Putting their worst foot forward, Marvel stumbles into Moon Knight’s solo adventures with some fascinating results from the original writer and budding comic book legend. Covering material from Hulk Magazine #13-15, #17-18, #20-21 and Marvel Preview #21 – Countdown To Dark makes a terrible first impression for the Fist of Khonshu before finding the correct approach to tell some engaging stories.
First appearing as a villain in Werewolf by Night #32, the hired gun turned hero would eventually find his footing as one of Marvel’s respected C-List crimefighters who has risen to prominence over the past few decades as he has proven. The creation of the character was with multimedia projects and comics given him more and more prominence in the current day. Writer and creator Doug Moench summarised the thought process that defined the character in a 2019 interview:
I thought, ‘Well, wait a minute. How about if the Committee hires a mercenary to kill the Werewolf?’ […] So, I set out, ‘Well, who would be best to kill the Werewolf?’ Well, someone who uses silver weapons ’cause silver hurts the Werewolf, you know. And tied to the night, because [the] Werewolf only comes out at night, and what’s at night? The moon. Okay, I’ll base this character on the moon because the moon makes the Werewolf change, and this is going to be the opposite of a werewolf.1
This is the type of quick thinking that lets you hit your deadlines and have a multiple decade defining runs on Batman the way Moench did. And with a design by Don Perli the Moon Knight was born. Marc Spector is a former mercenary turned crimefighter who uses his vast fortune and skills to get the job done alongside a collection of allies, his girlfriend Marlene and his helicopter pilot pal called Frenchie. But in addition to his accomplices Spector also maintains two other public identities. To the high society types he is known as Steven Grant and to the folks on the streets and at the diner he is the somewhat reliable Jake Lockley. To the criminal element he is the crescent crusader Moon Knight.
Because the character was liked enough by people at Marvel he hovered around with guest appearance and team-ups in other books for the rest of the decade until finally being given a spot as part of their Hulk! Magazine. Due to the success of The Incredible Hulk TV series Marvel were willing to appeal to people outside the conventional comic market with a magazine. And much like Warren Publishing’s horror output from the same era these books operated under less intense censorship compared to the normal Marvel line, allowing for blood and a level of grimness you wouldn’t find in the pages of Fantastic Four. With the Hulk being the star the magazine would also feature other characters as back-up stories with the unused Moon Knight selected as a prime candidate. The strategy worked according to Marvel editor Ralph Macchio in an material included in this hardcover. The stories were very popular in Italy and they were plans to adapt Moon Knight into a live-action television series in Japan that sadly never materialised. At the very least the plot to bump Moon Knight’s profile up few notches would work and Doug Moench would take the character into his first ongoing solo title in 1980. This hardcover covers the late 1970s period where the character would start being defined.
Unfortunately the first story proves disastrous. At most it is a 20-page story expanded and extended to 47 pages. Bloating the script with exposition from both the protagonist and antagonist detailing every aspect of Moon Knight’s status quo before the story gets going. Some of this could be understandable as the target audience would not be familiar with the character and Moon Knight’s three civilian identities is a strange core concept to introduce while also establishing the supporting cast. Yet it is such a miserable slog to get through. A very bland chase after some terrorists and stolen plutonium spared only by a few moments of fun dialogue, a sword fight and Moench’s flowery proses narrating the darkness of night. This book had been gathering dust in a drawer for 16 years because I’ve never bene able to stomach Countdown To Dark enough to read it to completion.
Things pick up with the much more focused and humorous An Eclipse, Waning. As Steven Grant visits an oddball astrologist on the night of an eclipse and has to tolerate his passionate ramblings while pouring himself wine and foiling a robbery. And unbeknownst to everybody, the Incredible Hulk is loose in the woods as well. Bill Sienkiewicz will later go onto define himself as one of the most eclectic and expressionist painter is in the superhero genre, best known for his work on New Mutants and Elektra: Assassin, but on Moon Knight he’s still providing very conventional work for the period. Though he proves fully capable of engaging in slapstick comedy with the three goons Moon Knight tussles with being so dim they feel like they were pulled from a Scooby Doo episode. As a new character some aspects of Moon Knight were in flux in his earliest appearances. These first few stories they allude to the idea the phases of the moon increase his strength. And this is ironically expanded upon by Bruce Banner, who explains the pseudoscience explanation for moonlight effects human psychology to explain why in the past the full moon triggered some of his earliest Hulk transformations he wonders the woods. The central gag here is that Moon Knight and Hulk end up fumbling around in the dark and bump into each other without realising they have actually crossed paths. Add in some very fun Hulk scenes, reminding me that jade giant is one of my all-time favourite superheroes, and this is a dramatic improvement from the previous tale.
The following story reads like a tribute to Taxi Driver (1976) and other films detailing the paranoia and violence for New York City such as the later Fear City (1984). Countdown to Dark featured some blood by this is the arc where Moench’s embraces the adult-orientated freedom of a magazine in the era of the comic’s code to inject sleaze, allusions to sex as part of a perverse string of murders. A masked killer known as the Hatchet Man narrates his ritualistic killings of nurses in an effective opening for Nights Born Ten Years Gone. Instead of being a conventional murder mystery, the twist here is that Marc Specter immediately recognises the murderer’s handiwork and what drives these killings. This begins a trend for the rest of the collection that all the terrors inflicted on New York under Moon Knight’s watch are spectres of his ignoble past as a mercenary and CIA asset coming back to haunt him. It proves that a more concise and natural introduction to this character and world was perfectly achievable, as the creative team proves here. Feisty girlfriend Marlene gets involved in the case as well and proves that Marc is neither the best boyfriend by how he explodes at her suggestion and also nowhere near as capable as he needs to be as her life is endangered.
A somewhat easy conclusion to The Hatchet-Man murders that denies Moon Knight the catharsis of bringing him to justice or killing him is almost expected for this slasher case. But is excusable as it leads to the next story. Long Way To Dawn ends up being a real highlight. As an 8-page story it has the brevity and density of a good 2000AD short while also being a mournful exportation of Moon Knight’s powerlessness. Most interestingly it shows him being hesitant to deploy violence and finding less direct ways to help people, while also wondering if any of the aid he provides can have any long term benefit to society. Or maybe he is less volatile this evening because he now understands violence isn’t the ultimate solution. While ending on a more optimistic note as dawn finally comes to chase away the darkness, it is story of Marc Spectre seeing the trauma and horror of his own life reflected on the poor unfortunates. The addicts, the working girls, the incompetent law-enforcement and the destitute are all real people to him now. As he ruminates the harm inflicted on him and Marlene, Moon Knight shows a delicate touch on a level of empathy that seemed beyond him and his disguises. As a man who hides his truth self under countless lies he is finally able to regain his humanity. Sienkiewicz milk is the material for all its worth. Using 10 panel layouts and are variety of panel structures to keep things small and intimate. Rather than feeling like the swashbuckling adventures of a larger-than-life hero, this is a man in a suit waiting for the sunrise.
The outlandishly titled Mind Thieves closes out the tome with the Grant Gang having a dead body delivered to their front door and an assassination attempt on Marc Spector justifying a trip to Canada. What follows is a conspiracy drama that is just as preposterous as the real deal. Moench would win an Eisner Award in 1996 for his Big Book of Conspiracies anthology while Sienkiewicz would pair up with Alan Moore in 1988 to explore the CIA’s operations in Vietnam and the Iran-Contra affair in their book Brought to Light – Thirty Years of Drug Smuggling, Arms Deals, and Covert Action. As such it is not surprising that Moon Knight becomes a story commenting on the CIA’s illegal human experiments that were uncovered by the 1975 Church Committee investigation into the practices of the U.S. intelligence agencies. The additional charge to make this particular creative experiment work, besides a sincere appreciation of French sculptor and architect Robert Tatin in the third act, is combining the CIA experiments with the Canadian Duplessis Orphans scandal2. During which more than 3,000 children in the care of Catholic orphanages were falsely diagnosed as mentally ill and institutionalised as part of a collaboration with the local government of Quebec to profit from government subsidies. Combining both controversies into one unified and fictional conspiracy that (once again) Moon Knight had some involvement with in the darker years of his life. Certainly the boldest of the major storylines collected here. It also allows Sienkiewicz some more flexibility as the inhuman experiments of The Company allow him to experiment with a less realistic, more nightmarish and garish sequence of Moon Knight being experimented on.
This is also a storyline where some needling from the often-naked Marlene gets Marc Spector to admit that he wishes he really was Steven Grant. While these earliest stories use Moon Knight’s many disguises as tools so that he can solve crimes. Yet these brief reflections will become foundational as later Moon Knight writers explore the possibility that Marc Spector has been suffering from an disassociative identity disorder. While Moench stays focused on the adventure at hand it is interesting to see those ideas being to germinate so early in the character’s lifespan as he finds himself pulled between them and unsure of who Moon Knight really should be. The story ends up being a decent romp across the North American continent and then Paris which also ripping enough form the headlines to give it some flavour. Bringing the collection to a close on a strong note.
Despite being named after its absolute weakest story, Moon Knight: Countdown to Dark proves to be more interesting as a time capsule them as a collection of stories. Its two primary creators would go onto bigger and better things and this character would continue to evolve in his own solo title. But despite the strengths and weaknesses of the individual stories they are a window into the fears and controversies that were defining the American perspective on the 1970s. From the fear of nuclear annihilation, random violence, the government itself and a profound sense of opposition mixed with powerlessness.