Issue(s): Moon Knight #33
Cover Date: Sep 83
Title: "Exploding myths"
Credits:
Doug Moench - Writer
Kevin Nowlan - Penciler
Carl Potts, Brent Anderson, Joe Chiodo, & Bill Sienkiewicz - Inker
Linda Grant - Assistant Editor
Denny O'Neil - Editor

Review/plot:
Some unusual names on inks for this issue; especially notable is Bill Sienkiewicz.

This issue is the first appearance of reporter Joy Mercado, who will go on to be a regular minor character in the Spider books (although she'll turn blond for that). She's working for the Daily Times here, on a story about which Denny O'Neil writes in an editorial piece:

There's been a lot written about super heroes as modern myth figures - our twentieth century versions of Hercules, Prometheus, Aeneus and all the rest of the larger-than-life legends that somehow reveal what people think is best in themselves. What "Shattered Myths" does is comment on the need for modern myths and their possible corruption in the context of an action-adventure thriller.

It sounds more Literature 101 than it is. The story has Mercardo writing an "Exploding Myths: Titans For Our Times" series, and having already written profiles on Daredevil and police detective Flint, her subject now is a local criminal named Druid Walsh who allegedly has super-strength.

She finds him beating up a bunch of guys in a bar & grill where he's trying to extort some protection money, and she leads him on...

...inviting him on a "date" (at the top of the Mount building in the Olympus Room restaurant, in case you like your symbolism up front). He finds out that she's a reporter but she convinces him that she's into him anyway.

However, it turns out that his strength isn't really super...

...so the article she writes about him isn't flattering.

Moon Knight is her next intended subject so she sends him a fake "I need you for a life and death matter" request. He turns up to find an angry Druid Walsh at her desk. And Druid may not be super-strong, but neither is Moon Knight, so Druid is able to knock Moon Knight around...

...and walk away with Joy. He takes her back to the Olympus. He intends to detonate a bomb, making himself a literal "exploded myth", and taking her out too. While they're waiting for the bomb to go off, he explains a little about himself. He was never very smart but he became damaged in Vietnam. Later he tried pro-wrestling; his fangs are a leftover from that.

Moon Knight shows up and after a big difficult fight he manages to rescue Joy...

...but Druid is blown up.

Moon Knight turns on Joy, saying that it's her fault that Druid got stirred up. I guess as long as he was just a petty criminal in a local neighborhood, leaning on guys for protection money and throwing crates at the police, it was ok.

I don't really agree with Moon Knight/Moench's conclusions (and Joy won't either, after this issue), or the fact that Joy has to use her sexy sexiness to be a reporter (i demand a story where Ben Urich seduces Poundcakes), but it's a well told story. It could just as easily have been a Daredevil story (or, say, Batman), since there's nothing specific about Moon Knight here, and i'm not sure it's really quite a deconstruction of the superhero myth as O'Neil said it would be, since it invents a new non-super guy to focus on, but if it's just looked at in terms of the semi-tragedy of this local tough who's got a legend built up around him and then sees it all torn down, it's pretty good.

This is the end of Doug Moench's near exclusive run on Moon Knight. It's probably not a coincidence that the series will flounder a bit from here, going from Tony Isabella to Alan Zelenetz and then getting cancelled and rebooted as a new series which only lasts six issues. Of course the loss of Sienkiewicz was also a factor. Kevin Nowlan's art was pretty nice too but this is his last issue as well.

Quality Rating: B-

Historical Significance Rating: 3 - first Joy Mercado

Chronological Placement Considerations: N/A

References: N/A

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: N/A