Throughout his tenure on Moon Knight, Jed MacKay has boiled the lunar-fueled vigilante down to two key points. Those points are as follows: there are a handful of people Moon Knight genuinely cares for, and if you hurt them, he will visit unholy vengeance upon you. Marc Spector: Moon Knight #5 puts both of these points to the test, as Spector finds himself entering a mysterious building that swallowed his friends whole. This isn’t just any building, though. It’s one of the same extra-dimensional beings that previously took residence in Spector’s home, the Midnight Mission…but while the Midnight Mission was meant to be a sanctuary, this is a house of horrors.
Only MacKay could take the idea of “Moon Knight fighting a haunted house” and push it to an admittedly awesome extreme. To combat the darkness that’s swallowed his loved ones whole, Spector is forced to rely on Ginnarr, the cursed Asgardian sword that killed the Midnight Mission in Moon Knight: Fist of Khonshu. You’d think that would give him an advantage, yet Ginnarr’s hunger winds up turning the tide in a less-than-favorable way for Spector. MacKay doesn’t stop there, as the events of the last few issues begin to take their toll on Moon Knight. And that’s not even getting into the return of the would-be deity Achilles Fairchild, who’s far more deadly than the last time he and Spector crossed paths.
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If MacKay’s writing wasn’t enough to hook readers, Devmayla Pramanik’s art certainly will. Page after page features a seemingly endless black void that spits out glowing green skeletal constructs, while Fairchild himself is sporting a suit that feels as if it were made of living shadow. Pramanik does not hold back on the violence, as Spector uses Grannirr to carve through anything standing in his way; limbs and heads fly at dizzying speeds, while Moon Knight roars in defiance of the darkness. In perhaps the best page of the issue, Spector and Grannirr come face to face, as we see the massive dragon trapped within the latter’s blade…and Spector stares it down without a trace of fear. It’s images like these that cement Pramanik as one of the best artists in Marvel’s stable.
Marc Spector: Moon Knight #5 wouldn’t look nearly as good as it does without Rachelle Rosenberg’s color work or Cory Petit’s lettering. I don’t know how Rosenberg manages to make Moon Knight’s costume have the ethereal glow it does, but it’s truly a work of art; the same could be said for the fiery hues of Grannirr’s scales. Petit also gives each character a unique voice, whether it’s the inky black words spilling from Fairchild’s possessed lips or the rough, rumbling structure of Grannirr’s Asgardian speech.
Marc Spector: Moon Knight #5 continues to deliver beautifully brutal visuals, while also upping the stakes significantly for the Fist of Khonshu. It also ends on a cliffhanger that will have certain Marvel fans immediately wanting the next issue – I should know, because I’m one of them.
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