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Thursday, September 13, 2007

Moon Knight

I just finished Moon Knight #12.

First, I really like the character. Up there with Beta Ray Bill and Deathlok, Moonie has been one of my favorites.

And I like Charlie Huston as writer, and he did a good job at the beginning of Moon Knight relaunch.

All that good stuff said, I think I'm giving this series one more issue to get past its red-herring covered, months-behind-the-Civil-War, convoluted, disjoint, nonsense, uninteresting presentation before I drop it. I do not like reading issue after issue of a series and getting that same "WTF + I-just-wasted-my-time-again" feeling.

Am I the only one feeling this way?

I dig Charlie and Moonie. I hope they fix stuff. Maybe issue #13, which switches artistic duties to Tom Coker (and theory, writing duties to Mike Benson, but Huston will still still be plotting), will fix stuff. Maybe there's just a disconnect between writer and artist currently. I just hope if they fall back on the whole we - need - an - Initiative - guy - who'll - do - our - dirty - wetworks thing, they make it interesting.

(And I realize maybe it's not Huston -- maybe its the art schedule or editing; all I know is I'm a year and a half and $35 bucks into the presentation of a favorite character that's pissing me off.)

UPDATED: It's not often that an author's response to one of my reviews makes me feel bad -- especially without trying.

Charlie Huston sent me a very professional, stand-up note where he didn't blame anyone, but walked through a bit of the additional factors that go into the whole "red-herring covered, months-behind-the-Civil-War, convoluted, disjoint, nonsense, uninteresting presentation". Honestly, he's just responsible for the last 4. ;-)

The fact is Huston doesn't marry the covers to the content, handle scheduling, or decide onto which books Marvel slaps "Civil War" and "The Initiative" marketing banners. (And, hey, I fell for it, and bought a few books with the banners that weren't related. Note to Marvel: Now I'm not buying anything but the core "World War Hulk" books, because your Civil War marketing bothered me, and had a reverse effect.)

And Huston copped to the "convoluted, disjoint, nonsense, uninteresting presentation" -- probably more than he needed to. He was trying something he knew might or might not work, and ishes 11 and 12 were meant to be read pretty much on the heels of each other. But publishing schedules caused things to lay out differently.

Oh, and the feeling bad part? Aside from Charlie being such a nice, professional, non-blaming (or defensive) guy in his response, his note reminded me that I was beating up on on his series for exactly what I took folks to task for when they unfairly blamed Steve McNiven for the Civil War delay. Hello Pot, meet Kettle.

And while I said in the first version of this post, "And I like Charlie Huston as writer", I didn't point to his well-done Ultimates Annual #2, and his excellent Legion of Monsters Man-Thing story as examples.

So, I wanted to address all of that. Glad I'm not guilt motivated, or this post would have been really maudlin. Or more maudlin. Whatever.

As it is, I'm grateful to have made Chuck's acquaintance (I have no idea whether he hates that nickname), and I now have an idea for a super team consisting of Moon Knight, Deathlok, Man-Thing, and Beta Ray Bill. And probably Dragon Man (let me know if you know where I can find the FF Series 2 toy). And maybe Machine Man. Hey, I kind of already started it.

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posted by Adam @ 1:38 PM

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