I had written often about the character Moon Knight in some of my more "slip shod" blogs but I don't think I ever invested any time seriously examining the character other than my brief mention of his appearances in RAMPAGING HULK MAGAZINE in an extensive Hulk article for my On Television Classics blog. (BTW – You can read reprints of those excellent RH stories in ESSENTIAL MOON KNIGHT Vol 1) I first discovered Moon Knight in the late 1970's in an issue of MARVEL TEAM UP. I was a regular reader of the character's third series in the 1990's. I also dug the four issue mini series of the late 1990's and have been reading the return of Moon Knight in his new, excellent monthly series.

Face it. I am a huge Moon Knight fan and sometimes I ask myself "why?" After all, he has long since been a secondary character in the Marvel universe and the character is a shameful rip-off of Batman. So why all the adoration for such a B level character? Because with B level characters writers take chances and those RAMPAGING HULK stories and the later half of the early 1980's solo series were off the charts in terms of the unique, inspired and brilliant writing. But, Moon Knight never rose above B status and despite the quality of the writing all his series were short lived. Upon looking at the decent sales figures for the new series it would seem that this Moon Knight series will be a winner. 

And the writing is excellent. But, rather than discuss the story lines of the past dozen or so issues I thought I would look at the very first too issues which find Marc Spector down on his luck, haunted by distressed memories, addicted to pain killers and seeing his glory day memories of Moon Knight far behind it. There is a certain subtext here that is not necessarily obvious on the surface.

Based on the condition that we find Spector we must conclude: being a B level hero weighs heavily on a man whose glory fades in comparison to the heroes who get all the attention. Yes, it would seem that Spector's mental and physical breakdown is a metaphor for his long running bad newsstand sales.

Look, how would you like it if you took criminals off the streets as well as outright saved the word a few times and were essentially considered unimportant? Yes, that would weigh heavily on the psyche
 

TO BE CONTINUED