Epistrophe

January 1, 2025

Moon Knight, Venom & What If…

In Jeff Lemire and Greg Smallwood’s groundbreaking 2016-17 run on Moon Knight, the title character supposedly leads an escape from the mental institution holding him and others. The reality of the breakout and even the facility remain dubious, possibly serving more as a metaphor for the mental state of alter ego Marc Spector, but its dreamlike depiction and layers of symbolism serve the story and the character well.

     In 2016, Lemire called his portrait of the institution (Ravencroft Asylum) “a bit of a throwback to another era where mental health was much more taboo and these hospitals and facilities were much harsher and more like prisons than hospitals.” And, referring to Spector’s Dissociative Identity Disorder, he admitted, “this exploration of mental health will be a very metaphorical one at times…”

     It’s not surprising, then, that Mike Chen opens the story proper of his What If…Marc Spector Was Host to Venom? novel about Moon Knight with a similar escape (albeit from Retrograde Sanitarium) before diverging into another tale that significantly complicates things for Moon Knight. Chen ups the ante considerably by introducing an alternate-universe Marc Spector who is not an avatar of the Egyptian god Khonshu, by adding Venom to the mix and by transferring Khonshu to the alternate Spector and his versions of DID alters Steven Grant and Jake Lockley.

     Depending on the comic book writer, Spector’s DID has been positioned at the forefront of a series, withdrawn to the deep background or placed somewhere in the middle. But Moon Knight’s early appearances in the mid-1970s in comics like Werewolf by Night and Hulk magazine and in his own title beginning in 1980, was not accompanied by mental health issues. The character’s co-creator Doug Moench explained to Back Issue in 2017 that Spector “made all this money as a mercenary, so he used that money to create Steven Grant…[who] provided a base of operations and supplied all of the stuff that Moon Knight would use….Then he needed a guy close to the ground who could keep an eye on crime…so Jake Lockley was specifically created for that purpose. But he was still Marc Spector.”

     It’s that last statement that confirms Leyna Vincent’s speculation that “Moench intended Grant and Lockley to be aliases that Marc uses to further his crime-fighting career as Moon Knight.” Yet, just as he blurred the reality of Khonshu’s existence in Marc’s life, Moench occasionally hinted at DID, seemingly intimating, as Vincent notes, “that intentionally created aliases could evolve into alters over time, which is not how DID works.”

     As of 1989, Marvel Age was still explaining the superhero in Moench’s terms: “One of the things which set Moon Knight apart from other costumed heroes was that he used not one, but three secret identities…each was a different name for the same man. But after a while the multiple identities began to take their toll – the hero’s sanity was stretched to the breaking point when all three personalities tried to take control.”

     But, as Jason D. DeHart notes, “Moench introduced a sense of mystery in the character, with a balance between the natural and the supernatural,” and readers have responded to it over the course of fifty years as subsequent writers adjusted it to their advantage in creating their own visions of the hero. Alan Zelenetz’s mid-eighties six-issue run that followed Moench’s series did confirm the Egyptian god is real. The follow-up, Marc Spector: Moon Knight, discarded Grant and Lockley in favor of simply Marc and Moon Knight. This long-running series, editor Carl Potts told Marvel Age, was “pretty straight hard-hitting action – adventure stories with an occasional bit of mystery, some suspense and a bit of romance.” And when Moench once again took over the reins of Moon Knight, he told Marvel Vision in 1997 that his return after fifteen years would contain “a good mystery, a lot of action, the best of the classic villains and perhaps more supernatural elements than used to be in Moon Knight.” And the publication reported that “Spector will go back to his trademark of adopting multiple identities…”

     Interest in the character’s mental health would appear over the next few decades, with several series somewhat dabbling in the disorder before Brian Michael Bendis awkwardly turned Spector’s alters into manifestations of Spider-Man, Captain America and Wolverine in 2011 and Warren Ellis de-emphasized the DID in a highly regarded 2014 six-issue run. Ellis told Comic Book Resources his approach was “to return to the original themes of the work and review and remix them in the light of a new decade.”

     Marc’s disorder was prioritized once again when Lemire re-conceived it as originating from a childhood trauma at the same time Khonshu was eyeing Marc to be his avatar. Max Bemis’s subsequent run carried it a step further or, according to some readers, a step too far, by connecting the source of Marc’s disorder to his discovery of a former Nazi named Ernst and his torture of Jews in Chicago.  

     Jed Mackay’s run, beginning in 2021, repositioned the disorder once more. The writer told Comic Book Resources, “Marc Spector is in therapy through the course of the series, working on keeping his DID in check, but that doesn’t mean it’s something that’s no longer a part of him, just that we’re focusing on Marc Spector.” Mackay has maintained that approach in his current series, Moon Knight: Fist of Khonshu, which premiered in October, the same month that Random House published Chen’s novel, where Spector’s identity disorder is on full display.  

     In What If… Spector’s alters are placed under a microscope and their details allowed plenty of room for examination. Chen chooses to follow the Bemis DID origin, name checking Ernst as he does a number of other comic book ingredients, from the obvious (West Coast Avengers) to the amusing (police officers named Lemire and Smallwood) to the subtle (the Rand Foundation, Detective Flint). But the “what if” of the title applies to much more than scenario; it encompasses a range of largely unexplored possibilities, including how a symbiote affects a host with DID, how Spector’s alters need to adjust without his identity present, how a god fares against an alien and how Spector’s relationship with Marlene might have survived, all of it thought-provoking.

     What makes the novel most intriguing, however, is that the author widens the usual focus of a Moon Knight tale by providing two Spectors and their corresponding alters while retaining only one Khonshu and a single Venom determined to complete its mission, the purpose of which is withheld for much of book from all involved, including the reader. While Ellis portrayed Moon Knight and his alternative guise of Mr. Knight as self-assured in the 2014 comic book series, such certainty has no place in What If… There is merely a trail and intended victims sorting through shards of information in hopes of gleaning what plan has been set in motion.

     Whether it involves character or plot, mystery has been a common thread throughout Moon Knight’s history. In 2016, Lemire explained to Comic Book Resources, “My run will be based on a few key mysteries…So it won’t just be weirdness and mystery for the sake of it. There is a plan and there will be definite answers.” He could have been referring to Chen’s book.   

     Although there is mention of the Midnight Mission, Chen later clarifies that the novel is set prior to Mackay’s run and the establishment of the Mission. The tale proper opens as an objective narrative, but its chapters soon become a cross-section of subjective points of view, from Spector’s alters to Venom, as each awaits a complete picture of the events unfolding. And the book’s momentum is guided not only from dramatic situations, like the search for the psi-phon device from issues #41 and #42 in Terry Kavanaugh’s early 1990s run, but from these chapter-to-chapter shifts in narrators.    

      The inclusion of Gena Landers and Frenchie as well as cameos by Dr. Emmet, Layla El-Faouly and Arthur Harrow strengthen the novel’s connection to the comics, allowing the book to resonate with readers of the source material. But, appropriately, there are enough differences between the life of our Marc Spector and the other reality’s “incoming Marc Spector,” as the book puts it, to assure interest. Reality, after all, can be somewhat malleable in Moon Knight.

     What If… utilizes New York City as its setting, yet its true backdrop is the multiverse, a realm not often chosen by those who’ve penned the title. Ellis might speak for more than a few writers and fans when he said, “The best Moon Knight stories for me were always ground-level but weird crime” and, while the novel may have one eye on the multiverse and deal less with weird crime, that doesn’t mean Chen isn’t remaining true to the protagonist in his What If… premise.

     Once Marc is taken over by Venom, we see him through the alien’s perspective for most of the novel. His alters are prevented from emerging so that the book mostly concentrates on the efforts of the alternate-reality Grant and Lockley, abetted by Khonshu, in their efforts to stop Venom. The two alters are nearly identical to those of our Marc’s, but the novel form affords a wider opportunity to explore the nuance of each, with characteristics from both the comics and the TV series on view. And, as one would expect, the drama is both internal and external.

     “It’s hard to explain the appeal of the superhero Moon Knight,” Marvel Age proclaimed in 1989. But the character’s most effective writers have always understood his uniqueness. Ellis has cited “the redemptive arc, the multiple facets of the character, the intervention of ancient gods, and madness” as “what excited people about it in the first place…the things he is interested in dealing with are not necessarily the things other NYC characters are interested in dealing with…” Moench has noted that “I always thought that he was an oddball, off-to-the-side character.” Lemire has observed that Spector’s mental illness is “what makes Moon Knight so unique and it’s what got me so excited about the book in the first place.”

     Mackay’s summation, however, seems to fit best for describing Chen’s novel: “I think that a core aspect of Moon Knight is that he’s a misfit, an outsider. He’s never really seemed to fit in the Marvel Universe in the same way that other costumed heroes have, and I think that distance makes him interesting. No one seems to like Moon Knight very much, and no one seems to trust him (sometimes with good reason) but despite that, he keeps trying to get out there and do what he thinks is right.”

Sources

Cairns, Bryan. “The Lunar Phases of the Moon Knight.” Marvel Vision #24, December 1997, 30-32. 

DeHart, Jason D. “Phases of Moon Knight: A Glimpse at a Character’s Improvisational History” in Waxing and Waning: Essays on Moon Knight, Scott Weatherly(ed.), Edwardsville, Illinois: Sequart Organization, 2023. 

Fisch, Sholly. “Marc Spector: Moon Knight.” Marvel Age #74, May 1989, 19-20. 

Gerding, Stephen. “Warren Ellis Brings Marvel’s “Moon Knight” Back to NYC.” Comic Book Resources, 22 November 2013. retrieved from cbr.com.

Katz, Zach. “The God on Your Shoulder’” in Waxing and Waning: Essays on Moon in Waxing and Waning: Essays on Moon Knight, Scott Weatherly(ed.), Edwardsville, Illinois: Sequart Organization, 2023. 

Larochelle, Christopher. “Moon Knight: The Doug Moench/Bill Sienkiewicz Era.” Back Issue, April 2017, 2-12. 

Richards, Dave. “Lemire Takes an Unbalanced Approach to ‘Moon Knight,’ Marvel’s Craziest Hero.” Comic Book Resources, 5 April 2016. retrieved from cbr.com. 

Richards, Dave. “Moon Knight: Jed MacKay Breaks Down Marc Spector’s New Marvel Mission.” Comic Book Resources, 12 May 2021. retrieved from cbr.com.

Vincent, Leyna of the Douglas J. Vincent System. “We Are Moon Knight” in Waxing and Waning: Essays on Moon Knight, Scott Weatherly(ed.), Edwardsville, Illinois: Sequart Organization, 2023. 

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