Moon Knight, Volume 1: Lunatic by Jeff Lemire
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Nothing beats the Warren Ellis book. That book MADE Moon Knight for me.
“What are you supposed to be?”
[billy club to the face]
“The one you see coming.”
Classic.
I like Jeff Lemire a lot, and this book is worth your time. But holy hell do I HATE stories that deal with madness in such a way where it’s impossible to tell whether the character is insane or not. Some will disagree with me on that, and that’s fine, but it’s a kind of story we’ve all read many times, and it leaves me with the same question: Does it matter?
If this character is whackadoo and is perceiving a bunch of wild shit that’s not happening, does it matter? What’s the difference if the wild shit is happening or not, to me, as a reader?
Most times, in this kind of story, we spend the majority of the book watching the character struggle with whether stuff is real or not, which I find boring. Because it’s not like we’re going to find a definitive answer. And it’s an issue of perception, so it becomes like watching two people argue over whether a color is more blue or indigo. Who’s to say, and who gives a hot damn?
This book, at some point, got to a place where the character seemed to say, “I don’t know for sure what’s real, but I know what I’m choosing to believe at this point, and I’m all in.” So that was better, at least. And it’s a real testament to Lemire in that he took a shot at a story type I don’t like and still managed to make it pretty compelling.
Alas, Ellis’ Moon Knight is a brief moment in history, and that moment is over. I suppose I should just be happy that I lived to see the brief moment when Moon Knight was fucking awesome, and maybe I should take a minute to laugh at the fact that I typed the phrase “Moon Knight was fucking awesome,” which I never thought would happen.