full on costume, it's hard to argue the bad ass look. They also do very cool stuff with the layouts of the book that play with time and space. It's not exactly revolutionary, but it's a neat effect.

The recent Moon Knight comics have been a point of contention between myself and Ian over at McSoss. Sadly, we seem to agree on this one. There are some interesting things that Ellis is trying to do with Moon Knight that I'm curious to see through, but the character that I used to know appears to be long gone. Here's hoping he comes back.

Fun Fact: Warren Ellis personally rejected (and rightfully so) 30 Extra Lives years ago to be part of his webcomic site. Ironically enough, the comics I submitted centered around Moon Knight.