Today, learn how Moon Knight briefly had superpowers from being bitten by a werewolf.
In every installment of Abandoned Love we will be examining comic book stories, plots and ideas that were abandoned by a later writer without actively contradicting an earlier story (so the more passive definition of retcons as being anything that is retroactively added to continuity, even if there is no specific conflict with a past story). Feel free to e-mail me at [email protected] if you have any suggestions for future editions of this feature.
Recently, I did a piece about how Moon Knight gained lunar-based superpowers in his second series in the mid-1980s that other writers pretty much ignored until eventually Charlie Huston revealed that Khoshu essentially took the powers away from Moon Knight. In that piece, I noted that in the classic Doug Moench/Bill Sienkiewicz Moon Knight series, that Moon Knight did not have superpowers, but I meant to do a follow-up article about how he DID briefly have superpowers, but before I could get around to writing this article, enough of you e-mailed me suggesting I write about it that I added a “Trust me, I’m going to address it” note to the original article. Well, this is that follow-up!
MOON KNIGHT FIGHTS AGAINST WEREWOLF BY NIGHT WITHOUT ANY BITES
This is weird, because there really would be no good reason for me to share this much of the original fight between Moon Knight and Jack Russell, the Werewolf by Night, but I assure you, there is a point to this!
Okay, Moon Knight debuted in Werewolf by Night #32 (by Doug Moench and Don Perlin) and the issue opens with Moon Knight just beating the heck out of the star of the comic book…
Moon Knight just WAILS on this guy. We then go back and see that this is a mise-en-scène opening as we go back and fill in how we got to the point, and how Moon Knight was hired by The Committee to capture the Werewolf (who he didn’t believe in until he actually saw him) and how Moon Knight showed up and started attacking Jack…
During the fight, Moon Knight is mostly destroying him, but Jack looks like he gets one good swipe at Moon Knight (and when you’re a werewolf, it’s a lot like fighting a bear. You can be beating up the bear easily, but one strike by the bear can end you)…
However, it is important to note that it doesn’t even look like Jack drew blood there, right? It’s a 1975 Marvel comic book, so it’s not going to be filled with blood anyways (remember circa 1986-88 when Marvel comic books started getting bloody, but it was all colored black? Too funny. “Nah, nah, it’s okay, it’s black-colored blood!”), but in any event, it doesn’t look like he even tore through Moon Knight’s costume, he just messed up Moon Knight’s ribs.
Anyhow, Jack is eventually beaten up to the point of unconsciousness. So Moon Knight latches him on to the ladder of his Moonwing helicopter and has his pilot, Frenchie, fly off.
Then, in the start of the next issue, Jack wakes up, and he knocks them both off of the ladder…
I dunno about here, is Jack cutting him here? How could he NOT be, right?
And at the start of this page, Jack again seems to maybe cut him, but luckily for Moon Knight, he then turns back into Jack (complete with silver daggers stuck in his chest!!) and collapses…
Okay, the reason I shared all of those pages is because I wanted to make it clear that Jack NEVER BITES Moon Knight in these two issues.
And yet…
OKAY, I GUESS MOON KNIGHT WAS BITTEN BY WEREWOLF BY NIGHT OFF-PANEL
Marvel’s brass were all, “Wow, this Moon Knight guy is pretty sweet. Could we turn him into a superhero?” He DOES let Jack go at the end of Werewolf by Night #33, by the way. So they asked Moench and Perlin to come up with a new story to set up Moon Knight as a superhero and they complied. So Moench obviously was thinking that he needed to come up with something that would work for a full-time character and one of the hooks is the famous bit where Marc Spector uses multiple aliases other than Marc Spector, each of whom have their own specific supporting cast members. It’s a great idea. However, when a villain is giving the lowdown on Moon Knight, they reveal that Moon Knight apparently WAS bitten by the Werewolf by Night and Moon Knight now has super-strength based on the phases of the moon, werewolf-style…
Now, you could argue that this is just a case of the bad guys not having good information (I mean, how would they possibly know that, right?), but nope, we see Moon Knight in action and he notes that yeah, he has super-strength based on the phases of the moon via an off-panel werewolf bite…
It’s really a shame that he was never actually bitten, right?
MOON KNIGHT’S WEREWOLF POWERS FADED AWAY
Okay, so fast-forward to 1980 when Moon Knight now has his own ongoing series and Moench obviously decided that he didn’t like the idea of Moon Knight having superpowers, so in Moon Knight #6 (by Moench, Bill Sienkiewicz and Klaus Janson), Moon Knight has a bit of a hard time with some thugs…
And he reveals to his girlfriend that the Werewolf “virus” has now left his system, so he no longer has werewolf powers…
How funny is it, really, that multiple writers thought “Super strength based on the phases of the moon” sounded like a good idea for a character?
Thanks to the many people who noted this when I mentioned Moon Knight’s lunar superpowers. If anyone has a suggestion for a future edition of Abandoned Love, drop me a line at [email protected]!
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