Story: Erica Shultz, Benjamin Percy
Art: Manuel Garcia and Sean Parsons, Rod Reis
32 pages, $4.99
Marvel Comics

What It Is: Spinning out of MOON KNIGHT #0, we have the character’s—who old time Marvel Zombies call “Marvel’s Batman (he’s not)”—first anthology series. And he’s had a lot of series, over a dozen since 1980.

The Good: The “Crusader” yarn. The story’s good and the art is great. We’re often told there have been many Fists of Khonshu, so it’s nice to actually see one.

I’m so-so on the continuity tie-in to the larger Marvel Universe, but I understand Wednesday Warriors go gaga over such nonsense, so fine. It didn’t feel overly forced and gives them a reason a pick up the book.

I was hearted to see the opening tribute to the late, great Don Perlin, who died in May, a few months shy of his 95th birthday. Perlin was a titan in monthly superhero books, one of the last of the guys who got his start in the Golden Age. He had seminal runs on DEFENDERS, GHOST RIDER, and WEREWOLF BY NIGHT, in the pages of which he co-created MOON KNIGHT with Doug Moench. And, of course, we would not have or remember Valiant Comics, without everything—art director, creator, editor, penciler—he did there in the ’90s.

The Bad: The present-day framing story, isn’t bad exactly, but uninteresting. Two legacy stories in a single issue would be better bang for the buck.

The whole thing is a little caption heavy, in both tales. I’d rather learn the characters and plot through action and dialogue, but I get it. Limited space.

The Score: 7 out of 10 capes

Further Reading: Jed MacKay’s run on MOON KNIGHT has been pretty fun all around. But/and, his BLACK CAT (2019) series was a top-notch, done-in-one comic book masterclass. Seek it out. The mythology that current MOON KNIGHT stuff builds on, with the Midnight Mission, Mister Knight, et al., started with Warren Ellis and Declan Shalvey’s six-issue run that kicked off the MOON KNIGHT resurgence with Vol. 7 in 2014—and those issues still hold up.