STORY: Mike Benson
ART: Jefte Polo
COVER: Gabriele Dell'Otto
PUBLISHER: Marvel Comics
PRICE: $2.99
RELEASE DATE: Thursday, May 28, 2009
It is rare nowadays that all the stars align and your favorite character makes it through a great story arc without being replaced by some legacey version themselves. Or that they wake up the next day and their life has been erased, or they've been zapped into some alternate dimension. Or that the character you've been reading turns out to be some alternate dimension version of...AHHHH!!!
I want to start with Mike Benson. I dogged out one of his earlier issues of Moon Knight on one of our earlier shows. This was back before I realized that People even read my stuff here. Well it turned out that Mr. Benson was one of those people. He wrote me and said that he didn't mind that I didn't like the issue. He realized that you can't like everything, and that I was in a positon where people were reading to hear my honest oppinion of these books. News, views, and reviews...that's what we do.
What Benson constructively pointed out was that I had only said that I didn't like the issue and that it sucked, rather than why I didn't like it, and why it sucked. Since then I have really tried to be a little bit more articulate when criticising a craft that I myself would love to someday be a part of. Thanks Mike.
Moon Knight #30 is a great ending to a great arc. A simple story made intricate by the well thought out craft that went into it. Moon Knight decides to leave the chaos of an Osborn run world, and seeks some peace down south in Mexico. The story has taken a few twists and turns, but creative ones.
We find out the Zapata Bros really have decided to aid Moon Knight in taking down the Mexican mob boss that has been playing everyone involved in getting his daughter back to him. We also finally get to see the demonic man-totem that has been stalking street scum in the shadows of the city. Through all this Benson managed to keep past plot devices, such as Spector's psychosis manifesting itself as a faceless mercenary, to a minor one per issue cameo by a talking rat or tequila worm. Since the series reboot with issue #1 these devices have only weighed down the stories, and have seemed clunky and out of place. Benson has also shown his mastery of the characters involved through whity banter and perfectly placed, and appropriate dialogue. Most of which is kept to a minimum. Rather than using dialogue to tell the story, Benson has become a great director, telling most of the story through his artist.
Which brings me to the other half of the team. Jefte Polo is quickly becoming one of my favorite artists. He is a master of setting a tone through set design. His worlds are damn gritty. His Punisher is sleek. And his Moon Knight is one of the best in the business, and though different than David Finch's Moon Knight (who was the first artist on this volume of the book), absolutely a rival. Though simpler, Polo's Moon Knight flows with a Spawn-like quality as he jumps a fence through the light of the moon, and envokes images from Steven Platt's run on the book just standing in conversation with the Punisher.
Together these guys have made possibly the most entertaining arc on the character to date. They kept it simple and just told a good story about a great character. For years Marc Spector has been trying to find the place where Moon Knight belongs in the Marvel U., and this reader thinks it's he's found it; in the hands of Mike Benson and Jefte Polo.
See you in the future! AC