Comic Related - Life in Four Colors

Life In Four Colors # 6
You Can Never Go Home Again

(We interrupt our regularly scheduled column to bring you….this one instead. If you remember at the end of my last column I promised an interview with two local comic creators in my home town….writer Andrew McGinn and artist Chris Metzger….which I had hoped to present to you in an audio format. Well about that….Andy respectively declined an interview for the time being due to the fact he felt an interview was a bit premature at the moment. He wanted the book he’s working on to be a finished product before sitting down and talking about it. No problem. I understand completely. I did sit down and talk to Chris for about an hour for what I thought turned out to be a really nice interview….but ran into some technical difficulties which I hope to get ironed out real soon. I believe by the time the next column rolls around I’ll have that interview ready for you in some way, shape or form…..but until then here’s what would have been Life In Four Colors # 7…bumped up two weeks into the schedule.)

I want to take a look at four of my favorite all time Marvel Characters this time around. Doctor Strange, Ghost Rider, Iron Fist, and Moon Knight. Although on the surface it may appear that these four characters have little if anything in common, in actuality their Comic Related fate seems to be marked by very similar events in their past. Both good and bad.

All four of these characters were created by some of the most legendary creators ever known to comic fans the world over.

They all appeared in pre-established titles before graduating on into their own books where once again they were first blessed by talented creative teams and later cursed by creative abandonment, flawed story development and several attempts to re-launch the characters into titles that rivaled those of long ago with little or no real success.

These four characters would some how survive bouncing from several different titles in between , being grouped with other characters that just didn’t suit their true nature, forced retirement, and even death.

And although I’m glad the characters haven’t been forgotten…. in some cases I think it would have been better if they were.

Let’s begin our Magical, Mystical Tour with the Master of Mystic Arts….Doctor Strange.

It’s hard to believe that the good doctor is the only character of the four that we are going to look at that doesn’t a have a current on-going series. Seems wrong on so many different levels. Strange is the second most famous comic creation of the writer/artist team of Stan Lee and Steve Ditko and appeared for the very first time in Strange Tales (vol.1) #110. At the time the book starred the Human Torch and Strange was just a back up feature that didn’t even merit any type of mention on the cover. Not the most illustrious of beginnings.

But it wasn’t long though before Johnny Storm was booted out of the magazine and Strange was sharing the book with Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. The Fury stories and the Doctor Strange stories did so well that both characters were granted their own headlining books…but neither title lasted very long. Strange would undergo a slight costume modification at the hands of Roy Thomas and Gene Colan before his book was cancelled (adding a full mask that concealed his entire face.)

Again at the hands of Roy Thomas, Strange would go on to help form one of the most “strangest” non-teams in comic history, The Defenders. Stephen Strange (now without the mask) along with other Marvel outcasts the Hulk, Namor the Sub-Mariner, and the Silver Surfer would first show up in Marvel Feature before going on to star in the Defenders own monthly title. The “non-membership” of the Defenders would go through many changes, but Strange would be associated with the book for most of its run.

Not long after the Defenders hit the stands, Doctor Strange started to show up over in the pages of Marvel Premiere on a regular basis in magical tales spun by the team of Stan Lee and Barry Windsor Smith. Later still, Steve Englehart and fan favorite artist Frank Brunner would attract enough interest to the otherwise unknown book that Doctor Strange was once again granted his own title and the Englehart/Brunner team would craft a stellar run for the first few issues. (issues #1-5 are classics true to the word and Strange is actually “murdered” the very first issue by the villain, Silver Dagger !). Englehart would stay on the title after the departure of Brunner who would be replaced by Gene Colan. Other comic legends like Jim Starlin and Chris Claremont would take a crack at the Sorcerer Supreme…..and Marv Wolfman along with artist P. Craig Russell would produce the phenomenal Doctor Strange Annual # 1. But stranger days lay ahead….and some of the best was still to come.

Doctor Strange would really start to hit its stride after writer Roger Stern took over the book. Together with an A-List of top notch artists that included Marshall Rogers, Terry Austin, Michael Golden, Dan Green, and Paul Smith…..the good doctor would battle Baron Mordo through time, lose his lady love Clea, contemplate suicide, destroy Dracula, and later find Clea again becoming in essence man and wife all before Stern’s run on the book was over.

And as if a sign of some kind….Doctor Strange was cancelled soon afterwards.

He would appear again in yet another version of the Strange Tales comic this time sharing the spotlight with Cloak and Dagger and losing an eye before being granted his own book for the third and final time. Although Roy Thomas and Jackson Guice had a fairly decent run on the book….. and although the doctor would “grow a new eye” the title would never reach the success and acclaim of the first series and was cancelled, but not before passing the first run up…by nine issues. (Doctor Strange vol.2 lasted 81 issues while vol.3 made it to 90).

Since the cancellation of his third book Strange has been regulated to only limited series (Flight of the Bones, Witches, Strange, and The Oath). The best of these being the Oath by Brian K. Vaughn and Marcos Martin….although the story itself doesn’t seem to fit in Marvel real time (no New Avengers…no mention of Clea)…but is much better than J. Michael Strynski’s Strange limited series, which I had to cast a spell of forgetfulness on after reading it…. And he wrote Strange so well in his appearances in Amazing Spider-Man.

Another writer that should be kept at bay with the Crimson Bands of Cyttorak and not allowed anywhere Greenwich Village….Brain Michal Bendis. Doctor Strange never really fit in the New Avengers….and never seemed so out of character. Although Strange is the oldest character on this list….he doesn’t seem to be destined for any long term respect in the near future.

The next character who’s had a rough time finding his way through the twisting corridors of the House of Ideas is Daniel Rand, better known to all us Kung Fu fanatics as Iron Fist.

Danny Rand would lose both his parents in the snow swept mountain peaks of the Himalayas , survive being attacked by a pack of starving wolves, and go on to spend ten years hidden away in a mystic city learning to become a living weapon. And that would be the easy part of his contorted travels on the path to comic book enlightenment.

Iron Fist was based on an idea by Bill Everett, the same guy who created the Sub-Mariner, and would make his first appearance in Marvel Premiere #15, which co-incidentally enough was just vacated the issue before by none other than Doctor Strange.

Iron Fist would leap from the pages thanks to the creative team of Roy Thomas and Gil Kane and would spend ten straight issues on the Marvel Premiere title, going through the many hands of a virtual who’s who of Bronze Age comic classic creators (Len Wein, Doug Moench, Tony Isabella, Arvell Jones, Chris Claremont, Pat Broderick , and John Byrne ) before landing on his feet in his own book….by the masters of comic story telling, Claremont and Byrne and what would be their first historic team effort.

The Iron Fist book introduced us to the villainy of Master Khan, made a believable character out of Angar the Screamer, gave the Wreaking Crew their best appearance in comics, had guest appearances by Captain America, Iron Man…..and oh yeah….those other characters that Claremont and Byrne became famous for…..the Uncanny X-Men.

We saw the character Sabretooth for the very first time in the Iron Fist book (issue #14) and also met Davos, The Steel Serpent. And to prove the book was ahead of it’s time….we also saw the first inter-racial relationship in the comics as Danny’s love interest was a black New York City cop who had lost right her arm in a failed attempt to defuse a bomb… Ms. Misty Knight (really pushing the envelope back in the seventies). Misty had a bionic replacement arm now and was one half of Knightwing Investigations which also featured supporting cast member and female samurai, Colleen Wing.

And even with all this going for it, Iron Fist only lasted 15 issues. Hard to believe.

Claremont’s storytelling was dead on, just as good as the stuff that he would later write for the X-Men, as was Byrne’s flamboyant pencil work, but the book struggled to find an audience, other than me, and was cancelled much too soon.

But the story, still left unfinished at the time of the book’s untimely end, was far from dead in the water. Plot lines that had not yet seen their end finished up in Marvel Team-Up (issues # 63-64) also by Claremont and Byrne…and Iron Fist would end up dropping in on a certain Mr. Luke Cage in Power Man #48-49…before that book was officially re-dubbed Power Man and Iron Fist with issue #50...John Byrne’s last on the title. Claremont would stay on for a few more issues but eventually he too would leave the K’Un-Lun Kid. Jo Duffy and artist Kerry Gammil would have a highly successful run on the book that would give us the return of Master Khan and the second comic book appearance of Sabretooth (the character would appear for his third appearance later in this series before we discover he was a mutant…and he soon moved on to be over X-posed in many, many, many X-Men appearances to come.)

Power Man and Iron Fist seemed to lose their way, along with much of their readership, after issue # 100 of the series and was cancelled with issue #125, but not before Iron Fist himself suffered slow character torture, first being poisoned by radiation, becoming evil, and dying at the hands of a character named…Captain Hero. Believe it or not.

To add insult to injury Misty had cheated on him with fellow police officer Tyrone King and his best friend Luke was blamed for Danny’s murder. Could a book end any worse than this!?!?

Actually yes….but we’ll get to that one later.

Speaking of later….John Byrne while writing and illustrating the Namor series would later reveal that the Iron Fist killed in Power Man and Iron Fist was an imposter (actually a “plant clone” via the Body Snatchers…and one K’Un-Lun’s hated enemies a H’Ylthri warrior). Namor would later travel to the mystic city hidden in the Himalayas and free the real Iron Fist but not before fighting yet another Iron Fist imposter….the Super-Skrull who had been impersonating both Danny Rand and Iron Fist (Holy Secret Invasion!)…and Master Khan pops back up and thanks Namor for his efforts by wiping Namor’s memories clean…again. Enter the bearded, amnesiac, savage Sub-Mariner….and exit John Byrne who stopped drawing Namor with that issue (#25). He would write a few more issues before slipping away somewhat un-noticed.

Much like Jean Grey (which Byrne had a hand in resurrecting as well over in the Fantastic Four) and Adam Warlock…Iron Fist did very little that was note worthy after returning to the land of the living. But unlike Warlock and Jean Grey…Iron Fist’s death was ridiculous and I for one applauded the way Marvel had un-done it.

But the character was, like Doctor Strange, delegated to guest appearances and less than admirable limited series. Iron Fist would star in two limited series….only one of which had any real credibility, in which his sister (who he and all the rest of us, thought was killed back in Iron Fist #2 by the H’Ylthri) was discovered still to be alive.

He would once again team up with Luke Cage (now cleared of murder charges of course) in the Heroes For Fire series….which also featured appearances by a WHOLE lot of heroes looking for a pay check…..the series was…okay…and lasted only 19 issues…four more than the original Iron Fist book. Loose ends from this book were tied up in yet another limited series….the mandatory Wolverine team up…Iron Fist/Wolverine.

Not long after that Iron Fist starred in his second ongoing series. Thankfully this one only lasted 6 issues as Danny decided to leave New York, and Misty behind and travel out west. Sort of like a modern day David Carridine. Along the way he picks up a kid which he must protect from evil forces in a watered down, retread version of Lone Wolf and Cub. The art was less than stellar as well, drawn in magna type fashion which didn’t seem to fit the story and would have looked much better in a Saturday morning cartoon.

Thankfully, (following in the footsteps of Doctor Strange again) Iron Fist was granted a third comic book series, this one handled much better by writers Matt Fraction and Ed Brubaker along with (at least some) art by David Aja.

Although this third series (Immortal Iron Fist) was much better than the one that came before, I think it still pales to the original…with a storyline that seemed to drag at times and story pacing that was constantly interrupted with multi-layered flashbacks. I found myself losing interest in the title shortly after the “Seven Cities of Heaven” story line concluded and dropped the book. Both Fraction and Brubaker would leave the Immortal Iron Fist two issues later.

The fate of Danny Rand now lies in the hands of a new creative team.

A final note…Iron Fist was grouped with a new line up of heroes over in the New Avengers written by that Bendis guy. Iron Fist doesn’t really do much in that title except bankroll the team and hang out with Spider-Man (who doesn’t really do much in the book either). But for a while Iron Fist and Doctor Strange were appearing in the same highly talked about, monthly series….which should have been considered a good thing ….but considering the fact that both characters were regularly shuffled to the back ground of the New Avengers stories…not quite as a good thing as it would seem at first.

And the hits keep on coming with the Spotlight now shining on the Ghost Rider.

The Ghost Rider made his screeching Hell-bent for Leather debut in the pages of Marvel Spotlight #5 scripted by Gary Friedrich and drawn by Marvel Monster Master Mike Ploog (famous for his stints on other monster mags like Man-Thing and Werewolf By Night). Ghost Rider would enjoy a short run in Marvel Spotlight before getting his own series, but Ploog would already be gone replaced by artist Tom Sutton.

The Ghost Rider would wheelie his way through several creative talents (a short list version….Tony Isabella, Frank Robbins, Sal Buscema, Jim Mooney, and Jim Shooter) along with story lines that did little to scare up a solid reputation for the book. Issue #20 stood out among the rest of the stories being produced on the title at the time as it was the conclusion of a two part crossover that had started in Daredevil # 138, written by Marv Wolfman and drawn by John Byrne.

The title did show signs of improvement when writer Roger McKenzie took over the writing as of issue #28 (McKenzie was the man that would later begin the process that would change Daredevil from an also ran book into a must buy book, although Frank Miller receives all the credit for that, McKenzie definitely got the ball rolling in the right direction).

McKenzie would be joined by artist Don Perlin (another Werewolf artist By Night). During their short but high octane run on the book Ghost Rider found himself used as a Hell’s Pawn by the diabolical and always dread Dorammu in an ambush attack on Doctor Strange …after that incredible three part story Ghost Rider would be stalked by a character calling himself the Bounty Hunter..(who looked a lot like the Sam Elliot version of the Carter Slade Ghost Rider from the Ghost Rider movie…..old skull face is the only one of these four heroes featured in this column to ever get his own film, although a Doctor Strange and Iron Fist film has been rumored to be in the works for years now).

After freeing himself from the Bounty Hunter’s noose Ghost Rider would cross paths with a boy who lived forever and even a U.F.O or two. McKenzie left the book at issue # 35 and that issue was actually written and drawn by none other than Jim Starlin, “Death Race” was another highlight for the book.

Writer Michael Fleisher would take over the writing chores on the book as he and Don Perlin knocked out a pretty decent run of stories for the next few years. The best of which was the double-sized 50th issue in which Ghost Rider teamed up with the western version of Ghost Rider, the before mentioned Carter Slade.

J.M. DeMatteis would write another stand out issue with issue #67 and starting with issue # 68 Roger Stern would start writing the book and was paired with artist Bob Budunsky…these two would churn out almost every issue afterwards, some of the best in the series (with an occasional issue produced by the J.M DeMatteis/Don Perlin team… who both were working on the Defenders at this time…and even managed to sneak in a Ghost Rider appearance in over on that book.) The first Ghost Rider series ended with issue #81 as Johnny Blaze finally found a way to rid himself of the Spirit of Vengeance.

But before Johnny finally paid the Devil his dues…Ghost Rider would also make a few very noteworthy appearances elsewhere in the Marvel Universe. About the time Tony Isabella was writing the adventures of the demon driven biker….Tony also launched The Champions…a loose knit group of heroes based in Los Angles and besides the Ghost Rider also starred a strange hodge podge collection of characters including Hercules, Black Widow, Angel, Iceman, and later Dark Star.

Isabella would only stay on the book for a short run of about three issues and the book was taken over by writer Bill Mantlo.

Before the book was cancelled at issue #17 John Byrne was the regular artist on the title doing some of his earliest team based artwork.

I always liked the Champions, as quirky as they were, with my favorite characters being Ghost Rider, Hercules, and Black Widow. During the time Marvel was accepting submissions for their second Epic line of comics I submitted a script for the first issue and plot lines for five more issues of a “modern” version of the book. If anybody is interested that can still be read in the Fan Fiction section at www.zonetrooper.com

Besides the Champions (and the Defenders # 96) Ghost Rider would also pop up in Marvel Team-Up #91 as he and Spider-Man clashed with Moondark the Magician…a really good story by Steven Grant and Pat Broderick. Avengers #214 written by Jim Shooter and illustrated by Bob Hall was also pretty good and saw Ghost Rider give his old pal, Angel….and even Iron Man a rough time of it.

In the early nineties Marvel re-launched the Ghost Rider series but this time around Johnny Blaze was nowhere to be found. This version of the Ghost Rider (not even the original demon, Zarathos) possessed a young teenager by the name of Danny Ketch. I never really liked this version of the character and never bought into the whole “magic motorcycle gas-cap” origin. Matter of fact I only own two issues of that series…issue #1 and the last issue #94 (which also includes a re-print of issue #93). Issue #93 was the last issue of the series for over ten years and the story line at the end of that book got lost in limbo until just a year or so ago when Marvel finally printed issue #94.

Although I didn’t collect that series there was a few guest appearances by this version of the Ghost Rider I did like (guest appearances by the second version of Ghost Rider in the nineties wasn’t really that hard to find as he , Venom, Wolverine, and the Punisher were virtually on the cover and in the pages of every Marvel mag being produced…) I thought his appearance in Todd McFarlane’s run of Spider-Man (issues #6-7) was pretty good as was the three part story of in Fantastic Four # 347-349 by Walt Simonson and Arthur Adams….Ghost Rider actually joined the (gray) Hulk, Spider-Man, and Wolverine as the four of them replaced the F.F! Spook-Face’s guest appearance in Thor #430 by Tom DeFalco and Ron Frenz was actually pretty good too.

I thought the visual look of this version of the character with the spiked leather jacket and chain looked much better and he was riding a much better looking bike, an improvement by far over the old “Skull-Cycle” or the “Hellfire Cycle”. I got to admit the “penance stare” thing was a nice touch. And I was glad the old one piece suit was gone….but I missed Johnny Blaze.

So did a lot of other people I guess because it wasn’t long before Johnny Blaze was appearing in the Ghost Rider book. (although I still felt this wasn’t “my” Johnny Blaze) He and Ghost Rider ended up starring in a separate Ghost Rider book entitled Ghost Rider and Blaze: Spirits of Vengeance, but the book was cancelled after issue #23 as the Ghost Rider overload started to catch up with Marvel.

Before the second Ghost Rider book came to a close…we learned the Johnny had married long time love interest Roxanne Simpson…but she was now dead…(along with Johnny and Roxanne’s children…I believe). Johnny and Danny learned they were brothers…and a whole big train wreck of storylines just seemed to blur together with the painted white line on the highway…..I found it all very confusing…but I only read the first six issues of the series (before getting rid of all but the first one)…and learned the rest of Johnny and Danny’s back story from an entry in the Official Handbook to the Marvel Universe.

Apparently Johnny would be possessed by Zarathos once again, star in a few limited series and one-shots, get killed somewhere along the way, go to Hell and escape from Hell in the first issue of his third ongoing series which Marvel released about the same time the Ghost Rider film was to hit theatres. I collected the first five issues which showed some promise …and as always …a guest appearance by Doctor Strange never hurts.

But it wasn’t enough to keep me around.

I heard Ghost Rider is an Angel now or something like that. But at least Ghost Rider was never a member of the New Avengers.

One more to go….the mysterious Moon Knight.

Moon Knight would make his first appearance in the now classic Werewolf By Night issue #32. Mercenary Marc Spector would be hired by a criminal enclave that called themselves the Committee. These high ranking members of organized crime felt that if Moon Knight (which they named and even designed the costume and weapons for) could bring them Jack Russell (not the dog or the lead singer of Great white but an honest to goodness real live Werewolf)…they could make Russell a Powerslave that would do their bidding.

As fate would have it things just didn’t work out that way and Moon Knight joins forces with the Werewolf to bring the Committee down in a story by Doug Monech and Don Perlin.

After appearing in the second part of that story in Werewolf By Night #33, Moon Knight would come into full view in a two part story over in Marvel Spotlight # 28-29, also by Moench and Perlin. “Enter the Conquer Lord” would not only give Moon Knight his first solo story and his first villain he could call his own, but other crucial parts of the Moon Knight mythos were added including love interest Marlene Fontaine and supporting characters Gena and Crowley. (Frenchie….although a very different looking Frenchie, had already appeared in the Werewolf story). We also meet Marc Spector’s other identities…millionaire Steven Grant (not the guy that wrote Marvel Team Up # 91) and cabbie Jake Lockley. Moon Knight also appeared for a brief period of time in the Defenders, for about three issues and was in the book as it celebrated it’s 50th issue with a all out war with the Life Model Decoy version of the Zodiac led by a Jacob Fury Scorpio L.M.D. This was some of Keith Giffen’s early art work and during his “Jack Kirby” period. I liked Moon Knight as a Defender…thought he fit in with the Hulk, Nighthawk, Hellcat, Valkyrie, and Power Man…but he didn’t stick around long. He also showed up in a two part story in Peter Parker, Spectacular Spider-Man…the first issue of that two parter was drawn beautifully by the legendary Mike Zeck.

Soon afterwards the Moon Knight “dream team” of Doug Monech and Bill Sienkiewicz would join forces to take the character to new and astounding heights over on the Rampaging Hulk magazine…as a back up feature that quickly generated enough fan interest due to incredible stories like “Nights Born Ten Years Gone” in which Marc Spector’s long lost and now quite psychotic brother, Randall, returns to haunt Moon Knight and terrorize New York City as the “Hatchet Man”. Thanks to knuckle biting tales like that…it wasn’t long before Doug and Bill were producing monthly tales of the Lunar Warrior in his own monthly book.

Years of crafting intelligent, suspenseful, and action packed tales over on Marvel’s Master of Kung Fu series paid off as Doug would write one high quality story after the other and with Bill’s artwork the series seemed destined to become an instant classic to be talked about for years to come.

The first issue saw a complete re-telling of Moon Knight’s origin introducing the villain, Bushman. The story seemed to veer away from the origin we saw in Werewolf By Night but no one seemed to mind. Issue #2 saw Crawley’s own son turn into a slasher much like Spector’s brother before him. Together Doug and Bill (yeah I don’t feel like typing either of their last names much anymore) would virtually forge Moon Knight into Marvel’s version of a certain “Dark Knight” complete with an interesting rogue gallery of bad guys that included Bushman, Midnight, the return of both the Committee and the Werewolf, Black Spectre, Morpheus, and Stained Glass Scarlet.

Although the best issues of the series were those written and drawn by…those one two guys…the entire series is worth collecting and even the issues that were done by “the creative team of the month” after the original creative team left the book around issue #30 were better than the Moon Knight stories that would eventually follow in the years to come…..but we’ll get to that in a minute. The first series ended at issue #38… a victim of Marvel’s “direct marketing” experiment.

As promised Marvel did re-launch the Moon Knight in a new series a few years later, this one called Fist of Khonshu: Moon Knight. In this series Moon Knight replaced his old arsenal of weapons with “Egyptian “themed weaponry and even had “super-powers” that varied in strength with the different phases of the moon. I didn’t care for that idea…and neither did anybody else for that matter….this series was cancelled at issue # 6.

He would next show up as a member of the Avengers (West Coast Avengers). I always liked Steve Englehart’s work but his West Coast Avengers stuff, although readable, wasn’t his best stuff. Coupled with Al Milgrom’s artwork the book seemed to just nurture the “second fiddle” stigma that always hung over it’s head and eventually brought about its demise.

Moon Knight seemed so out of place in these stories. He was a loner, and when he did work with others he worked best with other “outcast” type heroes like the Defenders. Englehart’s West Coast Avenger tales were weighed down by too much “soap opera” couple problems….and Moon Knight’s other identities rarely if ever were brought into play and his supporting cast were never mentioned. Taking an urban themed character like Moon Knight out of New York City and having him run around a ranch in California dodging cactuses and Gila monsters just didn’t make sense either…..but made more sense than Moon Knight’s third ongoing series….Marc Spector: Moon Knight.

I didn’t even collect this series (which I think was written by Chuck Dixon…at first at least). Once I learned that Moon Knight was killed off in the last issue of the book (I think that was…believe it or not issue # 60) I looked for that book for a year or so just so I could see how one of my once most favorite characters had meet his end. I found the book in the very back of a misplaced buck box in a Kettering Ohio comic shop (Maverick’s). I bought it…took it home and read it and barely recognized Moon Knight and any of the other characters in the book. It had evolved into something so far away from the original concept of the character and supporting cast and Moon Knight’s death made me think Power Man and Iron Fist # 125 wasn’t all that bad after all. Matter of fact I still own the last issue of Power Man and Iron Fist. I threw the last issue of Marc Spector: Moon Knight away after I read it.

Years would roll by and finally Doug Monech would resurrect the character he created thirty years ago in a four issue limited series that also brought back most of Moon Knight’s supporting cast and some of his best bad guys. Moench wrote off the last Moon Knight series and the character’s “death” as an unexplained mystic event…perhaps even a dream. That worked for me. A year or so later Monech would write a second Moon Knight limited series.

Moon Knight briefly retired after getting the beating of a lifetime over in the pages of the all too brief Marvel Knights series written by Chuck Dixon....his assailant was an old Master of Kung Fu foe….and although I liked the character I thought the Moon Knight should have been able to take him. Moon Knight had faced down the Hulk, battled the Werewolf more than once, and Bushman was no joke either. It was cool to see Shang Chi open a can of whoop ass on the guy afterwards.

Around the turn of the century rumors started to swirl about that Moon Knight would soon star in his own ongoing series once more. At the “urging” of somebody in the business (another story in it’s self)….I sent in a three page break down of what I would do with the character if given the opportunity to write the book. I wanted to take the character down a much more supernatural path, having Khonshu “God of Vengeance” reveal to Moon Knight that it was he that “made contact” with the Committee and sought Spector out to hunt the Werewolf, tying in both the origin from the Werewolf book and Moon Knight (vol.1) #1. The Werewolf was just another “agent of the moon” in the Egyptian deity’s eyes…and was used to bring Moon Knight out into the open to do the bidding of Khonshu.

Moon Knight’s multiple personalities would also be tied to different phases of the moon, and what I thought would be the clincher….Moon Knight’s life had been a wreck because he kept interfering with Khonshu’s cycle of vengeance and retribution. Moon Knight kept playing the hero….the good guy….Khonshu didn’t want a jet and silver champion of justice. He wanted an Avenger. There needed to be victim…so there could be vengeance…that’s want he wanted. Moon Knight was saving the victims before the act that was victimizing them would occur…disrupting the cycle. Khonshu wanted the murder to take place first…so that crime could be avenged later. Khonshu would then start taking everything in Moon Knight’s life that brought him joy away until he started to play by his rules.

Moon Knight would see this as a curse and seek out the aid of other “cursed” characters in the Marvel Universe….or those that may be able to at least to help him live with this curse …or maybe end it. That would include Jack Russell (the Werewolf), Johnny Blaze, Tigra, Son of Satan, Doctor Strange….and the surprise star on the list Mockingbird.

I also wanted to work with Moon Knight’s own villains…I love them…especially Morpheus and Black Spectre…I even had a plan to bring back the Conquer Lord. But….it didn’t happen. Charlie Huston would get the gig in what started out as yet another limited series and later became an on going book.

The book would also feature the incredible artistic talent of David Finch. I couldn’t resist picking up the new book to check out the “one that got away” and I actually liked it at first…….but by the time the first six issues ended….I was done. I had gone down the “crazy super-hero” road with Peter David’s second Captain Marvel series and for that matter with the U.S Agent as well over in the West Coast Avengers. I wasn’t getting into here. Add in the fact Huston brought Frenchie “out of the closet”, killed off Bushman, and the whole Hero Registration Act…..I quickly gave up on the title.

I did pick up issue #20 which featured a Werewolf guest appearance. Loved that story…mainly because it was set back in the 1990’s in Marvel time and was before all the craziness going on in the book now.

I don’t want to be all doom and gloom but I feel that the current Ghost Rider, Iron Fist, and Moon Knight series will all come to an end before issue #30 of each. I HOPE it doesn’t happen, but I can kind of feel it coming like an approaching thunder storm on a summer afternoon.

If that happens….maybe Marvel will put all FOUR of these great characters into one book!!!

If you’re going to dream…dream big.

That’s it for now…until next time…see you in the funny papers.