"Moon Knight, Vol. 1: Lunatic" by Jeff Lemire

BOOK TITLE: Moon Knight, Vol. 1: Lunatic

AUTHOR: Jeff Lemire

YEAR: 2016

GENRE: Graphic Novel

SUBGENRE: Superhero

GRADE: Pass

Marc Specter wakes up in a corrupt mental hospital with no clue how he got there. He spent his previous life masquerading as vigilante superhero Moon Knight, but the abusive orderlies and condescending psychologist try to coerce him into believing he’s just a nut case who deserves to be locked up. With the help of several patients who believe his story, Moon Knight attempts to escape the hospital in order to complete a mission given to him by his head voices: to assassinate the Egyptian god Seth and bring his monstrous army to its knees.

The lines between reality and insanity are blurred so many times in this graphic novel that it’s hard to pick a side, which is a good way to challenge the reader and make him analyze what the hell is going on. On one hand, you want to believe that the Moon Knight is a real superhero and that he wants to do the right thing. On the other hand, there are times when the questions surrounding Moon Knight’s sanity are valid and reasonable. Even when this first volume comes to its end, the jury’s still out as to whether or not this is all madness. When you’re forced to draw your own conclusions, you’re officially engaged as a reader and you want to buy more volumes of this Moon Knight series to find out if your suspicions are correct. This first volume is the addictive bait and the proceeding chapters will lead you to bigger fish.

Whether you believe it’s insanity or not, you have to admit that the mental hospital staff are a bunch of corrupt bastards who have no business in the medical industry. The orderlies assault Moon Knight for no reason and strap him to the shock table whenever they damn well feel like it. The head psychologist is no better; the way she talks down to her patients breeds resistance to treatment rather than progression. This could be a political statement about how prisons and mental hospitals (which are really just prisons for crazy people) are all about profit and will do whatever they can to make more money by keeping their inmates locked up indefinitely. Being released into society does nothing, because the inmate will be so angry from his time under lockdown that he’ll commit more crimes and wind up back where he started. Imagine how refreshing it’ll be to see the orderlies and doctors get the stuffing beaten out of them and literally get a taste of their own medicine. Patience, my friends. Patience.

The final thing I have to admire about this graphic novel is that there’s a lot of creativity underneath the guise of insanity. When the orderlies, doctors, and other villains are portrayed as Egyptian monsters and the world portrayed as an apocalyptic desert, the reader can begin to understand why Moon Knight feels the way he does. People like to say that there’s a fine line between genius and insanity. If it means I can have all of this creative fuel for when I want to write a psychological fantasy story, then I don’t mind the insanity at all. I’d rather be crazy and wild than sedated and boring. The mental hospital represents all of the boring conformity the world has to offer. I wouldn’t mind watching that place burn to the ground in a future volume of Moon Knight. Creativity and artistic thinking are what make this world work. That’s why STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) should also include A (arts) to make it STEAM. So many statements in only a 124-page graphic novel.

Superhero fanatics will enjoy the action and fantasy elements of this beautifully crafted graphic novel. Psychology enthusiasts will also get a kick out of this despite their oozing hatred for the mental hospital staff. This isn’t just a nonstop ass-kicking rollercoaster; this is something to think long and hard about. I wouldn’t mind seeing this graphic novel as part of a college’s English curriculum. Lord knows there will be plenty of discussions surrounding that. A passing grade will go to this awesome piece of superhero fiction. A stunning debut for the Moon Knight franchise!