Moon Knight Relaunches with Warren Ellis

Moon Knight has always been a very interesting character.  A mystical spirit that grants its powers to a human, Marc Spector has had a troubled past. Not just as a character either, the Moon Knight comic has had, pardon the pun, a storied past.

Moon Knight first appeared in Werewolf by Night #32 back in 1975. This led to appearances in Marvel Spotlight, Spectacular Spider-man, and several other series over the course of the 70’s. In 1980, he finally got his first ongoing series. Moon Knight ran until 1984 with a six-issue mini-series following cancellation. From there, Moon Knight was relegated to guest star status until 1989 where another solo series was attempted, this one lasting a whopping 60 issues until 1994. There were two one-shots and a four-issue series, but nothing else until 2006 where another series was launched. 30 issues and a one-shot later and this book too passed away. Vengeance of the Moon Knight was one of the latest attempts that ran for 10 issues in 2009. Moon Knight was in Secret Avengers, Shadowland, and Heroes for Hire, before another relaunch in 2011 for 12 issues.

After showing up in Secret Avengers and making an appearance during the recent Age of Ultron crossover event, his future seemed uncertain. What could possibly resurrect this many times relaunched character with something that would hold in today’s market? Marvel Comics seems to have found that magic bullet.

The latest announcement is that there will be a relaunch of Moon Knight in 2014 written by the great team of Warren Ellis, Declan Shalvey and Jordie Bellaire. This team seems to take a little more of a pulp approach, maybe taking Moon Knight back to his roots more than we have seen in the past. I have always like this character in the past and never really thought he was done justice, so we shall see how this new team handles him.

Warren Ellis has stated that he is very excited about the potential for this book. He told Herocomplex in an interview, “The best Moon Knight stories for me were always ground-level but weird crime,” he said. “‘Weird crime’ has kind of been the touchstone for me for this revival.” I like Ellis and Moon Knight, so lets all see where this goes.