Those of you who know me or who’ve followed my ramblings on here know that this week’s Secret Origin Saturday star is a longtime personal favorite of mine. This week we look at the origin story of the Midnight Marauder himself, Moon Knight!
As I’ve often said regarding Moon Knight despite his long forty-plus year history… (It boggles my mind that when I was a kid in the 1980’s reading Superman, Superman was about as old as Moon Knight is today!!)… Moon Knight only has about twenty-five decent appearances. This poor character has the potential of enormous untapped greatness, but sadly, I think he may have been forever hobbled by the poor treatment he’s received for the past thirty years! Recently with the news of an upcoming Moon Knight Netflix series, I’ve been pelted with requests for my thoughts and expectations. I am looking forward to the series by I remain skeptical about the quality. Moon Knight is a great character but sadly most people if they’ve heard of him buy into a lot of the horrible writing piled onto the character these last couple of decades.
Having said that, this page represents Secret Origin Saturday’s first visit to the Marvel Universe. This particular origin is a bit of a retroactive revision. When Moon Knight first appeared as a villain in Marvel’s Werewolf By Night #32, he was introduced as a mercenary hired and outfitted by the evil shadow organization, the Committee to fight and capture the hero werewolf, Jack Russel.
In the first issue of his very first solo series, Moon Knight receives the revised origin we see here. Now Moon Knight is the mercenary Marc Spector who works for the brutal African warlord, Bushman. Spector helps Bushman raid and pillage African villages, archeological digs, and so forth. You get the idea that Spector in the past has not been a very good guy. Having reconsidered the morality of his warring activities, Spector turns on Bushman, but the vicious plunderer beats him and tosses him out into the desert to die. It’s there that Spector is found by worshippers of the ancient Egyptian moon-god, Khonshu and brought to the temple of Khonshu. Spector recovers before a statue of the moon god. This prompts him to believes he was literally resurrected from the dead by Khonshu himself in order to vanquish evil and fight for justice. Later, Spector assembles multiple identities for himself. As millionaire Steven Grant, he moves through high society and associates among the power brokers of the World. As New York cabbie, Jake Lockley, Spector keeps his eyes and ears on the street looking for any place where his fourth identity, the silver clad sentry, Moon Knight might be needed!
This was a fun page for me and I hope my fellow Moon Knight fans will believe that I did our hero justice! Next week… we remain in the Marvel Universe where we take a look at one of Marvel’s big guns… a REALLY BIG gun! Who will it be? Well check back next Saturday. It will be a “Banner” day!
