Moon Knight 4, Iron Fist: The Immortal Weapon 3, Magneto 5

Moon Knight 4
Ellis (w) and Shalvey (a) and Bellaire (c) and Eliopoulos (l)

Moon Knight has been contacted by a Doctor Skelton, a sleep scientist who had worked with one-time ally to Marc Spector Peter Alraune. Skelton is having troubles with his sleep studies as all of his patients, hooked up to machines and drips in his small office provided by the university, have been going slowly insane after having the same dream. Moon Knight, sworn to protect travelers in the night (which also includes protecting people in dreams), returns to the office with Skelton and goes to sleep on the floor of one of an open, damp and smelly room. He enters an incredibly colorful and psychedelic hellscape where seemingly every piece of the landscape has the face of a man pleading for death. Moon Knight explores the area for a bit and then abruptly wakes up and crashes into Skelton's office, dragging him out by the hair and throwing him into the damp and smelly room, where he rips up the floorboards to find a corpse wrapped in a bag rotting underneath. Skelton explains that it was a random guy from Craigslist who'd first participated in the study and who had undisclosed medical problems that reacted badly to the drugs Skelton used and that Skelton had been forced to hide the body or else he would be shut down. Moon Knight explains that he's been rotting there with his own fungus and with whatever else Skelton put into him, that they've "been breathing in his dreams."

Another amazing outing for this MOON KNIGHT book which finds Ellis doing one of his favorite things, weird and creepy science, and finds Shalvey getting to really play with a new environment and play with the constructs of dreams, while Bellaire gets to colors some extraordinary new settings. Just a really phenomenal book, one that really flies by but that you'll have no trouble going back to when it's over, one that you'll really want to flip through a couple of times just to see everything that Shalvey and Bellaire are doing, let alone the interesting story and the ever tight-lipped Moon Knight (which comes somewhat at odds with the Moon Knight in ORIGINAL SIN who was rather a chatterbox this week's issue). I said in my pre-game this week that this is a series that will, even just three issues in, undoubtedly be a phenomenal book for as long as Warren Ellis and Declan Shalvey want to stay on it and, oh hey, what's this news now? Brian Wood and Greg Smallwood are taking over the series starting in issue seven in September? CURSE YOU, IRONIC LINK.

Total Score: 5/5


Iron Fist: The Immortal Weapon 3
K. Andrews (w, a, c) and Caramagna (l)

As Danny returns to K'un Lun to find it in ruins with the Thunderer, his old master and current Yu Ti of the mystical city, decapitated, something inside him rather snaps. Between the present and a slew of flashbacks, we see Danny trying to keep his rage down and his rage turning into fear as he worries about who he is and what he'll become, that his fear is based on unleashing death. Thunderer was an instrumental part of learning that about himself and now he's dead and Danny wasn't there to stop it. Fellow immortal weapon Prince of Orphans is onsite to help K'un Lun recover and asks Danny to step up and eat the fruit of immortality that he declined when he was first given the choice. Then, he'd rejected it because he sought vengeance on the man who he believed killed his parents, Harold Meachum only to be denied that vengeance because Meachum was old and frail, already practically dead. Now he's offered the fruit in the hopes that he'll stay and be a new and stable Yu Ti, a guiding hand as K'un Lun rebuilds. He declines it and kicks down the tree, demanding vengeance and attacking the Prince of Orphans. he's thrown out from K'un Lun and into the snowy Himalayas where he runs across some sort of beast that appears to be his father. Meanwhile, Brenda, the girl he slept with in issue one, is trying to watch over the little messenger girl but things are complicated when Davos (it's always Davos) comes to kill her.

On top of a very clear love of Iron Fist and the mythology surrounding Danny Rand and K'un Lun, it seems as if Kaare Andrews sat down and thought out every single thing about Danny Rand. He compiled his origin and his past and his present and tried to map out who the character was. Though Danny has recently been something of a stable voice, guiding perhaps angrier characters like Luke Cage or Daredevil, and giving his time and powers freely (well, since Heroes for Hire, anyway), you can absolutely see where Andrews is coming from. Spider-Man every single day is reminded and pushed by his origin, by the fact that he let Uncle Ben die with his own inaction. Yet here's Danny Rand, a guy who, as a child, saw his crazed father fall to his death and his mother torn apart by wolves as he pressed forward to a city where he would be relentlessly trained to be a weapon, and he opens up a nice dojo in town for kids to come train with him. I'm not saying that's impossible or crazy or anything like that, no. Absolutely people come back from horrifying childhoods. But still, Andrews obviously looked at Danny and said "well there's clearly more to it than that." And that's the story we're seeing. It's a story set in the present but with very strong and obvious ties to his past. And it's just an astounding book to look at. Also, I like that cover and the next cover looks AMAZING.

Total Score: 5/5


Magneto 5
Bunn (w) and Walta (a) and Bellaire (c) and Petit (l)

Magneto is recovering between missions. Removed to small-town America, he plots his next steps and restocks his supply of staples and other small magnetic things. He meets with a man to learn a new target he can attack but, before he can set out, he's found by a woman wishing to help him. Briar Raleigh is a woman with a metal leg and a dossier on the entire SHIELD team set to hunt Magneto. He decides to hear her out as she promises to lead him to much bigger scores, including the Marauders, than any little random informant could give, though he's not without his suspicions. It's possible those suspicions are well-founded as we're privy to a flashback wherein we see that she lost her leg in a Magneto attack on Seattle some time prior.

Briar Raleigh, though a name I'm not sure I can get behind (though I'm not eye rolling at it like certain Verity Willises), seems an interesting addition to this book. Someone with questionable motives giving apparently useful information to Magneto and being the person who can lead him in a direction. Whenever you have a character who can point a protagonist in a direction you have the potential for an interesting character. One like this one, who has questionable motives and no known history, seems particularly useful, especially given how many enemies Magneto's made. It's a little like Isaiah in BLACK WIDOW but it's hard not to believe (though this could be just what Edmondson wants us to believe) that Isaiah is a pretty good dude, at least good for Natasha. In this case, Briar Raleigh (does not flow off the tongue, nor does it flow off the keyboard) may well be giving Magneto information now only to lead him to traps later. Fun stuff. Can't complain on this one.

Total Score: 5/5