It's disjointed, chaotic, and jumbled, but I liked it.

I've sampled enough Moon Knight over the years to know he isn't my favorite character. When I first read an adventure with Moon Knight, he struck me as a Batman-lite. Depending on the era and the writer, Marvel has made efforts to cast the hero as more extreme and more vengeful than Batman. That didn't make the character any more appealing to me. I took a look at the preview on CBR last week and thought I'd give this volume of Moon Knight's adventures a try. I'm glad I did.

It's not an earth-shattering new story by any means. The story takes beats from Moon Knight's own multiple personality disorder and seems to shift without logic. In one scene, Moon Knight has Bushman in a scissor-hold but, in the next panel, Bushman is charging at Moony again. This book is filled with details and derring-do, capably handled by Opeña and Leisten and dustily colored by Paul Mounts. Opeña and Leisten's art is clean and their figures are strong, but at times the storytelling just seemed to not diverge from the path the story had been on to that point.

The opening scene with Jake and his pals reminiscing about the old days left me a bit perplexed as to the names for the four faces, but I figured Jake and Frenchie were the two most important. Of course, once the group split off and Jake "ran into" Khonshu, the story shifted considerably and became quite fun. Well, as much fun as a story between a psychotic superhero and the man whose face he carved off a lifetime ago could possibly be.

This time Moon Knight is using the identity of Jake Lockley as his alter ego, but still relies on his old pal Frenchie for some support. The Moon Knight parts of the book play up his resourcefulness and his Batman-like knack for having the right technology at the right time. The battle, however, was very un-Batman-like. Previous writers have tried to use Moon Knight's ferocity to play up his difference from Batman. Others have tried to make him light-hearted and witty, but Hurwitz doesn't try to do anything. He simply writes a strong character that moves forward without a woe-is-me attitude.

This series is clearly written to be collected, which in this case seems to be a bit of a detriment to the ongoing. The challenges it posed, however, were not insurmountable, nor did they affect my ability to jump right in alongside Moon Knight as he takes on Bushman and tries to deny Khonshu the vengeance Khonshu seeks. That angle makes this story work for me. Khonshu keeps appearing to Moon Knight and Moon Knight only, like the proverbial angel (or devil) sitting on the shoulder. The biggest difference is this angel is calling for blood and death. Moon Knight is resisting so far, and the duality of his external struggle against evil and his internal struggle to find balance make this book a good read. I'm still not the biggest Moon Knight fan, but I am looking forward to more from this character.