Issue(s): Solo Avengers #3 (Moon Knight story only)
Cover Date: Feb 88
Title: "Tower of shadows"
Credits:
Roger Stern - Writer
Bob Hall - Penciler
Stan Drake - Inker
Gregory Wright - Assistant Editor
Mark Gruenwald - Editor

Review/plot:
Moon Knight is on the hunt for Cornelius Van Lunt, and he's heard from Jack Russell (aka the Werewolf By Night) that the Shroud can help him. But the Shroud is thought to be a bad guy, a crime boss. Moon Knight arrives at the location Russell gave him, which is a castle, and he finds that it is rigged up with booby traps in preparation for his visit. That quickly turns into a fight with Shroud himself.

Moon Knight eventually knocks Shroud on his ass, but then he finds himself facing "the weirdest bunch I've ever seen": Night Shift.

It turns out this fight was actually an initiation session at Jack Russell's request. Russell is happy in this group that, thanks to the powers of Dansen Macabre, can keep him in check during a full moon. And Shroud is actually looking to get out of the role of leader. But Moon Knight, who has just joined the West Coast Avengers, declines the offer. And Shroud agrees to have his contacts seek out Cornelius Van Lunt, which will lead us into West Coast Avengers #29.

It's nice to see Roger Stern and Bob Hall, the original West Coast Avengers creative team, taking a turn on a plot point in the book that fits in neatly to the ongoing series. And the fight between the very similar Moon Knight and Shroud is cute and it's cool to see the weird Night Shift again even if they aren't too involved in the plot. But mostly this is a very slight and unnecessary story and my concerns about this series continue to be justifed.

Quality Rating: B-

Historical Significance Rating: 1

Chronological Placement Considerations: Moon Knight and Shroud appear here before West Coast Avengers #29.

References:

• Moon Knight is on the hunt for Cornelius Van Lunt after he skipped out on the Avengers in West Coast Avengers #28.
  
• Hawkeye tried to recruit Shroud in Stern & Hall's West Coast Avengers #1.

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: N/A

It's nice to see Marvel's two Batman-inspired characters together. This story seems fun but it would have been better to get more than a handful of pages devoted to this pairing, as well as Night Shift and Jack Russell. There's a potentially cool story there. I can't remember if it's a follow-up to this story in any way, but I believe Night Shift shows up again in West Coast before Byrne takes over.

I actually thought this was a perfect example of what the second stories in Solo Avengers could be - spotlighting a character that doesn't have his own title and give him a nice little story that helps expand a bit on what's happening with that character in the Avengers title. Here, we get a bit of a transition between the end of the Zodiac story and Moon Knight catching up to Van Lunt and we get a nice fight between two characters who really mesh well together.

A nice pure fight issue although I can see why readers would call foul with an MK story so early in the series when longer time Avengers hadn't got their shot yet.

Bob Hall's pencils are very strong in this mid-eighties period. I always liked the art when he was the penciler on something. I don't understand why he was not utilized more. Some of Marvel's ongoing titles would have benefited from him at this time.

Also while I like some of the individual one issue stories told at this time, I think the back up features would have benefited from a few multi-issue stories with a single character. The series should not just be featuring fillers - but being utilized as features to identify possible characters for their own titles.