Ultimate Moon Knight wore a slightly different white costume designed by Mark Bagley, had the bad attitude common to the universe’s heroes, and a backstory that seemed arbitrarily altered from his Earth-616 counterpart.įrom Moon Knight’s appearances in Ultimate Spider-Man. When Moon Knight arrived in 2005’s Ultimate Spider-Man #79, he checked off all the Ultimate universe boxes. Typical scenes would show Spector changing out of his suit and donning a newsboy cap, choosing Jake Lockley instead of Steven Grant for a certain task.īut as so often happened in the 2000s, the Ultimate Universe changed everything. More often than not, Spector treated his identities as characters, tools in his mission. Occasionally, Frenchie or others would refer to Moon Knight’s “schizophrenia,” and some stories treated the identities as distinct from one another. Through the 1990s, Moench and other writers varied the personalities. Knight and, in a memorable run by Brian Michael Bendis and Alex Maleev, Captain America, Wolverine, and Spider-Man. Initially, these identities included the suave billionaire Steven Grant and hard-luck cabbie Jake Lockley, but would grow to include the methodical detective Mr. As the Fist of Khonshu, Moon Knight defended those who traveled under the moon, but the psychic trauma resulted in additional identities. Moon Knight came to be when an act of heroism cost amoral mercenary Steven Grant his life and he was resurrected by the Egyptian moon god Khonshu. Image: Jeff Lemire, Greg Smallwood/Marvel Comics But thanks to a multiple personality, and an angle added to the character shortly after his creation, Moon Knight stories have featured some of superhero fiction’s most nuanced portrayals of mental health. “Relatable” may seem like an odd way to talk about a hyper-violent guy who sometimes chats with a deity and flies around the city in aircraft piloted by his aide-de-camp Frenchie. Initially introducing the character as a Batman riff in 1975’s Werewolf by Night #32, writer Doug Moench, who co-created the character with artist Don Perlin, added “schizophrenia” as a differentiating gimmick.ĭespite this checkered past, Moon Knight has become one of Marvel’s most relatable superheroes - and he’s about to get an introduction to a much wider audience, thanks to a certain Disney Plus series starring Oscar Isaac. Superhero comics don’t have the best track record with mental health, and in the character’s earliest incarnations, Moon Knight was among the worst offenders. As the attendants helped me remove the laces from my shoes and strings from my sweatshirt, four-color images filled my head, panels of the Joker cackling from a padded cell deep in Arkham Asylum or Kraven the Hunter bellowing at Dr. So when my doctor sent me to a behavioral health clinic after a suicide attempt, my only experience with such places came from popular culture, especially comic books. My severe depression and anxiety had, up to that point, gone undiagnosed. “Will I be in a straight jacket?” The attending nurse laughed when I asked her that question, but I wasn’t joking.
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