Warning: The following article contains spoilers for Moon Knight Annual #1 by Cullen Bunn, Ibrahim Moustafa, Matt Horak, Mike Spicer and VC's Joe Sabino, on sale now.
In the Marvel Universe, the ancient Egyptian lunar god Khonshu has been reimagined as the society's God of Vengeance who selected Marc Spector and his dueling personalities as his avatar to deliver bloody justice to the world as Moon Knight.
However, Moon Knight Annual #1, by Cullen Bunn, Ibrahim Moustafa and Matt Horak, reveals that Spector is far from the first individual in history to be chosen as Khonshu's champion on Earth. And, with the fate of the entire time stream at stake, Spector finds himself partnered with them all as he battles a classic villain through time and space.
The annual opens up to Ancient Egypt revealing that Khonshu is the God of Time as well as Vengeance, with the Egyptians' worship of their lunar deity abruptly interrupted by the sudden appearance of time-traveling Avengers villain Kang the Conqueror.
Seeking three artifacts joined together in a staff from Khonshu to gain dominion over time, Kang's plot is hampered when the staff is broken, scattering the three components he needs. Seeking assistance, Khonshu summons Moon Knight from a vision of present-day that is apparently ruled by Kang, sending his loyal vassal across the time-stream to partner with earlier avatars as they battle Kang across history.
The first partner Spector gains is a Wild West vision of Moon Knight from 1874, who employs revolvers loaded with silver bullets. Unsuccessful in preventing Kang from acquiring one of the artifacts, Spector follows Kang to World War II, where he attempts to claim another artifact held within a Nazi stronghold, and faces off against the Moon Knight of 1945, who is appropriately leading his own Allied military unit known as Silver Company.
Spector's fight against Kang intensifies leading to him teaming up with Moon Knights from Ancient Rome, the American Revolution, the Roaring Twenties, Victorian London, the time of sea-faring pirates and an apocalyptic far-future. However, the Moon Knights' history-spanning battle against Kang reaches its climax with the appearance of Khonshu's very first avatar millennia in the past.
Arriving in 4000 B.C., Spector finds himself face-to-face with a woman silently meditating in a Mesopotamian desert. Similarly dressed in all white and wearing a mask bearing Moon Knight's emblem and a pair of bloody claws fitted on each hand, the avatar has already killed an army of Kang's time-traveling followers in defense of the final artifact.
As Kang inevitably arrives to claim the final artifact for himself, the battle is joined, not just for the legacy of Moon Knight through history but the fate of the entire Marvel Universe. However, thanks to some quick thinking from Spector, the two avatars of Khonshu are not alone.
Seizing the final artifact, Spector summons all of the previous avatars of Khonshu he had partnered with in time, including the Ancient Egyptian avatar that confronted Kang at the beginning of the story and a previously unseen Viking incarnation of Moon Knight joining the fray. Outnumbered, Kang is overpowered and frozen within the time-stream while Spector allows the first Moon Knight to use the combined artifacts for herself to undo the damage the villain had previously committed before she displaces herself in the time-stream to maintain a constant vigil defending the artifacts.
While previous comic titles had revealed a previous avatar of Khonshu in Ancient Egypt and another in the alternate future of Marvel 2099, this story gives the imminent streaming star a whole host of avatars of Khonshu through history on the scale of Iron Fist, Ghost Rider or Black Panther's own respective legacies. And while the history of Moon Knight doesn't stretch as far back as Avengers 1,000,000 B.C., it does provide an expanded history to the fan-favorite Marvel Comics character that had largely been unexplored.