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Back in April of 2017, Kevin Feige said that
Marvel has plans for Moon Knight.
This “mercenary turned hero” hears voices
and dispatches his foes with all the blood
and violence of a Deadpool or Punisher.
And he’s a bit of a cult favorite.
However, I wouldn’t pre-order those tickets
just yet.
Feige was super vague with the details, so
much so that he may not even be talking about
a movie in this decade… and he may not be
talking about a movie at all.
So why am I telling you this?
Well, there are two things that people know
about Moon Knight:
1.
He’s Marvel’s Batman.
2.
He’ll be in a movie real soon you guys!
So let’s talk about it.
Let’s start with Moon Knight’s Origin
story.
It all began back in 1930s.
Bill Swooft here for Scotch Tape!
The hard-boiled, plenty rugged, clear tape
that can instantly patch, bond, seal and repair!
So back in the 1930s Marc Spectre’s family
fled Europe before the start of WWII.
* laughs *
Yeah.
That’s the only justification I have for
that skit.
No regerts.
Marc Spector was born in Chicago Illinois
and he and his very religious father did not
see eye to eye.
Marc could not understand why his father refused
to fight against the Nazis and he came to
see his father as a coward.
This lead Marc to reject his father’s faith.
He would go on to become a heavyweight boxer
before joining the US Marines and a short
time later, he found himself working for the
Central Intelligence Agency where he worked
with his brother, Randall Spectre and WIlliam
cross (who would eventually go on to become
the villain Crossfire).
Unfortunately, Marc’s brother Randall was
secretly smuggling weapons and when Marc’s
girlfriend found out about this, she tried
to turn Randall in.
He responded by brutally murdering her and
so Marc Spector hunted down his own brother
and during the fight a grenade exploded and Randall
was presumed dead.
Understandably, Marc soured on the idea of
working for the CIA and he became a freelance
soldier of fortune.
He quickly garnered the reputation of a man
willing to do anything, for the right price.
While working in Africa, Spector met a French
Mercenary named Jean-Paul Duchamp (or due-champ, as I've literally pronounced it my whole life before researching this video)
They quickly became friends and Spector nicknamed him Frenchie.
DuChamp worked for Spector for many years,
eventually serving as the pilot for Moon Knight’s
Moon Chopper (a one of a kind, custom built
helicopter).
Thanos eat your heart out.
Spector came to work for a terrorist named
Raoul Bushman and that’s when he started
to grow a conscious.
You see, Bushman was brutal.
While in the sudan, they stumbled upon an
archaeologist named Dr. Peter Alraune (who
was excavating the tomb of an ancient Egyptian
Pharaoh).
Bushman murdered the doctor and plundered
the tomb.
Marc, bothered by his newly found conscious,
tried to help Dr. Alraune’s daughter (Marlene)
escape.
Bushman beat Marc, abandoned him
in the desert; he left him, basically, to die.
Barely conscious, he stumbled into the ancient
tomb, seeking shelter from the cold of the
desert night.
Marlene and her father’s men, brought Marc
to rest near the statue of the moon god Khonshu.
Laying before the statue, Marc’s heart stopped.
That’s when saw a vision, a vision of the moon god,
offering him a second chance.
Marc awoke from the vision, his heart once
again beating
and he wrapped himself in the shroud that covered
the statue and from that moment on he became
Moon Knight, earthly avatar of the moon god
Khonshu.
Moon Knight found and defeated Bushman and
then returned to the United States with the
moon god idol where he (aided by Marlene,
Frenchie and a sizable fortune from his days
as a mercenary) continued in his fight against
the forces of evil.
In order to gather intelligence, Spector created
a couple of new personas.
Steven Grant was a rich high roller who rubbed
shoulders with the elite in New York City
while Jake Lockley was a down to Earth cab
driver.
This allowed Spector to gather investigation
leads from the streets of the city to the
boardrooms of Wall Street.
However, switching back and forth between
these personas did not do much for Spector’s
mental health but we’ll get to that later
in the video.
As for the behind the scenes stuff, Moon Knight
was originally created by writer Doug Moench
and artist Don Perlin and made his first appearance
in Werewolf by Night #32 in August of 1975.
And while this isn’t strictly relevant to
Moon Knight, it was pretty amazing to read
though Werewolf by Night - The Complete Collection
and see just how many people in the Marvel
universe have fought this one specific werewolf.
We’ve got the police and military/militia
guys, of course, but also this literal cowboy
who calls himself (and this is true) Ol’ Joshua, some carnie folk, Spider-Man, Hydra, Count Dracula, another
werewolf and Frankenstein's monster (which actually those last three make a lot of sense if you really think about it)
There’s also this character who refers
to himself as Atlas the Avenger… which was
weird because he looks just like The Toxic
Avenger who wouldn’t be created until some
time around 1983, right before his 1984 cinema
debut.
I find this whole series to be endlessly fascinating.
*loaughs*
 
But right..
Moon Knight!
The character's popularity lead Marvel to
bring him back for several guest spots and
so this villain became a popular anti hero
(a blueprint Deadpool would follow a couple
years later).
In 1980 he was finally given his own series
but it would not be his last.
So yeah, Marc Spector is often described as
mentally ill and it’s sometimes difficult
to tell what’s real and what’s in Marc’s
head -at least in the initial ongoing series
starting in 1980.
There’s even some question as to whether
or not Spector actually saw the moon god Khonshu
at all.
His vision could have easily been the crazed
hallucinations of man dying from exposure
(especially since he’d just been beaten,
nearly to death, by Bushman).
Other issues in Moon Knight’s original run
even hint that Marc Spector’s multiple personalities
may have been more than just a creative way
to gather leads, but rather, it may have been
a way for Marc’s various personalities to
express themselves without garnering concern
from Marlene and Jean-Paul.
However, all of this is left ambiguous.
The next series took a different angle and
made Moon Knight into more of a traditional
superhero.
This removed the ambiguity and Moon Knight
was, for sure, the moon god Khonshu’s knight
of vengeance.
No backsies.
This is also where Moon Knight’s moon shaped
throwing weapons and gadgets first came to
prominence (and the source of the Batman comparisons).
This new series didn’t sell well and only
lasted for six issues.
Moon Knight then went on to join the West
Coast Avengers (because all Marvel superheroes
must be some kind of Avenger, at some point, it's like... a law... or something).
And also Hawkeye created Moon Knight’s weapons while time travelling.
And I think you have to mention that whenever you do a video on YouTube about Moon Knight.
That's probably also some kind of law.
Ain’t comics fun?
So is Moon Knight Marvel’s Batman?
Well, I can say for sure that he was not initially
meant to be a Batman clone. At least not initially.
However, adding in the crescent moon throwing
weapons, his fortune, his cover as a rich
high roller and his high tech armored suits
and he sure does have a lot in common with
The Dark Knight.
However, I think if you look past the surface
stuff, the differences between the two are
vast.
Moon Knight’s on again, off again mental
illness, his maybe magical but also not magical
origins, his super powers that might just
be delusions of grandeur and the whole Egyption
moon theme all work together to make him very
different from the Caped Crusader.
Not to mention that Moon Knight will kill
you dead, Batman, not so much (at least not
anymore).
Even the places where they each obtained their
training are different.
Batman was already rich and travelled the
world seeking out training, much of it provided
by The League of Shadows (depending on your
chosen continuity).
Meanwhile Moon Knight was trained by simply
working as a boxer, a Marine, an intelligence
agent and a mercenary -not becoming rich until
his mercenary days (and still he needed to
make some investments once he became Moon
Knight to keep that money coming).
To me, Moon Knight is much more than simply
Marvel’s Batman.
He’s Moon Knight: the vengeance of the moon
god.
So where does that leave us?
Will we ever see Moon Knight in the MCU?
Or in his own TV series?
Well, speculation about Moon Knight in the
MCU was rampant after Captain America: The
WInter Soldier.
In the movie, Sitwell mentioned both Bruce
Banner and Stephen Strange (and this was before the Dr.
Strange movie had even been announced).
In that same scene, he also mentioned a TV anchor in Cairo and
many took this mention of Egypt as a hint
that Moon Knight would get his own solo MCU
film.
Captain America: Civil War also dropped a
reference to Egypt.
When Secretary Thunderbolt Ross shows the
Avengers the incidents that they were (in his
view, at least somewhat partially) responsible
for, there are a few we haven’t seen before
including Egypt.
Even more recently, Avengers: Endgame writer
Stephen McFeely said in an interview that
they want to bring Moon Knight to life in
next phase of MCU.
It all sounds very promising, but let me end
on this quote from Marvel Studio head Kevin
Feige.
When asked whether or not he had any plans
for Moon Knight, he said, quote:
Yes, Does that mean 5 years from now, 10 years
from now, 15 years from now?
There are stacks of character cards that we
have in our, in our development offices, which
we look at.
Which we pull for him, which we discussed.
End quote.
Yeah.
For as long as there have been comic book
adaptations, there’s also been speculation
about Moon Knight.
It will happen, but for now, I’m not holding
my breath.
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Specifically, this one goes out to Rachel
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Thank you for making to the end of the video,
until next time guys, be kind to each other.
I’m Jay Parks.
