Moon Knight

Writer: Charlie Huston
Artist: David Finch
Publisher: Marvel

“The Bottom�
I remember the first issue of Moon Knight that I ever purchased. I knew nothing about the character, but to be honest, he looked like Marvel’s answer to Batman. However, the cover drew me to it. It was drawn by then little known artist, Frank Miller (Dark Knight Returns, Sin City) with interior pencils by then little known artist, Bill Sienkiewicz (both would one day team up for the seminal, Elektra: Assassin).

Like Ghost Rider, Moon Knight is a fan favorite that keeps being resurrected; a character searching for an identity because no writer quite seems to be able to get a handle on him after Doug Moench’s initial run (much like The Punisher until Garth Ennis managed to get to the core of the character).

“Someone has to do this.� –Moon Knight

Mercenary Marc Spector found himself betrayed and left for dead in a tomb. He was resurrected to became the avatar of an Egyptian god, Khonshu. Transformed in the desert, essentially he repented, turned his back on the lifestyle he led, in order to craft a new life. From killer to hero, he became a soldier in service to his God, His “blade of vengeance.� Thus he became a silver wraith, an all white cowl and cape outfit which were akin to priest vestments.

The twist was that he had four secret identities: Marc Spector, Jake Lockley, Steven Grant, and Moon Knight. Each personality had their own quirks and morality clutching to sanity while seeking redemption. Even with his/their new lease on life, at best he/they were a “cracked vessel,� far from perfect, but struggling to be of use. In other words, his/their spiritual journey was just like the rest of ours.

“How could I live any other way?� –Moon Knight

I suspect that the chief draw of characters like Black Panther, Captain America, Batman, and Moon Knight is that they are fully human. Not being super-powered, it seems almost believable that any of us could be them with enough training and dedication. They are more relatable, their struggles mirror our struggles. This might even apply to their spiritual struggles.

Spiritual journeys have all sorts of twists and turns, peaks and valleys. There are times when you can hear God’s voice so clearly, feel Him moving in your life so purely. Then there are times, dark nights of the soul, when His voice seems silent. When you feel alone or that you’ve turned your back on the things you once knew. Where do you go from there?

Many of us are haunted by our pasts, feeling like we can’t get past mistakes we’ve made and people we’ve hurt. Or we’ve become, like Marc Spector, disillusioned when our ideas about our God can’t be reconciled with the reality of God. When it got hard, Marc Spector quit everything. He blamed God, turned his back on his community of friends, everyone but himself. He turned to alcohol and pills to try and dull the constant shrill of pain that his life had become. Until he hit rock bottom.

The thing about bottoming out is that if you let it, it provides prospective. For one, you have little choice but to look up, since you can’t get any lower, and maybe have one of those end of self moments. Sometimes we just need reminders of who we are, who were meant to be, what God has done in the past. In those quiet times, like Marc Spector, we may realize that our God has been with us the whole time, calling us, waiting for us to return, and sustaining us all along. Maybe we’ll experience another spiritual resurrection and have the opportunity to once again become a warrior-priest.

The Fist of Khonshu is set to return to the heights of his glory thanks to that able skill of acclaimed novelist Charlie Huston (Caught Stealing, Six Bad Things, and Already Dead). He’s been teamed with fan-favorite artist, David Finch (New Avengers). The story is long on mood and atmosphere, wrestling with the idea of what to do when you are broken and you feel like your God has forsaken you. It’s the narration that sets the book apart. Huston’s take on the character, both self-absorbed and possibly insane, longing to be a hero and yet pitiable, doesn’t make for typical comic fare. However, the story arc has Taskmaster and I’ve always loved him when done right and treated seriously.


***
If you want to make sure that I see your comment or just want to stop by and say hi, feel free to do so on my message board. I apologize in advance for some of my regulars.

Dream Girls

Adapting the Broadway musical that was first staged in 1981, director Bill Condon puts together a movie that moves at whirlwind pace in its first hour and then levels out. I really wanted to love Dreamgirls. Maybe that was the problem: too high of expectations. It had a lot of the things I love about musicals: great songs, great singers, great performers, great performances, great choreography, and great star power to drive the thing home.

A thinly veiled version of the rise of the Supremes and Berry Gordy's Motown, the movie mimics the music ... my dad ... grew up with. So part of the fun of the movie was guessing who was based on whom. The movie begins at an amateur night at a Detroit theater, with the Dreamettes being cheated out of a win. Fortunately, Curtis Taylor Jr. (Jamie Foxx) a Detroit car salesman turned would-be record producer, manages to wrangle them as backup singers for James ''Thunder'' Early (Eddie Murphy), a sort of James Brown via Marvin Gaye.

The movie is backlit with the politics of race. The overall all arc of the movie almost follows the history of pop music, with the idealism of Black musicians wanting to make and control our own music. From Blues, jazz, Gospel, R&B, to Soul, we see the music co-opted by white artists and businessmen. This sets the backdrop for much of what drives the movie. Due to the music industry's racism, Curtis pays off radio stations, a necessary evil for the day. He replaces the dark-skinned, thick lead singer, Effie White (Jennifer Hudson - channeling the voice of a young Aretha Franklin), with the light-skinned, twig-physiqued backup singer Deena Jones (Beyoncé Knowles). It's not just a cosmetic change, as Curtis tells Effie, her voice is too ''special'' (read: “too black�). However, by strange coincidence, the movie that began with such fury and passion stultified the more the career arc of the group moves to cross over appeal.

“You want all the privileges and none of the responsibilities.� –Marty Madison (Danny Glover)

Dreamgirls has the opposite problem of Idlewild: it uses the music to cover the lack of drama. Ostensibly the movie wants to be about the power and responsibility of family; what happens when you sacrifice for your dream and your dream is stolen. However, just like the protagonist of the movie Requiem for a Dream is actually addiction, the hero of Dreamgirls is “the dream.�

The movie examines the price of “making it,� never quite answering the question of whether any of them truly “makes it,� and the sacrifices required to make the dream a reality. Unfortunately, with the dream being the protagonist, mostly what we are left with are cardboard characters. Don’t get me wrong, Jennifer Hudson easily walks away with the movie, as Effie is the pathos storm of the century. Her showstopper number, ''And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going'' (one of those American Idol “big� songs that when done right is chilling, but when the voice isn’t up to the task is calamitous) is a staggering piece of musical acting. It was a moving lament that had our audience bursting out into applause (which didn’t happen when Beyonce performed her own show stopper number, “Listen�). In fact, Beyonce has little to nothing to do other than stand around and be manipulated.

“All my life I've been a fool/Who said I could do it all alone
How many good friends have I already lost?/How many dark nights have I known?
Walking down that wrong road, there was nothing I could find
All those years of darkness-can make a person blind/But now I can see.�

The group started off with a sincere desire: to use the gifts they were blessed with and be who they were meant to be. Somehow that simple, good dream was corrupted. At some point, something crept into the vision, unnoticed at first. Maybe pride, maybe greed, but something caused the dream to go awry. Once set on this different path, it eventually lead to loneliness, despair, fear. Something has to break this cycle.

Chasing after the trappings of success is a hollow endeavor. Instead, we are called to be missional, to seek to have a life as a community sent by God into its place in the world. We are to live an alternative vision of success as defined by our society's culture, socio-political, and economic structures. And, if nothing else, appreciate the power of community and family, because life boils down to relationships.

Because no character’s story is particularly followed, we’re left with half-concerns. Effie’s fall into despair doesn’t really grab us (we’re told she blew through half a million dollars in booze in two years, but barely see a couple of drinks). Dreamgirls needed to be bigger somehow, do more with its inspiration/source material and be more melodramatic. The movie constantly undersells many of the key emotional moments (from Deena and Effie reconciling, to Curtis figuring out who the father of Effie’s daughter is). They undercut any potential high drama by turning Deena into a saint, not responsible for any of the tragedy that befalls Effie. Even Jamie Foxx seemed to have turned his charisma down to “simmer� and has a constant look of vague discomfort. Which is similar to how I felt about the movie. I really wanted to like it, and was expecting Oscar worthy turns from most of the cast. Instead, I left liking the movie, but was vaguely disappointed.


***
If you want to make sure that I see your comment or just want to stop by and say hi, feel free to do so on my message board. I apologize in advance for some of my regulars.

Moon Knight

Writer: Charlie Huston
Artist: David Finch
Publisher: Marvel

“The Bottom�
I remember the first issue of Moon Knight that I ever purchased. I knew nothing about the character, but to be honest, he looked like Marvel’s answer to Batman. However, the cover drew me to it. It was drawn by then little known artist, Frank Miller (Dark Knight Returns, Sin City) with interior pencils by then little known artist, Bill Sienkiewicz (both would one day team up for the seminal, Elektra: Assassin).

Like Ghost Rider, Moon Knight is a fan favorite that keeps being resurrected; a character searching for an identity because no writer quite seems to be able to get a handle on him after Doug Moench’s initial run (much like The Punisher until Garth Ennis managed to get to the core of the character).

“Someone has to do this.� –Moon Knight

Mercenary Marc Spector found himself betrayed and left for dead in a tomb. He was resurrected to became the avatar of an Egyptian god, Khonshu. Transformed in the desert, essentially he repented, turned his back on the lifestyle he led, in order to craft a new life. From killer to hero, he became a soldier in service to his God, His “blade of vengeance.� Thus he became a silver wraith, an all white cowl and cape outfit which were akin to priest vestments.

The twist was that he had four secret identities: Marc Spector, Jake Lockley, Steven Grant, and Moon Knight. Each personality had their own quirks and morality clutching to sanity while seeking redemption. Even with his/their new lease on life, at best he/they were a “cracked vessel,� far from perfect, but struggling to be of use. In other words, his/their spiritual journey was just like the rest of ours.

“How could I live any other way?� –Moon Knight

I suspect that the chief draw of characters like Black Panther, Captain America, Batman, and Moon Knight is that they are fully human. Not being super-powered, it seems almost believable that any of us could be them with enough training and dedication. They are more relatable, their struggles mirror our struggles. This might even apply to their spiritual struggles.

Spiritual journeys have all sorts of twists and turns, peaks and valleys. There are times when you can hear God’s voice so clearly, feel Him moving in your life so purely. Then there are times, dark nights of the soul, when His voice seems silent. When you feel alone or that you’ve turned your back on the things you once knew. Where do you go from there?

Many of us are haunted by our pasts, feeling like we can’t get past mistakes we’ve made and people we’ve hurt. Or we’ve become, like Marc Spector, disillusioned when our ideas about our God can’t be reconciled with the reality of God. When it got hard, Marc Spector quit everything. He blamed God, turned his back on his community of friends, everyone but himself. He turned to alcohol and pills to try and dull the constant shrill of pain that his life had become. Until he hit rock bottom.

The thing about bottoming out is that if you let it, it provides prospective. For one, you have little choice but to look up, since you can’t get any lower, and maybe have one of those end of self moments. Sometimes we just need reminders of who we are, who were meant to be, what God has done in the past. In those quiet times, like Marc Spector, we may realize that our God has been with us the whole time, calling us, waiting for us to return, and sustaining us all along. Maybe we’ll experience another spiritual resurrection and have the opportunity to once again become a warrior-priest.

The Fist of Khonshu is set to return to the heights of his glory thanks to that able skill of acclaimed novelist Charlie Huston (Caught Stealing, Six Bad Things, and Already Dead). He’s been teamed with fan-favorite artist, David Finch (New Avengers). The story is long on mood and atmosphere, wrestling with the idea of what to do when you are broken and you feel like your God has forsaken you. It’s the narration that sets the book apart. Huston’s take on the character, both self-absorbed and possibly insane, longing to be a hero and yet pitiable, doesn’t make for typical comic fare. However, the story arc has Taskmaster and I’ve always loved him when done right and treated seriously.


***
If you want to make sure that I see your comment or just want to stop by and say hi, feel free to do so on my message board. I apologize in advance for some of my regulars.

Dream Girls

Adapting the Broadway musical that was first staged in 1981, director Bill Condon puts together a movie that moves at whirlwind pace in its first hour and then levels out. I really wanted to love Dreamgirls. Maybe that was the problem: too high of expectations. It had a lot of the things I love about musicals: great songs, great singers, great performers, great performances, great choreography, and great star power to drive the thing home.

A thinly veiled version of the rise of the Supremes and Berry Gordy's Motown, the movie mimics the music ... my dad ... grew up with. So part of the fun of the movie was guessing who was based on whom. The movie begins at an amateur night at a Detroit theater, with the Dreamettes being cheated out of a win. Fortunately, Curtis Taylor Jr. (Jamie Foxx) a Detroit car salesman turned would-be record producer, manages to wrangle them as backup singers for James ''Thunder'' Early (Eddie Murphy), a sort of James Brown via Marvin Gaye.

The movie is backlit with the politics of race. The overall all arc of the movie almost follows the history of pop music, with the idealism of Black musicians wanting to make and control our own music. From Blues, jazz, Gospel, R&B, to Soul, we see the music co-opted by white artists and businessmen. This sets the backdrop for much of what drives the movie. Due to the music industry's racism, Curtis pays off radio stations, a necessary evil for the day. He replaces the dark-skinned, thick lead singer, Effie White (Jennifer Hudson - channeling the voice of a young Aretha Franklin), with the light-skinned, twig-physiqued backup singer Deena Jones (Beyoncé Knowles). It's not just a cosmetic change, as Curtis tells Effie, her voice is too ''special'' (read: “too black�). However, by strange coincidence, the movie that began with such fury and passion stultified the more the career arc of the group moves to cross over appeal.

“You want all the privileges and none of the responsibilities.� –Marty Madison (Danny Glover)

Dreamgirls has the opposite problem of Idlewild: it uses the music to cover the lack of drama. Ostensibly the movie wants to be about the power and responsibility of family; what happens when you sacrifice for your dream and your dream is stolen. However, just like the protagonist of the movie Requiem for a Dream is actually addiction, the hero of Dreamgirls is “the dream.�

The movie examines the price of “making it,� never quite answering the question of whether any of them truly “makes it,� and the sacrifices required to make the dream a reality. Unfortunately, with the dream being the protagonist, mostly what we are left with are cardboard characters. Don’t get me wrong, Jennifer Hudson easily walks away with the movie, as Effie is the pathos storm of the century. Her showstopper number, ''And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going'' (one of those American Idol “big� songs that when done right is chilling, but when the voice isn’t up to the task is calamitous) is a staggering piece of musical acting. It was a moving lament that had our audience bursting out into applause (which didn’t happen when Beyonce performed her own show stopper number, “Listen�). In fact, Beyonce has little to nothing to do other than stand around and be manipulated.

“All my life I've been a fool/Who said I could do it all alone
How many good friends have I already lost?/How many dark nights have I known?
Walking down that wrong road, there was nothing I could find
All those years of darkness-can make a person blind/But now I can see.�

The group started off with a sincere desire: to use the gifts they were blessed with and be who they were meant to be. Somehow that simple, good dream was corrupted. At some point, something crept into the vision, unnoticed at first. Maybe pride, maybe greed, but something caused the dream to go awry. Once set on this different path, it eventually lead to loneliness, despair, fear. Something has to break this cycle.

Chasing after the trappings of success is a hollow endeavor. Instead, we are called to be missional, to seek to have a life as a community sent by God into its place in the world. We are to live an alternative vision of success as defined by our society's culture, socio-political, and economic structures. And, if nothing else, appreciate the power of community and family, because life boils down to relationships.

Because no character’s story is particularly followed, we’re left with half-concerns. Effie’s fall into despair doesn’t really grab us (we’re told she blew through half a million dollars in booze in two years, but barely see a couple of drinks). Dreamgirls needed to be bigger somehow, do more with its inspiration/source material and be more melodramatic. The movie constantly undersells many of the key emotional moments (from Deena and Effie reconciling, to Curtis figuring out who the father of Effie’s daughter is). They undercut any potential high drama by turning Deena into a saint, not responsible for any of the tragedy that befalls Effie. Even Jamie Foxx seemed to have turned his charisma down to “simmer� and has a constant look of vague discomfort. Which is similar to how I felt about the movie. I really wanted to like it, and was expecting Oscar worthy turns from most of the cast. Instead, I left liking the movie, but was vaguely disappointed.


***
If you want to make sure that I see your comment or just want to stop by and say hi, feel free to do so on my message board. I apologize in advance for some of my regulars.

Spider-Man: The Other

Writers: Peter David, Reginald Hudlin, and J. Michael Straczynski
Artists: Mike Deodato and Joe Pimentel, Pat Lee and Dream Engine, and Mike Wieringo and Karl Kesel
Published by: Marvel Comics

“Evolve or Die�

Spider-Man has seen a variety of changes over the years. He’s had multiple arms, been a giant spider, worn an alien costume, and then there was the clone saga (oy! The clone saga). Obviously not afraid of messing with the mythos of Spider-Man (since many fans still haven’t forgiven him for his retro-fitting of the story of Gwen Stacy), Straczynski has been working toward this story for years.

“Never understood. What you were. What you are. What you are becoming.� –Spider Spirit


The heart of the story revolves around the idea that Spider-Man’s powers are totemic in nature. Expanding the mythos into one of archtypes. DC comics went through this trend in the late 80s/early 90s as several of their characters were revealed to be elemental in nature (Swamp Thing, Red Tornado, Firestorm, etc.).

Since this story was going to fundamentally change the very character of Spider-Man, the story ran through all of his major titles: The Amazing Spider-Man 525-528, Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man 1-4, and Marvel Knights Spider-Man 19-22. The storyline also got to utilize the talents of three fan-favorite writers: Reginald Hudlin (Black Panther), Peter David (Incredible Hulk, Fallen Angel, X-Factor), and J. Michael Straczynski (Rising Stars, Strange).

“You treated the gift that you had been given as though it were a toy. You did not look too deeply into what you had become of what you could do. You committed the crime ... of superficiality.� –Spider Spirit

The Other follows Spider-Man’s spiritual journey as he searches within himself, learns who he is, and is led to confront both the “spider within� as well as the Spider Spirit. You see, Peter Parker (Spider-Man) was guilty of something that many folks are guilty of when it comes to their spiritual life: no self-examination. He never questioned, never dug deeper. While having a simple faith is good, being simple about one’s faith is not. Part of him was afraid of finding answers that might be disturbing. Instead he chose to not look beneath the surface, accepting the limits of what he thought he could do, and place his faith in a comfortable box.

He abandoned the journey of becoming a disciple.

The best way for me to think about discipleship is in terms of apprenticeship. I’m a student, Jesus is the teacher, and my goal is to become as much like him as possible. Discipleship would involve a changed in three areas: belief (we turn to Christ, expressing our desire to see him as he is, not simply how he’s been represented to us), behavior (our lives become slowly transformed, centering our lives around living out the kingdom mission; putting feet–action–to our faith and knowledge), and belonging (we join a specific faith community).

Discipleship, simply defined, can be seen as a process of how we transform everything we do in order to “take on,� or becoming more like, Jesus. You figure out what it means for you to live and work in light of being a blessing to your neighbor and to the world. It takes time and in our culture’s need for immediate gratification, we’ve forgotten that this can be a long process.

“You’ve got what every human being has asked for: a fresh start, a clean slate ... You’ve been reborn.� –Tony Stark (Iron Man)

The end goal is for Spider-Man to be born again. Literally “Reborn as what? And perhaps just as important ... why?� he asked before being baptized in the Hudson River. He becomes healed, inside and out; free of the past, of the person he was as he embraces the person he could be. Like many on a deepening spiritual journey, Spider-Man discovers new gifts, develop new spiritual fruit if you will.

All told, The Other’s story could have been told in a lot fewer issues, the story felt a little padded. Peter David, no stranger to writing Spider-Man, is great, but the story rather drags a bit when written by Reginald Hudlin. J. Michael Straczynski’s issues are back to the typical Straczynski sense of pacing. However, no one loses sight of what makes Spider-Man great: he’s a regular guy simply trying the best he can.


***
If you want to make sure that I see your comment or just want to stop by and say hi, feel free to do so on my message board. I apologize in advance for some of my regulars.

Squadron Supreme

Writer: J. Michael Straczynski
Artist:
Publisher: Marvel MAX

There does seem to be a bit of a convergence of ideas, a trend of superheroes submitting to (or registering themselves for) government oversight. This is probably a commentary in itself on how we see (fear) government: we can’t just have a group of powers walking around uncontrolled, unregulated. The New Avengers. Powers. Ultimates. Now Squadron Supreme.

Squadron Supreme is an ersatz version of DC’s Justice League of America (Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, etc.) done for Marvel Comics (Hyperion, Nighthawk, Power Princess, etc.). This current incarnation of the Squadron Supreme re-visits the threads from Mark Gruenwalds legendary Squadron Supreme mini-series, a pre-Watchman look at super heroes operating in “reality�; and examines the question of how long would super-heroes remain under the control of anyone else before they decided they knew best to solve the world’s problem. How long before supreme power corrupted supremely?

It has taken a long time to get here. The comic book started as Supreme Power, which laid the groundwork for Squadron Supreme, then the story ran through a couple of mini-series, before becoming Squadron Supreme. All this to say that the story moves at a deliberate pace we’ve come to expect as typical of J. Michael Straczynski stories. He took six issues to re-tell the origin of Dr. Strange. Rising Stars could have easily been trimmed by a third were it not for his devoting whole issues to exploring a character, even peripheral ones. However, that’s what we want from Straczynski: character driven stories over flash-bang plots.

As another consideration, the characters he’s (re-)created are far from the one-dimensional copies of existing heroes they once were. They have been completely re-imagined. From Hypericon as the alien outcast (distrusted as opposed to being embraced as Superman is) to the quite possibly mad Princess Power, their relationships with one another are absolutely fascinating to watch.

“We are the message and fear is the communications frequency of choice.� –Hypericon

Their first missions operating under the mandate of the U.S. government were to Africa, Middle East. Even the heroes wrestled with the idea of them being dispatched to fight “the other� and the attitude behind it. Such events lead them to already begin to consider the repercussions of their actions and whether or not this is the best way for change to be accomplished. While it may be only a matter of time before they throw off the yoke of such colonialistic action, this brand of imperialism is long entrenched.

An aspect of colonialism is its conquest mentality that works by making other cultures less than human, debasing one while exalting the colonizer’s. The western imperialist colonizers viewed Africa, for example, as an untamed land with ungodly people; that there was nothing good in this dark and scary continent–other than its resources–and that its people were entirely under the power of the devil. Ironically, the United States is a revolutionary country in that it threw off the shackles of its own colonial masters. The hypocritical conceit of the country was that while our founding fathers held that all men were created equal, they also held slaves. That central kind of hypocrisy affects the character of a nation; finds its way into the system of the society, the hearts and minds of the individuals that make up the system and becomes ingrained.

Somehow, we have to get from this sort of mentality to joining in a ministry of reconciliation.

For reconciliation to be done, there has to be a coming together of equals. For things to be on equal terms, there has to be a relationship not built on fear or oppression. There must be a recognizing and respecting of each other’s stories. So there is a continual cycle of hostility, racism, hatred - these things make it impossible to just “forget� the past. We need a tool more active than simply “forgetting.� When I look at how Jesus started the movement that eventually became the church, it’s important to note that it began by changing the hearts of a few individuals. The individuals formed impacting communities. Then the communities impacted the social order. Your identity, your individual stories, are caught up in a greater story.

Long term, it would be better to embrace a path of peace and forgiveness, quietly working to change people’s hearts while they go about their mission. However, since this is a super-hero comic book, the characters will have to wrestle with how or if to use their power to force their will on others. And we will have to wait to see it play out and the consequences of that course.

The bottom line, this is a great comic. Adult themes explored in adult ways, you wouldn’t recognize these characters as the JLA-ripoffs they once were. These are fully fleshed out characters telling stories we’ve seen shades of in some of Straczynski’s previous (and best) work. The art has the force of almost being its own character, unobtrusive and clean, with a realistic style to it. I will say that it may be best to wait for the trade paperbacks of this one. The individual issues are frustrating, not quite providing enough story (or maybe it’s the sheer anxiousness of wanting to keep reading more of it) to justify the month to month wait. Basically, it’s the same reason I now only watch 24 when I buy the collected seasons. Read back-to-back, Straczynski once again proves why he is such a fan favorite.


***
If you want to make sure that I see your comment or just want to stop by and say hi, feel free to do so on my message board. I apologize in advance for some of my regulars.