Essential Reading for Moon Knight fans? Review of Age of Khonshu

In my last Moon Knight review I said I couldn’t be bothered to read “The Age of Khonshu”, a story arc involving Moon Knight that ran in Avengers in 2020. Eventually I did get around to it though.

Avengers vol. 7: The Age of Khonshu, collecting Avengers #31-38
Language: English
Authors: Jason Aaron (writer), Javier Garrón (artist), Jason Keith (colourist) and others
Publisher: Marvel
Cover dates: April 2020 – January 2021 (= on-sale dates: February – November 2020)
Pages: ~180
Price: $20
Website: https://www.marvel.com/comics/discover/2007/avengers-the-age-of-khonshu

In the life of every superhero, there comes a time when he or she briefly turns evil and fights other superheroes. This is essentially what “The Age of Khonshu” is all about. The explanation given here is threadbare to say the least: Moon Knight and his god Khonshu (allegedly) try to thwart Mephisto’s plans of world domination by stealing the superpowers of several heroes, which in turn makes Moon Knight and Khonshu powerful enough to achieve world domination themselves. Naturally, this does not sit well with the Avengers who take on the resistance against Moon Knight and Khonshu. Who will prevail? Will Moon Knight come to his senses again and realise who his real enemies are? And what will become of Mephisto and his sinister schemes?

Spoiler: we never learn what becomes of Mephisto. Presumably, that is resolved in one of the next Avengers trade paperbacks. And that is one of the major flaws of this TPB. It’s not a self-contained story at all; of the eight issues it collects, the first two and most of the last one have very little to do with Moon Knight and the actual “Age of Khonshu” plot. They might provide a pretext for Khonshu’s actions, but first and foremost, Avengers vol. 7 is meant to be read by people who have already read Avengers vol. 6, not by Moon Knight fans who have not been following Avengers.

That being said, parts of The Age of Khonshu are surprisingly entertaining. Especially the beginning, i.e. #33, when Moon Knight takes on some superheroes one by one. Or the design of Khonshu’s domain (even though once more Khonshu himself is not a very imposing figure for a god), ‘New Thebes City’, his mummies, moon priests and werewolves, the whole faux-Egyptian iconography. However, whenever one aspect of Moon Knight’s character – in this case, the Egyptian theme – is emphasised, his others are likely to fall by the wayside. His mental illness, for instance, is only passingly referred to by other characters. (Once again, the way in which Moon Knight’s mental health issues are handled borders on an insult to people in the real world struggling with such issues, as Connor Christiansen has pointed out in his review at AIPT.)

The Age of Khonshu is a mixed bag on all levels. Javier Garrón’s art has a great clarity to it and makes the action easy to follow, but if we single out individual panels, characters or poses, there is nothing particularly striking or outstanding about the way they are drawn. Likewise, Jason Aaron’s dialogue writing is sometimes genuinely funny, but sometimes all those witty quips are a bit too much and make every character seem like Spider-Man.

Needless to say, in the end the status quo is restored. “So I’m going back where I belong, to keep saving my crappy little corner of the world the only way I know how”, Moon Knight says in his last scene in this comic. There is no need for Moon Knight fans to read The Age of Khonshu to understand and enjoy his current solo series. It adds very little to his character, except maybe that it sheds some new light on his fraught relationship with his god. Then again, as far as Moon Knight comics go, it’s not the worst one either.

Rating: ● ● ○ ○ ○

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