When the Going Gets Weird, the Weird Turn Pro

Moon Knight #1

A new start for the Moon Knight, with Warren Ellis at the helm. After a few fairly lengthy recountings of his origin — mercenary Marc Spector killed in Egypt, resurrected by the god Khonshu, and driven insane by Dissociative Identity Disorder — we get into the meat of the story. The Moon Knight is back in New York City, riding in a fancy robot limousine and wearing a custom white suit. He works now as a consultant for the police, who call him “Mr. Knight” — because if they refer to him as Moon Knight, they acknowledge that he’s a crazed vigilante and would have to take him to jail.

The cops are investigating a number of slasher murders in which someone hunts down particularly fit individuals, ambushes them, stabs them to death, and steals parts of their bodies. Spector lists off his deductions about the killer, then travels into the sewers alone to bring him to justice. But what chance does a lone nutbag have against the powerful slasher? And just how crazy is Moon Knight anyway? The answer may surprise you…

Verdict: Thumbs up. The dialogue is, for the most part, wonderful. Characterization is very interesting. Not a lot of action, but what we get is wonderfully effective. The reimagining of Moon Knight’s background and mental state is excellent. I’ve never been able to get into Moon Knight much — his insanity seemed to be something that everyone took for granted, with little real storytelling impact. What we get in the end is much stranger than we were probably expecting, and a great deal more interesting than any run-of-the-mill insanity. And it’s particularly interesting that this is one of the few Warren Ellis books I’ve read where the unstoppably badass protagonist is not a craggy, cranky Brit — that alone makes it more interesting to me…

Veil #1

And here’s another debut — a new comic written by Greg Rucka and illustrated by Toni Fejzula. Our lead character is a woman who suddenly awakens, nude, in the subway, attended by rats and with little real memory of her past. In fact, she seems to be working hard on relearning language and tends to speak in rhyme. Her appearance out of the subway causes a considerable stir — a bunch of hoodlums decide they want to do some typically unspeakable things to the naked crazy girl. She encounters a protector, Dante, who takes her to his apartment to get her some clothes. But the hoodlums don’t give up that easy and come looking for payback. Unfortunately for them, Veil has some very unexpected abilities.

Verdict: Thumbs up. A weird, wonderful read, with trippy, sing-song dialogue and remarkable stylized painted illustrations. This one was the talk of the local comic shop — the owners loved the stuffings out of it, sold out much faster than expected, and had already ordered more copies. Expect this one to fly, people.

Loki: Agent of Asgard #2

Argh, I totally missed out on the first issue — it disappeared fast, and no new copies came in over the last month, so I’m picking up the backstory from the title page blurb. Loki wants his Asgardian crimes expunged from his record, so he’s undertaking missions from the All-Mother — for every mission he completes, she erases some of his misdoings.

Loki’s new mission is to find the goddess Lorelei. We learn how he was assigned this quest — the All-Mother appeared to him in a bowl of punch — and we follow him as he tracks Lorelei while she robs a casino. So where is Lorelei hiding, and who is the mysterious redhead Loki’s spending time with at a speed-dating session in New York?

Verdict: Thumbs up. It’s a very funny, very clever comic — just like we’d expect for the God of Trickery — with lots of wonderful dialogue and a very smart heist scene starring Lorelei and her cohorts.