Page 45 Review by Stephen
"Sweetheart. What is it that I've said tonight that makes you think I have any interest in looking into a mirror?"
The very best MOON KNIGHTsince Moench & Sienkiewicz’s definitive stint, this is a tense, chilling and at times quite horrific thriller in which the protagonist's psychological make-up / breakdown is explored by hardboiled crime writer Charlie Huston, and exploited within by The Profile. The protagonist is Marc Spector, a former cape, soldier and mercenary whose hands are soaked in blood and whose mental state depends on what you believe - and what he believes.
Physically crippled by an act of complacency... bitter, impotent, drugged up on pain killers and drunk on grief, Spector is a man desperate for another chance not for redemption, but to inflict pain and injury in service to his lord and master, the great God Khonshu who (Marc believes) resurrected him only to desert him now. Blaming everyone and everything but himself, Spector lashes out verbally and physically at his god, his friends, even his lover, and all the while the white Egyptian idol stands behind him, silent, implacable, waiting... waiting for Marc to find a reason to live. Unfortunately there are others who want to give him a reason to live. They give it to him at his friends' expense, and then it just gets nasty.
As written here, Spector really isn't your average "hero".
"If by hero, you mean a borderline sadist whose entire sense of self-worth is bound up in his ability to inflict pain, kill and generally &*%$ everything up? Then yeah, he was a hero."
And Marc's not the only one who has suffered in the cause - his friend and former pilot, Jean-Paul is an amputee at the knees - but Spector's so self-obsessed. Helping hands are slapped away, loyalty is rewarded by rebuttal, dismissal and indeed disloyalty. His ingratitude is almost painful to witness. And I can't for the life of me understand why this isn't part of Marvel's Max line for "mature readers" - the brutality is extreme and explicit (slicing someone's face off...?), but don't get me wrong, this isn't a note of disapproval. It works for me far better than a punch through a wall that yields no injuries.
Think about it: most of the conflicts in superhero comics have on at least one side of them an unscrupulous psychopath with lethal capabilities or weaponry, so do you think whoever's defending themselves is going to be able to fight clean every time, or that some of that hatred won't rub off on them swiftly? Here it's all part of the blood-soaked package, not remotely gratuitous in the context of the psyches being explored and the depth in which they're being explored. Speaking of which, I do like the supercilious Profile, a man who can read people at a glance and predict their reactions by analysing their past:
"Sorry. I didn't mean to impugn your authority in front of your superiors."
"Well --"
"I know that will send you into a compulsive spiral of self-doubt that will only resolve when you take it out on someone else."
"I --"
"A woman, most likely."
"Uh?"
"But why don't I take over?"
In a tip of the hat to the title's pre-eminent artist, Bill Sienkiewicz, you can read literally whomever the Profile is reading figuratively, for his observations are mapped around the object of his attention in bursts of tiny notes. "Never washes hands after bathroom." "Unresolved father-murdered-by-werewolf issues."
So finally we return to the art. Finch's interiors are even stronger than his covers. It's art which you can really fixate over such is the drive, the detail and the nice touches here and there, like the white, leathery forearm pads sliced with the scars of past battles, and the cowl hanging crinkled rather than crisp. On that basis alone I nearly made this Page 45 Comicbook of the Month, but then I'm a boy, testosterone is my master, and although like IDENTITY CRISIS this has a heart, it is very black indeed.
Of the second half, I wrote:
This is not a book about a hero. Let's get that straight from the very beginning.
It's a book about violence: about those who commit violence, and why they commit violence; about those who inspire violence, and about those those who've spent far too much time around those who commit and inspire it. It's about one man in particular who feels compelled by forces he ascribes to another (his vengeful Egyptian God Khonshu whom he sees before him manifested as a manic, badgering corpse) to commit acts of extreme brutality on those who would do the same, and who also relishes it far more than he would admit to himself. For in spite of all his soul searching, Marc Spector almost wilfully deprives himself of self-knowledge, leaving the revelations to The Profile, a man who can read people at a glance.
It's also a book that reads far better in a single volume since there's a difficult but deft dance backwards and forwards in time as Marc attempts to recultivate a relationship with his ex-girlfriend who wants none of it (this is a man who cannot let go) and to track down an ex-side-kick who's been mutilating bodies in order to attract his attention, all the while trying to beat information out of The Profile which he almost certainly doesn't want to hear.
In fact for me, The Profile is the star of the show, a resource Marc uses to cunning effect to pass a SHIELD sanity test, thereby avoiding being arrested and detained from his dates with destruction. And it's quite the feat considering that he is 100% pathologically insane.
