Moon Knight Primer, Part Fourteen
Moon Knight (2016) #188 - 193
Prologue, Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V, Part VI, Part VII, Part VIII, Part IX, Part X, Part XI, Part XII, Part XIII
Ok, so… the Bemis run.
This one is complicated. It is not as abysmally bad as Bendis, or Dixon, or Huston, but it still has some very, very problematic stuff regarding both mental health, violence, class and sexuality. On the other hand, it is the run that gave us “Dad” Khonshu and “Daddy Issues Khonshu”. It’s one of the very, VERY few runs where Khonshu is an active positive presence in the guys’ lives, and they are acting together as a system for the whole thing. So… half full glass.
It also reintroduces the worst girlfriend ever -although this time they remember that she used to have a spine and was a cool lady when not dealing with her boyfriend and his alters- and Jean Paul as a constant presence in the guys’s lives. Not only that but, while putting Khonshu directly in the guys’s headspace in a way that some think he’s another Alter, just one very unattached to the others’ lives in a way, he also introduces MORE Egyptian gods, in particular, Ra, Khonshu’s father and the Sun God, who has a present-day avatar -and whose avatars fought against previous Khonshu’s avatars for centuries- so, yeah, we get the possibility of the gods being real, or it all being in someone’s head given the reason why Ra resurfaces -which is part of the problematic stuff because of course it is. Oh, and it also gives us Diatrice Spector who is an adorable ball of light and joy. Again, it’s very hard to hate Bemis for this.
It’s just that the bad stuff? At least in my opinion? Is really bad.
Once again, I am going through generals because we’re back to the “Most everything happens in the real world so we don’t need three pages of symbolism explained”.
So let’s start with the really, really bad.
Besides the title of the first arc which is “Crazy runs in the family”.
SIGH.
This run introduces two new villains: the Sun King and The Truth. The Truth is mostly used as a first disk boss, and a punchline as his powers are a bit uncontrollable and anyone within his effect area will start revealing all the truths that they hide, their true thoughts. This, of course, makes Marc at some point start saying that he doesn’t really believe in Khonshu and that all is in his mind, but he manages to get out of it quite fast. The fact that Moon Knight is somewhat immune to The Truth if he concentrates. Will come up again later.
The Truth, by the way, is not exactly a villain. He’s more on the nihilistic scale where he just thinks that everyone’s true feelings will end up in violence.
HOWEVER, the problematic stuff comes when, recruited by the Sun King, The Truth comes into contact with Bushman who is alive AGAIN, and that causes Bushman… to constantly declare his love for Marc, to the point of annoyance from Sun King, The Truth, and Bushman. It starts somewhat ok, and interesting: The Truth’s powers start by making you face the Truths you don’t want to admit to yourself so people start blurting things randomly as The truth’s powers sometimes leak. BEFORE he meet the Truth? Bushman had admitted that after all that has happened between him and Marc? Well, he’s terrified of facing Moon Knight again so he tries to keep his drug dealing under the radar. And given that in Marvel, no matter how many times they ret-con details, at the same time EVERYTHING still happened (Something that becomes interesting given the fact that they just tried to whitewash Marc’s time with Bushman), this means at least two deaths, the infamous face removal, and three other random encounters. So yeah, healthy fear of Moon Knight? Understandable. Him letting himself go a bit because he started eating a lot of junk food and delegating action to others? Kinda iffy especially as he’s drawn fatter than bigger, and he’s made into sort of a comic relief which is… kinda fatphobic to be honest. But once he gets in contact with the Truth, we find out that the junk food eating is a full on ED -he is constantly eating junk food- because, and I quote “I eat because I feel powerless. I feel powerless because I’m obsessed with the handsome dirtbag who tore my face off.” And later on, while they’re trying to interrogate Marc? We get the line “When Marc talks, We Listen! HE’s all I really have in this world!”
And then he idiotically tries to fight Moon Knight one on one again, and of course loses and almost sets Moon Knight free from Sun King if it wasn’t for the Truth FINALLY being able to get into Marc’s head just in time for plot reasoning.
Bushman’s confession is never, EVER, mentioned again. (Also, what WAS going on in that merc camp? Because with this we have TWO ex-mercs who worked with Marc in that particular mission who were in love with him. Which granted, it isn’t much, but it’s weird it happened twice.)
We will talk more about the Truth in the next arc, but interestingly, while their first encounter is as violent as every supervillain fight is -and we’re going to talk about that because it’s part of the demonization of my man Jake Lockley- after that? Every encounter with the truth in the arc is just them… talking. Sometimes the Truth convinces Moon Knight, but at the end? Because Marc beats Sun King The Truth just goes “Oh. So truth is not black and white. Uh. I need to be put in the system so I can start thinking about this. Thank you so much, Mr. Moon Knight.”
Which, to be frank? Is a very healthy way to deal with defeat that I hadn’t seen in Marvel since the days of the Mad Thinker (who actually went on to change his name to Thinker because HE was far ahead on the “why are we demonizing mental health issues” train)
But then there’s Sun King.
On paper? Sun King is a great idea. He is the literal reflection of Marc Spector: A former soldier, with a dubious backstory as he can’t really remember his past, who got a little bit scrambled during the war and became convinced he is the Avatar of the God Ra and thus decided to change the world under his flag. Given that Ra is Khonshu’s father, and Bemis added the idea that for centuries the Avatar of Khonshu -always dressed in a variation of Moon Knight’s costume- and the Avatar of Ra -always looking like the Sun King- have fought over the idea of how to protect the world, with Ra going far, FAR down the “kill everyone who doesn’t agree with me” scale.
He even goes on to create a tiny colony/cult on an island, with people going voluntarily as they’re convinced that Ra will bring out a better world. And if that sounds a bit like Series!Harrow? Is because yes, Series!Harrow has a lot more in common with Sun King than with the ACTUAL Harrow character (Who we’re STILL waiting for to come back with his plan on revenge against Moon Knight since… 1989. Man is taking his time I guess). He even kinda looks like Sun King, what with the long hair and his clothing.
The problem is, as almost everything Bemis did? With the execution.
Because see, the origin of Sun King is tied directly to our favorite worst psychiatrist ever: Dr. Emmet.
The very first issue of Bemis run has NO Moon Knight at all, not really. Instead we focus on the Real Dr. Emmet (remember, the one we saw originally, the avatar of Ammut, was only Marc’s reflection of how he saw her. And boy, he was very generous with her since she was nowhere as smart as he saw her), who has become a tiny bit obsessed with what she perceives her greatest “Failure”, Marc Spector. Why is he a failure? Because he LIVES with his condition, thrives as a superhero with DiD, and didn’t take to her attempts of integration.
Seriously, this “doctor” sees the Moon System living a perfectly balanced life and being successful in every Alter’s life, and thinks “MAN, why couldn’t I make him stay miserable and medicated in a padded room? I SUCK as a doctor.”
It also brings a strange new status quo, regarding HOW much the rest of the world knows about Moon Knight’s condition. It seems that now Steven, Jake and Marc’s real names are no longer common knowledge, but Moon Knight having DiD and believing in Khonshu are still so widespread that he is still “That crazy superhero”.
Anyway, for some reason Dr. Emmet is still allowed to have patient, and Patient 86 -Sun King’s only identification name- lands on her lap after a tiny incident of Arson in which he killed two people, who had been torturing him as a form of hazing (I will NOT say what they did to him, but man, it was extreme). And the Dr, instead of say, wondering where the man got the matches to create the fire in the first place, try to find out his clinical history even if it’s a challenge as Patient 86 is a John Doe with no memories of his past, or anything a real dr. would do? Decides to introduce him to Egyptian Mythology and Moon Knight with the EXPRESS desire to see if she can replicate what she calls the Moon System’s “coping mechanism” in this patient whom, in her words, “is almost pleasant and coherent”. She SPECIFICALLY chooses to introduce him to Ra, given his obsession with fire, and is congratulating herself on how calm and nice the Patient is… until said patient bits a nurse’s nose off for her “lack of faith” and then proceeds to prove that he HAS pyrokinetick powers (a thing that should’ve been checked BEFORE he was admitted to the hospital) and, claiming himself to be Ra’s Avatar, proceeds to burn the building down with everyone inside.
There are survivors, of course. Including Dr. Emmet who is badly burnt and now driven insane herself. Last time we see her? Is in the cult island, holding a cat, and proclaiming her faith in Moon Knight’s gods.
Worst Psychiatrist ever for the Boys, and that’s counting Dr. Elsa “I want to steal your God’s powers for my own goals” Warsame.
By the way, in the “Are the gods real or not” department, there’s a fight in Moon Knight’s mind where both Ra and Sun King get into their mindspace to fight. Did I mention Khonshu ALSO had daddy issues? Well, here’s where they come into place. And that’s when Jake, who always has been the most aware of Alters, comes to ask “HOW are they here, if THIS is all in Marc’s mind?” (Ok, so the Marc’s mind remark is wrong and should’ve been “Our” minds, but again, Bemis is not the best when it comes to writing Plurality. Not the worst, as he at least acknowledges the Alters’ existance, but not the best) and Steven of all people answers with a metaphysical theory.
I love Series!Steven who is incredibly booksmart. But Comic!Steven has always been more of a himbo when it comes to anything that is not money and investments so it’s REALLY weird to hear him talk about metaphysical realities and how everything is real as long as Marc believes it is, which brings the CRINGIEST line in the whole arc which is when they declare that “Crazy is their superpower” RIGHT after Jake says that the only thing HE really has faith in? Is Diatrice, his daughter… Oh, yes. We’re going to talk about Diatrice soon.
I mentioned that the Bemis’ run was a bit of a let down, didn’t I? I mean, that line alone is incredibly regressive given that we had JUST come from an amazing run whose whole message was “No, the Moon System is not Crazy. It just IS. Yes, they have what is considered a mental illness, but that doesn’t mean they’re crazy, nor that their reality is not real, nor that they can’t have a normal life” and while Bemis SEEMS to want to continue with this idea, nope, we still have “Oh, but we’re insane! Lol!” moments.
Which brings us to Jake, who here suffers the biggest and worst character assassination that any character in the Moon Knight comics has suffered. YES, worse than when Khonshu went from Justice God to “I look like Bushman and want Marc to kill everyone around” because at least that one had a flimsy excuse in the form of real mythology.
What Bemis did to Jake? Has NO Excuse.
See, I pointed out before that Steven was the man Marc WANTED to be: Rich, suave, completely untouched by violence. However Jake is the man Marc WOULD have been: Down to earth, with good friends and only using violence when strictly needed to defend said friends. Of the trio, no matter if the slipt happened before or after Khunshu, Jake was always the moral compass of them.
Consider this: Steven wanted NOTHING to do with Marc’s past or memories, and yet, all his money CAME from Marc’s past. Sure, he made it far, far more with investments, but the original source was always the blood money Marc made as a mercenary (Which may be also why he never hesitated on buying Marlene whatever the hell Marlene wanted: part of that money had her father’s blood on it) Jake, on the other hand, understood Marc’s past (there are examples of monologues I’ve posted about how he has more stomach than Steven to remember the things Marc did, back in the Moench era, and yet a killer goes so vicious that Jake has to switch to Marc as not to puke), but doesn’t take any from it. He has a paying job as a Cabbie, is presumed in some eras to have his own place away from both the Grant and Spector mansions (that everyone seems to have forgotten exist after the 2006 era), and he’s the only one who is shown having real friends: sure, Crawley and Gena ended up also working for Moon Knight, but they started as his friends. And we know some Cabbies also got worried when he disappeared, so again, friends. Jake was always the social one.
But then, we get to Bemis. Who suddenly decided that Jake was what happened when Marc, already disturbed, took “The worst parts of himself and let them fuse into a living person.”
I have to remind you that in the literal previous run? It was established that Jake manifested when the kids were TEN. I REALLY wonder what Bemis thinks is “the worst parts” of a 10 year old, whose actions in the past are SO bad, SO terrible, that the frigging TRUTH is horrified when they first meet and the only way he has to escape is to threaten Jake to tell Marc “the things he’s done”.
This is what brings us, ironically, to one of the most beloved panels of the whole Bemis run: The guys fighting in their inner space while Khonshu consoles Steven and assures the pacifist Alter that no, Marc and Jake fighting is not his fault. THAT? That is adorable. Also the brief look at how said fight looks from the outside: The body meditating in Central Park, suddenly shouting both as Jake and Marc and startling an old lady who is walking her dog.
Jake and Marc’s fighting? Not so much.
Jake once again claims that Marc “sliced me off your personality and sent me to live among freaks, addicts and criminals” and that he knows how to “strip and dress a human body” and do you HEAR how Classist this is? Upper middle class Marc cannot be a horrible violent monster (Despite the fact that the one who ACTUALLY WORKED with criminals, and WAS a criminal himself was Marc, and the one who most CERTAINLY know how to strip a body in every sense of the word), but lower class cabbie Jake? Oh, he must certainly is and must be drawn as deranged as possible (Seriously, the faces they make Jake have are disgusting. Right out of Garth Ellis “Crossed” which is a comic I can’t tell you to stay away from ENOUGH, and well, was also drawn by Jasen Burrows, the artist of the Bemis issues which explains a lot. But SERIOUSLY, AVOID Crossed like the plague). And even then? Even within his own narrative of “Look how terribly violent and unhinged Jake is”? the one who pulls out the ACTUAL weapons during the fight is MARC, who makes Jake bleed using a giant moon crescent -and even with Marc, military trained Marc who at some point was said to be trained to be as good as Nick Fury, cheating? Jake wins the fight. While pointing out that their work as a system is as follow: “Steven is the wealthy benefactor. Khonshu is our connection to the bigger picture. You’re our voice of reason. And I deal in the grimy leftovers. You Built us this way.”
Leaving aside the fact that this makes Khonshu a fourth alter, when even this arc itself treats him more of as an outsider, given that he has a long, long history older than the system’s body, and with a second character that Marc didn’t meet until now? This has NEVER been true for the System’s dynamics. Not in any Moon Knight comic, not even in his brief time in teams like the West Coast Avengers? Would anyone call Marc “The voice of reason”. JAKE was the voice of reason, the one who went “Ok, uhm, we fight drug dealers and street criminals. What the HELL are we doing going against Dr. Doom?” The one who tried to keep them alive not by fighting, but by being smart and hiding and not, say, have a huge mansion with a moon shaped helipad. The one who, again, had friends he trusted enough to bring into the secret of their lives and condition without them having been affected by it directly first, as Jean Paul and Marlene had.
I mean, not two pages after that? MARC in a flashback tells Marlene HE blew up Randall with a grenade -because Randall killed Marc’s then girlfriend but still, and that’s the only time we’ve mentioned Randall since before the Lemire run! Wow.
Oh, and the secret that Jake was SO desperately to keep from Marc? That FIVE years ago, he went to Marlene, DESPITE The fact that we have CANON evidence that Jake TRIED to keep Marlene and Steven together and happy because he thought Marlene was a fine dame, Despite the fact that Jake NEVER once had any romantic interest in her at all, and had an illicit relationship with her behind Marc’ (and probably Marlene’s husband, if Bemis even remembered that Marlene was married by then) back which resulted in Marlene getting pregnant and giving birth to an adorable girl who is CURRENTLY named Diatrice. I will talk more about Diatrice later.
EVEN WORSE? When Marlene retells this to Marc? Even if she points out that she was never forced, she claims that “There’s no warmth in him. There are things inside of him that.. HE’s not you, Marc. He could never be you. I had to lean that the hard way.” Oh, and when SHE stopped the relationship, he kept coming around, because he “had her where he wanted him, as she couldn’t do ‘it’ alone.” Meaning, raising Diatrice. And yet? Diatrice doesn’t call JAKE her dad. She knows Jake as “Uncle” Jake, because her REAL dad is a “superhero”.
Once again, this goes completely against not only the Guys’s characterization until now, it ALSO goes against Marlene’s! I mean, I can’t believe I’m defending her but she’d NEVER have a relationship with Marc in the first place, as she loved STEVEN.
And when Bemis could have taken the right path, by making Jake realize that since the one thing he believes in is his daughter -even if no one lets him call her his daughter, oh, no, Diatrice is MARC’s daughter- then it means that the power of the System IS the power of family and being together? Oh, no, they have him utter the horrible line “Holy %$#@ we have the power of crazy!”, while, again, drawing the body as unhinged an violent as possible.
And YES, Lemire ALSO used that line at the beginning of his arc. But the context was different, as that time? The one who SAID that Marc’s power was madness was Khonshu, who we have established was, at the time, not the God, but Marc’s mental manifestation of the idea that his condition made him somewhat “Wrong” and thus “mad”.
So yeah, Bemis in many ways is stepping back almost as far back as the horrible Huston run regarding Moon Knight’s mental health.
But then… there’s the good.
And I have to give the man credit? The Good? Was VERY Good.
Because Bemis is the only one besides Lemire to portray the guys’s life AS a System. It’s not Marc fronting and giving lip service to the others as many, many other runs, nor Steven and Jake trying to keep things together to keep Marlene happy as in the Moench runs. Sure, it has Khonshu narrating -again, really weird choice- but also giving the boys advice against the evil they’re going against, supporting each in different ways. It gives us Marc, Steven and Jake talking to each other, not just in the inner world as the Body Meditates, but also outside as they get ready for the day. Yes, some of the language used is outdated, and Khonshu’s opinions of the trio are weird, especially if you come from the series: Here, he likes Marc, but thinks of Steven as Narcissistic and Decadent, and a “tolerable annoyance” at best, while Jake… sigh, Jake gets an “anything is better than… the other guy”. Bemis writes Jake horribly, but he still manages to write the communication between the guys as a conversation, and not as Marc trying to repress everyone so I can’t help but give him credit for that. Khonshu ALSO tries to convince Marc not to go back to Marlene given, well, how it has never, ever worked between the two of them, which, if we ignore the fact that it wasn’t Marc who dated Marlene, is weirdly protective.
Bemis also brings Jean Paul Duchamp back, while giving Marc an extra layer of mental health issues since he sees Frenchie first as a zombie because, well, last time he saw Jean Paul was in his mindspace and Frenchie got half eaten by a Crocodile man, but, after Jean Paul and Marc talk, Jean Paul literally rips off the zombie skin and is seen normally. The boys admit that they needed to see Jean Paul die so they could understand how important their friend really was. There’s no mention about Jean Paul’s husband Rob -and well, Marlene’s husband was literally erased from reality- but I hope that he’s still around. Our favorite gay French pilot deserves to be happy.
And well, finally there’s Diatrice. Lovey little Diatrice. As I pointed out, she’s Jake’s and Marlene’s daughter, even if Jake was introduced to her as her “uncle” and seems ok with that. She’s five years old, and was allowed to choose her own name, and all her life was told her father was Jake’s brother and a superhero -and she’s not that impressed by Marc, to be honest. Oh, and she prays to Khonshu for her daddy’s safety, once Marc explains to her who he is. I will be honest, I am not a fan of child characters in comics, but Diatrice is an exception and a very bright spot despite her birth being used to demonize Jake, and you can see that, despite all the lip service to Jake not being emotionally able to care for people? Jake dotes on his daughter. I really hope a much better writer retakes this relationship (The current status quo is… sad and complicated. But she still exists)
And this is the first arc of the Bemis run. The second is a little bit more controversial, so I will give it its own part. But hey, we’re getting closer and closer to the present day, and TODAY there’s finally a new comic out! Moon Knight #21 by McKay is out and we’ll see if there’s any synergy with the series as we had a year long hiatus there! And join me next time when we deal with the most controversial version of WHY the boys split.
