The Comic Book Club: Moon Knight and Taskmaster

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This is what happens when Techland goes to the comic book store: we end up discussing what we picked up. This week, Douglas Wolk, Evan Narcisse and Graeme McMillan talk about Moon Knight #1 and the Taskmaster: Unthinkable collection.

DOUGLAS: I have a couple of biases when it comes to Moon Knight stories. The second thing I can’t help but think of when I think “Moon Knight” is the series of stories Bill Sienkiewicz drew in the early ’80s, which were way, way ahead of their time as far as visual storytelling went. Who was drawing covers like this one in 1982? (Who’s even drawing covers like that now?) Which means that if you’re not going to push the visual side of Moon Knight like crazy, there’s not much of a point in drawing him at all.

And the bigger bias is that I can never see him–particularly in stories centered on his multiple-personality issues and the voices in his head–without thinking of the Moon Roach character from the early years of Cerebus. There aren’t a lot of parodies that are powerful enough to efface what they’re based on, but the Cootie is one of them: a “superhero” so mentally messed up that he gets into fistfights with himself (and is also terribly susceptible to any lies anybody tells him about who he’s supposed to beat up or kill next).

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Which is basically the version of Moon Knight that Brian Michael Bendis is writing here: a badass fighter who’s also totally delusional. It’s interesting that Bendis’s three Marvel Universe books right now are the two top-line Avengers titles and this C-lister’s series; this also seems to tie into what he’s doing in the Avengers books, with the Ultron business.

GRAEME: The Ultron tie-in actually took me out of the story, annoyingly; I wish this book had come out before last week’s Avengers #12.1, where we learned that there’s a big “Age of Ultron” story coming up. When the Ultron body appeared here, I immediately thought “Oh, so this is part of the build-up to this big event; I guess that’s smart of Bendis to make this more ‘essential’ for Avengers readers by doing that,” instead of feeling that it’s as random or confusing as Marc Spector himself did. There are times when you can know too much as a reader, I think.

DOUGLAS: For a 34-page first issue, this is kind of light on story, and padded out with the thing Bendis seems to do a lot when he’s filling pages: fight scenes with occasional grunts for dialogue. He’s basically killing time until the final-page revelation, which would be a lot more of a blast if it weren’t the selling point of this incarnation of the series, mentioned in all the advance publicity, hinted at on the front cover, etc. (It’s still pretty clever.)

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GRAEME: There was an interview Bendis gave recently for the Word Balloon podcast where he talked about the fact that he’d essentially had to blow the last page reveal in order to sell the series as a whole to cynical fans. It was interesting, because he didn’t seem particularly annoyed about it. (He seemed to be arguing that, in today’s market, you generally have to tell people what the first issue is all about, and whether they come back for the second issue is down to whether they read the first and thought “Yeah, that’s what I thought it would be” or “That’s nothing like what I was promised at all!”) But here, I think it’s a shame. I would have loved to know how I would have taken that last page if I didn’t already know the new gimmick of the series, especially because I suspect that I wouldn’t really get it: Would I be able to make the leap that Spider-Man, Captain America and Wolverine are inside Marc’s head just from their sudden absence on the last page? It felt too subtle for its own good, but disguised by the fact that the majority of readers knew it was coming anyway.

DOUGLAS: That said, I’m impressed by what Alex Maleev is doing here. He’s been talking about how he’s drawing Moon Knight without photo-reference, which means that this is a pretty significant shift away from his familiar style (and the style he’s been using for Scarlet); I can actually see a little bit of Sienkiewicz in his line, especially in bits like the big double-page spread early in the story. In the first scene with Spider-Man and Wolverine and Captain America, I thought “uh-oh, he’s actually not using reference of any kind–all of them look way off-model, Wolverine’s much taller than he’s supposed to be… oh I get it now.” And, if I’m not mistaken, this is the first Marvel superhero title since… maybe the Jonathan Lethem/Farel Dalrymple Omega the Unknown?… to have freehand panel borders. It’s a very small gesture, but a meaningful one: Maleev really is trying to make this look different from his Daredevil and Scarlet and Spider-Woman and Halo.

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GRAEME: I have to admit, I liked this much more than I was expecting to. It’s very much Bendis by numbers in terms of writing – You’re right, Douglas, it’s VERY light on dialogue and plot – and the LA scenes are completely unconvincing. But I surprised myself by warming to Maleev’s art more than I would’ve expected based on previous encounters. (There’s something less static and sterile in it; somehow it seemed warmer and with more life than he’s had in a while). And, dammit, there’s something weirdly charming about Spector’s “Wait, LA is my territory purely because I live here?” schtick, even more when you realize that it’s all essentially internal dialogue. I don’t know if I’ll be back next issue – there’s not enough meat here to guarantee that for me – but, considering I was expecting this to be a book I really wouldn’t enjoy, even the possibility should be considered a win.

EVAN: My big problem is that this feels way too divergent from Moon Knight books of the past. In every book he’s headlined, Marc Spector’s carried the weight of conscience. He was a merc, someone with questionable morals, and the Moon Knight identity was a way to atone for that. Instead, Bendis dismisses that in the first few pages and sets off on what he wants this book to be. Now, writers can and should do what they want. But a C-list character like Moon Knight only has fans because of what came before, and honestly, it feels like there’s not enough here to win new ones over. I’m not talking new comic-book readers. I’m talking people who are Batman fans but never picked up a Moon Knight story. Would they stick around for more of this? I’m inclined to say no.

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But the thing that gets under my skin is how Bendis is going to play with Moon Knight’s, let’s just be honest, mental illness. You get the feeling he sees it as part of the ethos of the character, and that it’ll be like Matt Murdock’s Catholic guilt and self-destructiveness was in Daredevil. The issue with that is that it ultimately leads to a dead end. Either other heroes in the Marvel Universe intervene, or they decide that Moon Knight’s useful enough to let roam free. I’m thinking of Moon Knight like jazz legend Thelonious Monk here (stay with me here): He’s functionally dysfunctional, yet still a genius. Do you risk messing with his unique brain chemistry to try to help him, or stand aside and reap the benefits of what he brings to the world? (Also, I decree that there must now be a story arc called “‘Round About Moon Knight.”)

Spector’s likely to go off the rails at some point, but Bendis has to make that journey interesting enough to want to follow. This beginning doesn’t do that for me.

DOUGLAS: A miniseries starring Taskmaster–a third-tier Marvel villain with a skull for a face–sounds like the province of people who care a lot more about the minutiae of Marvel continuity than I do (and I care kind of a lot already). But a bunch of people kept telling me “you know, that Taskmaster miniseries is really surprisingly good.” And so I picked it up this week–collected as Taskmaster: Unthinkable–and guess what: it really is surprisingly good. I’m not gonna try to make a case for it as Great Art, but it’s a really solidly constructed, attractively drawn, incredibly well-plotted superhero espionage thriller, Memento by way of the Brubaker/Phillips Sleeper series. Graeme, you asked on Twitter a week or so ago why people read superhero comics; my response was “Thrill-power. World-building. Vacationing in a fantastically cool collectively constructed fantasy.” That’s exactly what I got out of Taskmaster.

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I like Fred Van Lente’s writing a lot, generally, and this project put him in a position that suits him well: he gets to draw on tons of past continuity (if I had to guess which of the assassin clans in this story he made up for it, I’d have guessed the Cyber Ninjas, and I’d have been wrong; oh, the ’90s), but he doesn’t have to preserve the status quo for his main character. (Really, this story represents a huge change in the way we understand Taskmaster.) He’s also one of the most overtly funny writers in mainstream comics right now–there’s some straight-up Howard the Duck-level goofiness in here–and pretty much pulls it off in the context of a more or less serious, violent thriller. And I don’t think I’d encountered Jefte Palo’s art before, but it suits this story nicely: really solid, lively storytelling that conveys some tricky concepts (action scenes simultaneous with psychological P.O.V.), and a kind of post-Maleev sense of texture. I wish every little miniseries to fill a gap in a mainstream publisher’s schedule were this much fun.

GRAEME: Fred Van Lente is one of those writers who make me convinced that I’m reading them wrong, somehow. It’s like I am somehow reading them from a distance, and can recognize that I should like what I’m reading, but somehow just don’t. It might be a sense of humor thing; for every Don of The Dead, there’s a group with the acronym MILF or a character called Redshirt who, surprise surprise, gets killed at the end – comedy that feels a little TOO obvious, a little TOO eager to please, and I feel the writer’s hand too present in what I’m reading. Does that make sense? I get that he’s funny, and can see why you enjoy it, Douglas, but… I just don’t get it, on some level.

(For some reason, Van Lente’s work constantly makes me think of Jeff Parker, who does exactly the same kind of thing, especially with the juggling of genre and tone within stories, but does it so much better. I can’t explain what really differentiates their work for me, but I can’t escape the feeling that Parker could’ve made exactly the same jokes, and they would have landed better for me, somehow.)

That said, I’m totally with you on Jefte Palo’s art, which feels like Maleev crossed with a Paco Medina or Humberto Ramos influence to me: something gritty yet ultimately superheroic and cartoony, and exactly what a book like this needed. Even as the story lost me as the book continued, it was Palo that kept me turning the pages.

EVAN: I was kind of in the same boat as Graeme with regard to Van Lente. I felt like Marvel was shoving him in my face as an up-and-comer but the mechanics of his work were too naked for me to enjoy. But what sold me on him was the new Power Man and Iron Fist series (which we talked about a while back).

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I always liked Taskmaster growing up. The dramatic costume grabbed me as a kid: a shield, a sword, all those weapons, all that white, a hood and a skull mask! He’s in the classic mold of villains who steal superhero mojo–Amazo, the Mimic, the Super-Adaptoid–with an appealing bit of pseudo-science to explain it all. The way that Van Lente twists that pseudo-science to make it into a burden is inspired. Taskmaster’s brain is essentially a hard drive with a finite amount of space, and on that conceptual hook hangs a surprisingly affecting bit of existential drama. Like Douglas said, it’s a rather radical re-interpretation of the character’s status quo, one that I’m guessing a lot of other writers won’t play with. Still, this story goes to prove the old adage that every superhero character has at least one good story in them.

Graeme, you’re right on the jokes trying too hard in certain instances. But Van Lente doesn’t do much of that in PM/IF, which leads me to hope that it’s just something that he had to get out of his system. Overall, he’s nudged himself into the realm of creators who I’ll check out on the strength of his name alone.

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