Comics I Bought This Week: April 9, 2011
I’m back from the comic shop this week and I got five new comic plus two hard cover collections. A big week:
And now for a review of something I’ve read recently.
“Moon Knight: Countdown To Dark” by Doug Moench and Bill Sienkiewicz
I must have hard cover fever or something. Here is another book I bought recently that I have most of the original issues that are collected here. These are some of the first Moon Knight stories. They originally ran in the back of “The Rampaging Hulk” magazine. Not “The Incredible Hulk” comic book but the magazine size Hulk comic that was made back in the 1970’s to tie into the Hulk TV series. There is also a Moon Knight story that first appeared in a black and white Marvel magazine called “Marvel Preview”.
“Moon Knight” was one of my favorite books back in high school. I still have every issue of the Moench/Sienkiewicz “Moon Knight” series that came after this volume but I don’t think I’ve looked at them since college. These issues first came out in 1979-1980 and it’s been a while since I’ve looked at them. But I remember checking them out a lot when I was in high school.
Being that these stories first appeared in magazines and were not subject to the comics code they are a lot more adult then other comics at the time. There is nothing explicit in them but they reference sex, have plenty of violence, and people actually die in them. Though Moon Knight is a costumed super hero the stories have more to do with spy stuff than super hero stuff.
I remember Moench’s writing being good, especially on “Moon Knight” and “Master of Kung Fu” but I don’t think I’ve read anything of his in years. Thankfully I remembered correctly and the writing holds up well. As a matter of fact I think I’m really enjoying the late 1970’s to early 1980’s comic writing that I’ve been reading lately. It’s well crafted and fun good to read.
The art is some of Sienkiewicz’s early stuff. It’s good and you can see he’s learning with every story. You can see that Neal Adams is his strongest influence but he still hasn’t even developed his full blown Adam’s style that he uses in later issues of “Moon Knight”. It’s certainly not as good as later Sienkiewicz but it’s still nice work. Even this early on he draws and tells a story well.
The coloring is a little rough. Since “The Rampaging Hulk” was a full color magazine and not a four color comic the coloring was done by a different method than normal. Technically its fully painted art but it’s actually watercolor over black line. There is nothing wrong with it but it’s not as smooth and seamless as today’s computer coloring.
So there you go. Some more old comics. Good ones to. If you have a mind to check out what super hero comics aimed at adults were like back in 1979 then check out this volume of Moon Knight stories. I liked it.
Discussion ¬