Issue(s): Moon Knight #6, Moon Knight #7
Cover Date: Nov 89
Title: "One hand in the river" / "Zombie saturday night"
Credits:
Chuck Dixon - Writer
Sal Velluto - Penciler
Mark Farmer - Inker
Marc McLaurin - Assistant Editor
Carl Potts - Editor

Review/plot:
It's zombie time! Now, to be clear especially for you youngsters, what we're going to be seeing here are voodoo zombies. These zombies are mindless slaves of a voodoo master, and are not the ravenous George Romero style zombies that you know from Walking Dead. They're still animated corpses (although sometimes, like in this story, they can be "living zombies"), but they're a little more subdued and less dangerous (if they bite you, you don't turn into one).

Anyway, Chuck Dixon has some fun with them here and starts going in much more of a lighthearted direction for this book. I think that's a good move. Moon Knight, despite all his previous personalities (which are not on display in this book), never had much of a "personality" and i've always found the character kind of a bore. So injecting some humor into the series is very much welcome. It's not suddenly a comedy book, of course, but it's definitely less serious and brooding. Some of that comes in the form of the overeager sidekick Midnight, which is a little more cliched, but there's some good bits in here with the zombie stuff too.

As Marc Spector, Moon Knight returns to his place of business for the first time in "weeks" (it's a repeated theme in these issues that Marc is neglecting his business and personal life to be Moon Knight; he's currently being audited by the IRS) and finds Brother Voodoo in his office.

And Brother Voodoo has been zombified (as if he needed to take off the sunglasses to show it).

As Marc and Jericho head off, we see that they are being trailed by the new Midnight, who Moon Knight kicked out of his house in the last arc. We also see that Brother Voodoo has the munchies.

Actually it's apparently the salt that Brother Voodoo needs. But we are all glad that his corpse was showered.

Midnight is unable to keep up with Marc's taxi due to New York traffic.

The plan was to take Brother Voodoo back to Marc's mansion, but Brother Voodoo detects a zombie as they are traveling, so they get out of the cab.

They get a little delayed in following him, so they don't catch up until the zombie has reached a top-floor restaurant where two mobster leaders are talking about attacks on their turf.

And the zombie turns out to be rigged with explosives.

Before Moon Knight and Brother Voodoo decide how to handle that, Midnight shows up and knocks the zombie out the skyscraper's window.

It's the "yahooo!" that tells you we're dealing with something a little less than serious.

Midnight went out the window too, and he's briefly thought to have been caught in the explosion, but that turns out to not be the case.

Despite Moon Knight's anger, Midnight is now for all intents and purposes his sidekick going forward.

Midnight takes them all back to Marc's mansion.

Meanwhile, we find out how the zombies are getting made: people are being forced to watch daytime television.

Ok, that's really just how the zombies are being kept occupied while their voodoo master, a Doctor Friday, plans out their next mob hits.

Friday is working for El Brutale, who is trying to take out his competition fast enough that the Kingpin doesn't notice anything and step in.

Back at Marc's place, Brother Voodoo is detoxing.

One thing is for sure: temporarily becoming a zombie can totally get you cut.

And hey, look. Chloe is wearing pants!

I said these zombies aren't the ravenous type, but post-zombification, Brother Voodoo sure is hungry for real food.

He explains that he was investigating Doctor Friday in Haiti when he got caught and was forced to drink the zombi poison. Friday also took the medallion that allows him to summon his loa (i.e. the spirit of his brother Daniel). So i guess it's worth noting that Brother Voodoo was never actually dead; he was just forced into a zombie-like state. the other zombies are also supposedly volunteers, people that willingly allowed Doctor Friday to turn them into zombies, with the promise that they'll be turned to the living eventually (except he's actually making them blow themselves up).

You don't hear much from Brother Voodoo. Do you think he's just constantly down in Haiti battling zombie masters, or does just he get to relax most of the time?

Brother Voodoo is able to lead Moon Knight and Midnight to where Doctor Friday is operating from.

So, zombie fighting time!

I like the Sal Velluto / Mark Farmer art combination. I do wonder about the panel directly above though. Just in a very minor way. It looks great. But you'll notice that it's a border-less panel. You can see where Moon Knight's body is cut off; that's where the panel line would go. But Moon Knight's fist extends below that line. Extending art beyond the panel borders is a time honored tradition that helps the art seem like it's exploding off the page, too big to be contained. But when you combine that with a border-less panel, it looks kind of weird. Like, why is Moon Knight's body getting cut off if the fist goes lower? Again, just a very minor thing. But sometimes the coolness of a technique causes artists to forget why it works. This is the sort of thing that Jim Shooter probably would have went ballistic over, and it's definitely an overreaction to do more than kind of shrug your shoulders at it, but it caught my eye and i wanted to note it.

Back to zombies.

Actually, it's not just zombies that the heroes are fighting, because some of the zombies are busy watching Geraldo.

So the heroes also have to fight some of El Brutale's goons, and El Brutale also kills Doctor Friday for failing him. But Doctor Friday gets to his zombie juice and takes it to save his "life".

But then Brother Vooodoo shows up, retrieves his medallion, and uses his brother's spirit to stop Friday.

I like that we don't actually see Daniel's spirit, leaving Midnight to wonder if anything really happened.

And that's basically the end of it, except that we see that there's one zombie left to hunt down El Brutale, who has fled.

Definitely a fun pair of issues, and feels like an improvement from the earlier ones.

Quality Rating: B

Historical Significance Rating: 1

Chronological Placement Considerations: It's been weeks since Spector went to work and Brother Voodoo had been sitting in his office for three days waiting for him. That doesn't mean it's been weeks or even three days since last issue, but i have allowed enough time to pass for Moon Knight's appearance in Punisher annual #2, which includes Moon Knight nursing Punisher back to health for two days.

References:

• Moon Knight knows Brother Voodoo from the original Moon Knight #21 (no footnote).

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: N/A

Those are some nice early Mark Farmer inks.

I agree, fun issues. I was really hoping this is more the direction we'd beheading for this title, but alas it wasn't so. Midnight is such a boring character. The Brother Voodoo appearance, however, was awesome. I thought it was a cool use of a character that otherwise seemed lame. I wanted him to show up again.

I also wanted some of Marvel's other minor league "horror heroes" and "horror villains" pop up - something like a street level occult genre. We'd see Black Talon, Werewolf by Night, Blade, the Living Mummy and ; not Mephisto, Damion Hellstrom, Baron Mordo, or Jennifer Kale.

It didn't need to be a dominant focus of the book, but I think a monster hunting hero would have been a good hook for the character in addition to his pulpish villains.

And Devil Slayer. He's still around.

At least they finally put some clothes on Chloe.