The Past Strikes With Vengeance: Reviewing ‘Moon Knight: Fist Of Khonshu’ #2

Death is but a revolving door within the Marvel Universe. At least, if you have the right connections. Marc Specter naturally has the right connections, having beat death again himself, but there just might be another who did the same that holds the key to Moon Knight’s latest mission.

A real blast from the past gets name dropped as a weird rogue joins the party and secrets are spilled in Moon Knight: Fist Of Khonshu #2. The second chapter of the latest moonlit volume from Jed MacKay, Alessandro Cappuccio, Rachelle Rosenberg, and Cory Petit.

If there is one thing that you can expect from (most) MacKay comics, it’s that he’s not afraid to get weird. Okay, if there is another thing one can expect it’s that he’s also not afraid to really dig through the massive toy box that is Marvel. He brings in various characters of a variety of levels of notoriety and obscurity, placing them perfectly to tell the best stories.

Were I to have a Bingo card related to this book, the Cubist would not have been on there as a possibility. Mostly because I had no idea who the Cubist was before today (my older Moon Knight knowledge is severely lacking), which was wild for my Marvel encyclopedia of a brain.

At its core, this is very much a kind of board setting up or first piece movement sort of issue in the story arc. Showing what both sides of the conflict are doing to prepare for and go at each other with some good action, plenty of solid character discourse, and little tidbits dangled for the future. Character beats are MacKay’s bread and butter. They are really doing their bread and buttery thing here, in the best ways possible.

This is the writer that has me in stitches over the moment shared between Moon Knight and 8-Ball here, and actually really loving seeing freaking 8-Ball regularly in a comic. Just like he got me to read and love a Taskmaster series in the past. As a character writer, the man might be unstoppable.

Oh, and extra points for the meta-style moment with “rogues gallery” being dropped, scoffed at, and defended in the blink of an eye.

Plenty of artists could bring this book to life, and have played in the sandbox, but it’s hard not to feel that Cappuccio is perfect for this series. With the recent announcement of his being tapped for Ultimate Wolverine, I’m a bit afraid that we might lose him on this title, but I’ll enjoy what we have for as long as we have him here.

Just the right touch of rough texture meets a really moody atmosphere in this book. Depth and emotional energy are clear on every page, through every panel, even with a good chunk of the cast almost always wearing masks. Their body language and the way their masks mold and move with their faces spells it all out, alongside their maskless compatriots who are rife with the energy too.

Taking the moment with Cubist and going full wild with it, leaving even the reader feeling a bit off balance just like the characters is the good stuff when it comes to artwork. All of the stuff really draws from similar energy to just go all in and leave nothing on the table, and the book is better for it.

Color wise, Rosenberg compliments what Cappuccio puts on the page by really adding to and playing up the moody colors. I mean this is a book about characters who do their thing at night, taking on the darkest elements of the world, so there will be a lot of ominous and heavier tones in play. At the same time, there are plenty of flashier and smoother elements that she pulls out to give the heroics and fantastic elements their fair showcase.

One of the great parts of the design for both Moon Knight and Hunter’s Moon is that the “pure” whiteness of their costumes is broken up by so many other darker elements. This always speaks to the fact that there is darkness within them and about them, even as they are the heroes of our story. How Cappuccio and Rosenberg employ that and work with it within the story adds so much more to the overall beats.

MacKay delivers voices for characters extremely well, and so too does Petit. Any time I see that name on the credits I know that there will be tons done to really hit every emotional beat with the words, character’s full personalities and energies clear in every word on the page. Character tone and volume comes through loudly (or softly), and meets the energy of the rest of the art where it stands. It all really flows and lands just as it is meant to through every panel till the issue comes to a close.

Moon Knight: Fist Of Khonshu #2 is now available from Marvel Comics.