Saturday, September 30, 2006
Comic Art
Last week we looked at one of my more favored lesser
knowns that "worked with" The Defenders and we will do the same this week. The Character is Moon Knight. I have looked at him once in these spaces, but only as from the pen of Bill Sienkiewisz while today I want to look at the whole of the character.MK is one of those characters that is excellent in his own right, but suffers from being a bit too derivative. Please peruse the images arrayed here and tell me what you see - I'm hoping if you are any kind of comic fan, you are seeing Batman - the similarities in the look at just too close to not be noticed. I for one think that a plus, there has never been a more visual rich comic character that Batman, capes and shadows just seem to make the
image. But I think in this case people just looked at the cover art, saw "Batman rip-off and moved on. While we are doing comparisons with uber-hero Batman, MK was also written for a time by the incomparable Frank Miller. It was before Frank's name came to mean super-hero gold, but it was Frank. dark and thoughful.Like most characters that never quite break big, Moon Knight has been tinkered with a great deal. That is both a good and a bad thing. They are working out what will make the character work, but at the same time, they never give the fans anything to connect with and hold onto. This brief write-up thinks the comparisons to Batman superficial and the real comparison is to The Shadow; there is some insight there as the character goes, but visually the comparisons must be to Batman. And the visuals are the reason this character sticks
around.I do truly love the look of the character. Which is why I want him to catch on someday. If it was me making the editorial decisions, I would put him in the character niche the Batman used to occupy. Dark enough to maintain those marvelous visuals, but not so dark as a character that kids and optimists need not read it - which is pretty much where Batman is right now - too dark. I do think they should jettison Marc Spector, the civilian identity altogether - that would give them a chance to really start over with the character, and lose the occult aspects.
Moon Knight is one of the most attractive, beautiful characters in comics, but he has never caught on. He did appear at one time with The Defenders which is why we are discussing him here. If we can just work out the story.
Related Tags: comics, comic books, comic art, Moon Knight, The Defenders
