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drifting-pieces-blog-blog · 5 months

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Age of Khonshu, or as I like to call it: Oh no. Oh no no no no.

Age of Khonshu, written by Jason Aaron. 2018.

Who is Jason Aaron? A big writer at Marvel, he is best known for PunisherMAX (the ultras violent and non-marvel universe version of the Punisher), some runs of Thor (the one where Jane Foster becomes Thor), and certain runs with Wolverine: Weapon X. He also wrote Southern Bastard, which is a big name over in Image comics.

Another important fact? He was raised Southern Baptist that has since become an atheist.

That history out of the way, let's look at the sort of comic this is.

I have been putting off reading this little doozy for YEARS. Why? Three reasons.

This was not a good year for me personally. In fact, this was the start of some REALLY bad years to follow for the next 4 years.

I missed the original release and when I tried to find it to read it, no one had it. Not even the library. (This should have been my first clue).

This is a Marvel tie in event.

Now, I have ranted about these before and I'm going to rant about it again.

What is a tie in event? It's a big Marvel World event that attempts to do a large story-line that involves a lot of other big names (usually the avengers).

In Events, you have the main story line that involves the main character. So say, DareDevil is fighting a super ninja. You have the main story that takes place in DareDevil's comic "DareDevil vs. the super ninja" and in that comic, it's such a big fight that the avengers have to get involved, and maybe Dr. Strange and perhaps Brother Voodoo is getting a movie next spring so they want to showcase Brother Voodoo working with familiar faces so he's involved now too.

BUT. All these people involved also have their own comics running. They don't just want to keep going and ignore this big ninja fight that's happening. So then we have side event tie ins that pause their normal story-line to respond in some way to the event that is happening.

So Let's say Ms. Marvel has her story line going where she's been fighting some evil mob boss. She's suddenly going to pause that story. She'll suddenly come up on a hole hoard of evil ninjas and have to fight them for a single issue. But they don't want to loose steam with her evil mob boss because they have to get back to that in the next issue! So it turns out her evil mob boss HIRED those ninjas in some sort of attempted partnership with the evil super ninja. Just to highlight how evil the mob boss is!

Oh, and if you haven't been reading DareDevil or the Avengers or ALL THE OTHER COMICS INVOLED good luck trying to keep up with what's going on. So by the end of the event, you have to compile a LOT of comics together in a particular order so that you can fully understand what's going on.

Even worse? Sometimes the responding tie in comics that aren't really involved with the main story line try to solve the issue. So, going back to my example, Ms. Marvel not only defeats the ninja gang, but she discovers something amazing that will in the end help defeat the Super Ninja! She has single handedly helped bring it down! …In her own comic. It makes her look like the big hero and like she was crucial to the event….When in truth, she has nothing to do withthe main story line over in DD world and her little discovery won't have anything to do at all with how to bring down the Super Ninja in the end.

With me so far?!

If this sounds familiar to you, then congratulations, you may have read "Moon Knight Shadowland", which was infinately better than the main story line of Dare Devil Shadowland. (I'm still bitter about that one). Or the original Civil War saga. Or Seige. Or Dark Reign. Or Age of Khonshu.

Today, I'm here to talk about Age of Khonshu.

In which Moon Knight gets his own special event under an Avenger's title.

So how did they compile this event under an Avenger's title? We start with something that makes no sense to someone that has not been following the Avenger's comics.

Stepping further into it? This event follows directly after the 2017 BEMIS run. So we are moving from the worst run in MK history into Aaron's Age of Khonshu. The next comic after this didn't come out till 2021! That's a three year gap!

What's the story?

Mephisto (I hate Mephisto. He has been made basically into Marvel's version of the Christian Devil.) is messing with the time line and is going back in time to amass soul contracts with people and is slowly taking over the world or destroying it or building up hell. It isn't ever properly explained, but most evil things like this usually aren't.

For some reason Khonshu has seen the future of a world where Mephisto has destroyed it and done terrible things. So he puts these images into Marc's head. Marc, thinking Khonshu is out to fuck with him again (when isn't he?) tracks down Khonshu in one of his Moon Cult temples.

Khonshu tells Marc that he's terrified of Mephisto and Marc realizes that Khonshu isn't just fucking with him this time.

So he teams up and decides to…STEAL ALL THE POWERS OF THE AVENGERS AND GIVE THEM TO KHONSHU.

That's right. As someone told me, it's like watching a ten year old talking about how their character is the most powerful and can beat up all the other characters.

Moon Knight beats up Dr. Strange with the power of Khonshu and steals his magic. Then he beats up Danny and steals the Iron fist. Then steals the GHOST RIDER'S fire of vengeance. He goes after Thor on the MOON. Turns out Thor's hamer is made out of moon rock so Moon Knight laughs as he steals the hammer because he has the power of moon. He goes after the Black Panter and T'challa is just like "LOL No. My power comes from my ancestors. You can't steal that."

So they lock up T'challa in a pyramid.

YOU KNOW WHAT MARVEL MOVIE WAS COMING OUT IN 2018?! That's right, the first Black Panther movie.

So in this comic, it's going to feature heavily that Black Panther is super powerful and the hero of the story.

Giving Khonshu all these powers, he remakes New York into Khonshu World and imprisons anyone that fails to worship him, because he's an all powerful god that will stop Mephisto.

And he does fight Mephisto and kill him, but there are so many versions of him now, because he's the devil and you can't kill the devil.

And throughout this, Moon Knight worships and prays to Khonshu, calling him his god and how he's a follower, and believes that Khonshu is a powerful god.

The Avengers keep asking him to stop, that he's off his meds or something and mentally ill and they can help him stop Mephisto if he stops Khonshu.

Eventually Moon Knight realizes that Khonshu can't stop Mephisto and he's gone too far.

He prays to a different god and THE PHOENIX fire shows up and he becomes Moon Knight Phoenix.

He betrays Khonshu because now he is his own god I guess? Helping them take Khonshu down, he gives back all their powers and they lock Khonshu away in Asgard.

Now he expells the Phoenix from his own self before he becomes Dark Moon Knight and destroys the world.

Now the Avengers story moves on to them dealing with Mephisto in a later run, but Khonshu is defeated and that's the important part!

T'challa offers Moon Knight a place in the Avengers, rather than a jail cell in Wakanda for his crimes. Moon Knight turns him down and returns to a small part in Manhattan that he'd rather protect.

And that's how it ends.

Aside from the main story aspect of this particular volume of MK avengers, here are the MAJOR problems:

Throughout the entire run, there is HEAVY christian imagery and language.

They talk about the devil and how scary the devil is. They talk about Hell. They talk about angels. They talk about gods.

They especially show Moon Knight worshiping and PRAYING to Khonshu or Phoenix.

Moon Knight himself discusses fighting the Devil and going to Hell as a construct of the horrors he has seen and done.

2. Throughout the run, Aaron tries to pull out bits from Lemire. Referencing him and doing callbacks. It falls SO flat.

There is a scene early on where he does the "I am Marc Spector. I am Steven Grant. I am Jake Lockley. And we are Moon Knight" bit. But it's followed by a prayer to Khonshu because he is the Moon God's accolyte.

Later he talks about how Marc expelled Khonshu from his mind and had healed and was his own man again. He talks about how Khonshu had put horrors in his mind that made him ill.

He then talks about how he frequents a certain mental hospital.

Not only is he referencing Lemire, but he's taking it in the wrong context. This man read it and went "Yeah sure I got it" when he clearly didn't.

In Lemire's run, we see Marc dealing not just with how KHonshu used and abused him and how messed up he was, but we also see him coming to terms with his own mental illness and trying to understand himself. To understand that he himself had been abusive towards himself. His self harm attributes. His pushing people away. We see him learn to embrace the 'what if' aspect of after mental illness. We see doubt and we see room to heal.

In this it's just "Khonshu did it."

3. We're back to the mental health topic. While they DO acknowledge Steven and Jake twice, offhandedly, we don't see them. It's just MARC. And I find it hard to believe that either of them would either let Marc go this far off the rails to hurting his friends, but that they would go along with it without having a discussion or working as a team if they found it to be the only solution.

They also have NUMEROUS remarks from the others about "We all know Moon Knight is crazy but I didn't think he was this crazy". It carries on the old conversations that everyone in the Avengers and so on all see Moon Knight as mentaly unwell. Unfit. Crippled, even. He's not well enough to do things. He pretends to be a hero but we all know he's likely to melt down any minute and do something crazy, attitude.

And repeatedly he's told to take meds, go to the hospital, check himself in… Even T'Challa tells him "Wakanda has made great strides in Mental Health. We can cure you!"

Cure him from what? Trauma? Take away his DID? Or implying that he's some sort of other unwell causing him to not think straight?

It's these three things combined that just really set me off.

The absolutely disgusting use of Christian vocabulary and idealism to portray a Jewish character. Even if Marc isn't observant of Jewish beliefs, he is culturally Jewish and raised by a Rabbi. Unless he blatantly converted, he would not find himself worshiping and praying to another god. He wouldn't believe in the devil or use such language to describe Mephisto. He wouldn't talk about Angelic idealations or even Hell.

Then the blatant use of his mental illness to further how it's easy for Moon Knight to fall into such ways. Of course he did this. He's crazy. He'll do anything!

Of course he made his god Khonshu into an over powered dick.

I've discussed this before with a good friend, but there is a difference between following Khonshu and worshiping Khonshu.

I love the use of Yehya Badr to show this in MacKay's run. One has converted and religiously believes and follows Khonshu. The other follows a path that he himself set down as a result of his experiences and own needs.

Moon Knight never outright worships Khonshu (when properly written). Even in Moench's old run, he believed that he had been resurrected by Khonshu and therefore his power and life was in Khonshu's hands. This was more following Marc's thinking that he himself was nothing more than a ghost. Without Khonshu, it was more of an existential dread that he was nothing. Not that Khonshu was a god figure.

In later runs this translated into a sort of worship and it never should have. In Moench's run, Khonshu was some unknown force. Perhaps a god, perhaps a spirit, perhaps some form of something ancient that represents the moon and protecting those who travel by night. Considering the Marvel universe and such loose terms of applying all powerful beings under the phrase of 'god', it makes sense. Thor is technically a god. But he is not a god to be worshiped.

Moon Knight takes his own Jewish upbringing. He is here to cherish all life. To protect those who fall into the margins and cry for help.

What's most insulting is that this comic directly followed the run by Bemis. The one that was so laced with antisemitism and blatant disregard for mental health topics.... So we jump from blood libel and Nazism into fighting the actual Devil and praying to gods and worship.

This is not a good look, Marvel.

Here's the thing, we need a Jewish writer.

I don't mean someone that was formerly Jewish that converted to some other following. I don't mean an atheist that has a special interest in other religions (as Aaron claims he is). We need a born and raised practicing Jewish writer.

We need someone to use the proper terminology that isn't Christian based. We need Jake to speak more Yiddish. We need Steven to be seen putting money into the Tzedakah box. We need Marc to discuss his conflict with his Orthodox Rabbi father and his current path in life and how, like it or not, he has become the epitome of the Jewish struggle to exist.

I appreciate Mr. MacKay, but when his run is done and Marvel looks for the next Moon Knight writer, I'd really like to see a Jewish voice step in and not only respect their own people (despite what Marvel may tell them to do) but to also continue to represent and respect the mental health aspect of Moon Knight.

Maybe I'm asking too much? But this issue...

TLDR: Do not read Bendis, Bemis, and Aaron when it comes to Moon Knight.

#Moon Knight #Moon Knight Comics #I'm so angry you guys #Is it too much to ask that someone do a little research before taking on a comic title?#Tell your story Marvel but fucking tell it respectfully #What the hell was the editor doing?#growling and snarling #Moon Knight is Jewish

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allthingsr-betternotbeingnormal · 10 months

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Do you have to be such a daft cunt?

Miguel O'Hara x Reader

Word count: 954 words

Warnings: Swearing, growling, reader trying not to attack Miguel

Summary: Hobie shows you Miles being chased and you're pissed, which prompts you to return to HQ to give Miguel a piece of your mind.

Note: This was stuck in my head so I had to let it out. I might expand and make a multi chapter story on how reader met Miguel and the gang. (Might post it on AO3) Reader's hero name is Aqua and was bitten by a radioactive water spider.

Hobie never came to your universe, so to say it caught you by surprise with him standing outside your house was an understatement. It also meant something was wrong.

You felt it in your gut and your instincts were never wrong, so when he showed you a live feed of the chase–sorry more like manhunt–of Miles Morales you felt your blood run cold.

What was O'Hara thinking of going after the kid like that?

You've met Miles a few times–unknowingly to the Society–and you instantly clicked with the kid. He was cool, a bit clumsy, smart as a whip with a wicked sense of humor

Not something O'Hara seemed to have. Weren't all spider people supposed to have a sense of humor?

His must have fallen out his as–Anyway, watching as their 'glorious leader' continue to smash Miles into the train made you see red.

"We're going back to HQ."

"Nuh-uh. That's your bit. I'm a lay back and watch the chaos unfold, Luv."

Both your gaze met, a smile blooming on your face "I have a strong feeling you're up to something Hobie Brown. I hope it's epic."

"I can't be anything else but epic."

The mask covered your face before activating the watch Hobie made for you months ago. Completely undetectable from the Society.

The both of you have had your doubts about a few things concerning the place, hence your own device.

Glancing back at your best friend you sent a two-finger salute and walked forward.

The trip took seconds and you arrived just in time to see O'Hara tell Gwen to go home as the machine grabbed at her limbs.

First Miles, now Gwen. How unhinged was the bastard? Is this how society members are meant to be treated?

You pushed through the crowd of the others, cursing for them to get out of the way as they stood there, doing nothing

Gwen's name left your lips as you mad it to the front and you two made eye contact just as she whispered "We're supposed to be the good guys" before being blasted back to her dimension

A growl built in your chest and you're in front of O'Hara as he turned, slightly off guard at your presence

"Are you out of your fucking mind!?"

The others gasped, Peter B Parker quickly covering Mayday's ears

"Stay out of this Aqua."

He can't be seriously telling you to turn away from what you just witnessed. It was wrong and he and everyone else knew it

"You went too far! What you did to Miles was uncalled for O'Hara!"

The man's eyes turned red, a snarl left his lips showcasing his massive fangs

"Uncalled for? Are you daft? He disrupted a canon event and is on his way to start another. I did what I had to, to try and stop him."

"By what? Chasing him like a criminal! Beating him up! Telling him to just turn a blind eye and accept that he's about to lose his father!? That's cruel, even for you."

"If we don't stop him his universe will collapse. Is that what you want to happen? Huh? His father has to die. There's no changing that."

The others looked on as they fought back and forth. The majority of them exited the room until there was just Peter B Parker with Mayday, Penny, Porker, Jessica, Ben and Margo.

"There is no way you are 100% sure that diverting from canonical events will trigger universal collapse."

"Yes, I can because it happened to me!"

"The multiverse is complex O'Hara and even you with all your genius cannot fathom its capabilities."

O'Hara pushed passed you, growling and ignoring your words

"I don't have time for this. I'm going after Miles. Stay out of my way Aqua."

Your hand caught his wrist, making him pause "Miguel–"

You watch as his shoulders hitch. Not once since you've known him have you ever called him by his first name

"I know you've lost a lot and you feel like you need to shoulder everything on your own but you're taking this too far and you're buckling under the pressure. Don't do something you'll regret."

He wretched his wrist from your grip, putting on his mask as he called out to Jessica and Ben saying they were going after Miles before opening a portal to the teen's dimension.

Jessica and Ben entered and just before Miguel did he turn his head towards you "Don't come after us Aqua. Try and stop me and I can't promise that you won't get hurt."

The collective gasps were just a buzz in the background as blood rushed to your ears "I'll keep that in mind O'Hara. It's a shame. You're letting yourself become a spiderman all of us should fear. I hope you never catch the kid."

With no response the group watched as he disappeared through the portal.

The silence that fell across the room was deafening. Peter was about to say something when you started laughing, holding your side as you doubled over

"Ah–not to be a stickler but what's so funny? Miguel is on his way to rip the kid a new one and you're laughing your kidney off."

It took a while but you calmed down. Looking over at Margo, you smiled "You knew, didn't you?"

"Of course I did. That's why I didn't stop the transport sequence."

"What are you two talking about?" Penny and Porker asked

"The machine sent him to the universe where the spider was supposed to be. Earth-42. Miles Morales is in the wrong dimension."

The panic from everyone–especially Peter–was expected but you weren't concerned about that. The goal now was keeping Miguel as far away from the boy as possible and saving his father. O'Hara was wrong and you were sure of it

"Come on. Let's go save Miles. But first we need to fetch Gwen. Whose in?"

#miguel o'hara #o'hara #spiderverse 2 #across the spiderverse #spiderman #spider gwen #spider character #peter b parker #argument #spectators #portals #growling and snarling #hobie brown #spider man: across the spider verse #spider people

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