Issue(s): Moon Knight: Divided We Fall
Cover Date: 1992
Title: "Divided we fall"
Credits:
Bruce Jones - Writer
Denys Cowan - Penciler
Tom Palmer & Mike Manley - Inker
Sarra Mossoff & Eric Fein - Assistant Editor
Joey Cavalieri & Danny Fingeroth - Editor

Review/plot:
Bruce Jones had a really great Ka-Zar run in the early 80s and then fell off my radar screen until his Hulk run in 2002. In the meantime, Jones did continue to write comics, but mainly for other publishers like Pacific and Eclipse. He also wrote a Shanna the She-Devil story for Marvel Comics Presents, and when i saw that he wrote this prestige format one-shot, i thought it might be another case of a story intended for Marvel Comics Presents being re-purposed as a standalone issue. But the flow of this story doesn't feel like the usual choppy Presents format and it's not neatly divided into 8 page chapters. And the editor isn't Terry Kavanagh, the Presents editor. The fact that there are two editors and two assistant editors on the book, coupled with the fact that the story takes place earlier than publication date, does suggest that this was a project that began earlier than publication date. But Eric Fein became Danny Fingeroth's assistant editor on the Moon Knight book circa 1990, which was earlier than publication date but not that much earlier, and later than the story takes place. In any event, whatever the book's origins, it definitely is an example of Marvel's 1990s glut. This is a perfectly fine Moon Knight story, but it's nothing special and there's no reason to have sold it as a $4.95 one shot.

The story has Bushman brainwashing Moon Knight's friends Marlene and Frenchie, on behalf of a faction in the Soviet Union. The Soviets get assassins to kill Gorbachev and end Glasnost, and Bushman gets to torment Moon Knight.

The brainwashing is made easier by the fact that Frenchie gets into a fight with Moon Knight over the quality of their surveillance equipment, and Moon Knight subsequently gets snippy with Marlene because of the fight with Frenchie. So both Marlene and Frenchie are out on their own and easy to brainwash.

But Moon Knight figures out what's going on.

And stops the assassination and rescues his friends.

And learns the value of treating his companions like partners instead of minions.

And then a very quick wrap up.

Quality Rating: C

Historical Significance Rating: 1

Chronological Placement Considerations: This seems to take place before Bushman becomes the ruler of Burunda as seen in the first issue of the 1989 Moon Knight series. A narration caption at the beginning of this issue places the story in the "mid 1980s", but we have to avoid the period where Moon Knight was working as an overt agent of Khonshu, so i'm following the MCP in placing this between West Coast Avengers #41 and 1989's Moon Knight #1. The decision to set the story in the mid 1980s probably had more to do with the state of Soviet politics rather than anything continuity related.

References:

• While Moon Knight and Frenchie are separated due to their fight, Moon Knight reminisces about past adventures with Frenchie, including "April, 1981 - the voodoo caper". That's a reference to Moon Knight #6; Apr 81 was the cover date.

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? Y

My Reprint: N/A