| Essential Moon Knight Volume 1 TPB: 1 (Essential (Marvel Comics)) | 
 enlarge | Authors: Doug Moench, Bill Mantlo, Steven Grant
Creators: Don Perlin, Mike Zeck, Jim Craig, Gene Colan, Keith Pollard, Bill Sienkiewicz
Publisher: Marvel Comics
Category: Book
List Price: £10.99
Buy New: £5.23
You Save: £5.76 (52%)
New (28) Used (8) from £2.95
Avg. Customer Rating:  1 reviews
Sales Rank: 232700
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 560
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.4
Dimensions (in): 9.7 x 6.5 x 1.4
ISBN: 0785120920
Dewey Decimal Number: 741.5973
EAN: 9780785120926
ASIN: 0785120920
Publication Date: March 15, 2006
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
Soldier of fortune turned crime fighter December 16, 2007
Opening with the two issues of Werewolf by Night where the Committee hired Moon Knight to capture the Werewolf, in the end the Knight takes pity on the lycanthrope and frees him. There's the 2 issue Marvel Spotlight where he takes on Conquer Lord then he teams with Spider-man to take on the Maggia and Cyclone. Then he teams up with the Thing against a foe from the Knight's past Crossfire.
That was just a taste of things to come. Moon Knight unusually has 3 aliases a soldier of fortune (Marc Spector), a taxi-driver (Jake Lockley) and a millionaire (Steven Grant) as well as his "main team" of Marlene and helicopter pilot Frenchie and his "support team" of waitress Gina and her two sons and Crawley a salesman whose life was ruined by the bottle and is now a deadbeat.
As the character shifts into the back pages of the Hulk Magazine we read more of the Knight's past, from his days as a mercenary and his split from Bushman's forces. Bushman being a psychotic killer who left Marc Spector for dead. Spector stumbles across an old Egptian tomb and under the gaze of a statue of an ancient Egyptian Moon God comes back from the dead, when he returns to life he sees Marlene, whose father Bushman had earlier killed. Spector's old mercenary comrade Frenchie joins him and Marlene as they escape.
Throughout these tales the issue of the Moon Knight's power increasing as the moon waxes and decreasing as it wanes is explained by his supposedly being bitten by the werewolf during the initial fight but there is reason to believe it may be due more to his being resurrected by the spirit of the Moon God? We also read of his work for the CIA as his past comes back to haunt him on several occasions.
Moon Knight takes on nuclear terrorists led by the hirsute Lupinar. There are two schizo-killers with very close connections an axe-man (Randall Spector, Marc's brother) and one with a scythe (Crawley's son) and The Midnight Man an art thief. The Committee returns with new members hiring 5 not so great hitmen. Then a voodoo tale and a plot to blackmail Chicago by poisoning the water before Bushman returns as does the Midnight Man who has become a parody of his former self after being disfigured by toxic waste.
The fact that his secret identity(ies) is known by all the members of his pretty large "team", not to mention more than a few of his enemies is a little distracting and the strain of keeping 4 personalities on the go does start to tell on Moon Knight and especially Marlene over the course of these tales. There's a lot of emphasis on the darker side of life drugs, poverty, alcoholism and prostitution which is appropriate as most of these stories take place at night in the seedier parts of the city.
I also like the light relief with a very brief Laurel and Hardy tribute near the end of Hulk 14.
On the whole this is a pretty good collection, I especially liked the split version of the Hulk's brief appearance seen from both the Moon Knight and the Hulk's viewpoint, this is one of the few tales that does not have an overwhelming sense of pessimism.
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