Marvel’s Moon Knight arrives soon, so here’s a refresher on the comic book origins and details you need to know about Oscar Isaac’s vigilante hero.
Last night, Marvel Studios properly lifted the lid on its next Disney+ streaming series, Moon Knight, starring Oscar Isaac as the titular avatar of moonlit justice. But the character of Moon Knight is arguably perhaps one of the more esoteric of the heroes coming in the studio’s slate this year —and with a very mysterious trailer like the one we got, you might have some questions. We’re here to help. First introduced in the pages of Werewolf by Night #32 in 1975, Marc Spector, already the Moon Knight, was a mercenary tasked with capturing the titular lupine protagonist of the book by a villainous group called t he Committee. Although his first appearance was distinctly antagonistic, Marc quickly teams up with Werewolf by Night and is reframed as more of a dark, but still noble hero. He’d have several appearances as a guest star in series like Marvel Two-In-One and The Defenders for several years, but it wouldn’t be until 1980 that Moon Knight got his own solo series, from Doug Moench and Bill Sienkiewicz, that would largely flesh out the framework for Marc’s origin as the hero. That series established that before becoming Moon Knight, Marc was a former Marine who became a mercenary after being discharged from the military. Teaming up with the villainous mercenary Bushman, Marc is eventually betrayed and left for dead on a mission in the Sudan when he tries to stop Bushman from looting an ancient tomb and killing a team of archaeologists investigating it. Barely making his way back to civilization, locals take the near-dead Marc to a temple of the Egyptian moon god and purported protector of night travellers, Khonshu, where he succumbs to his wounds… only to miraculously be reborn, declaring that Khonshu not only saved his life, but has made him an avatar of his will as the Moon Knight. When Marc’s backstory was first fleshed out—in ways that only further made audiences draw parallels between the character and DC’s Batman—he adopted different identities to obfuscate anyone seeking to track down the identity of Moon Knight. There’s still Marc Spector the mercenary, but there’s also Steven Grant, a Wall Street speculator and businessman who takes Marc’s savings and turns them into millions, in order to fund his vigilantism. We see an alternate iteration of this in the Moon Knight trailer, where Steven isn’t a billionaire, but a shy, British museum gift shop employee. Not glimpsed, however, is a third identity: Jake Lockley, a down-to-earth taxi driver that Marc adopts in order to glean information from the streets.
